Posted on 06/11/2007 12:22:06 PM PDT by neverdem
IT’S a seemingly simple solution to a nationwide problem: if people do not have health insurance, just require that they buy it. The idea of making coverage compulsory to help reduce the number of uninsured Americans — currently 45 million — is gaining momentum. With a law passed last year, Massachusetts became the first state to mandate coverage. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California has supported the idea, proposing that his state do the same. In Illinois, mandatory health insurance has become part of a broader discussion of health reform.
Requiring people who can afford health insurance to buy it — the same way that car owners must buy auto insurance — appeals to those who believe that mandatory coverage is fairer than asking everyone else, directly or indirectly, to pick up the health care costs of those who choose not to buy it.
In Massachusetts, lawmakers were able to pass the measure because it was viewed as a grand compromise among employers, the government and individuals.
But the state is discovering that making health insurance mandatory is easier said than done. It has spent the past year dealing with questions about how much basic coverage people need, and how much they can be expected to pay. (The poorest residents receive free or subsidized coverage.)
The state has had to work with insurers to create a market for individual insurance where affordable policies were not readily available. With a half-dozen companies, it developed an array of plans that it offered for the first time last month.
Up to now, Massachusetts has maintained the public’s support for the mandate, said Paul B. Ginsburg, a health economist who is president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a Washington research group. “So far, there has not been any evidence of uproar,” he...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I htink you guys (gals) are right, but here’s the problem: the government already compels hospitals to care for everyone brought into their emergency rooms. Many of these people don’t have insurance, so hospitals get subsidized by the government, which means taxpayers must pay. Since taxpayers like me who have health insurance are also paying (via taxes) for others’ healthcare, I’d like to see some of these healthy twentysomethings start paying for their own coverage. Here in CA, a healthy 25 year old guy can get good medical and dental insurance through Blue Cross for under $80 a month. Most of them don’t buy it because they “can’t afford it”. Yet, the same people all have cable TV! When these twentysomethings get in car accidents, they get great medical care, paid for by taxpayers.
There’s an ongoing debate about the source of that number, and more importantly its composition. By adding every person who has had one day without insurance in the last year, every person who’s eligible for a federal program and hasn’t signed up, every person who’s elible for employer-provided insurance but doesn’t want to pay for it, every person who’s self-insured, and every non-insured illegal alien, you get that number.
The actual figure for ‘working families who can’t afford insurance’ is much, much, lower. More statistics brought to you courtesy of the same people who add non-combat deaths into the ‘Iraq death toll’ because it makes the number look more impressive.
“Because young males are generally healthy, adding them to the pool of insured would most likely reduce the average cost of coverage over all, given that this particular group is not liable to need expensive treatment.”
By their own admission, they are forcing someone to pay for something that they do not need, in order to lower the price for those folks that will be using the coverage. This is nothing more than wealth transfer by the barrell of government guns. Socialism begets fascism....
Can’t wait to read the FR posts celebrating the actions of Mitt.
Gotta fly for now, catch up in the am...
So, then, when that young guy gets involved in an accident, you won't mind if we just leave him at curbside, rather than having the government take him to the hospital and provide medical care for him, right? After all, that would be socialism.
This is “Romney Care” a plan which which the Mitt fans think is great because in their souls they Liberals.
Now here's what I want to know. If all those illegals just come here to be hard working tax paying pillars of the community, why don't they pay their hospital bills, instead of forcing the ER's out of biz?
Why not? Most states compel people to buy car and house insurance...
House insurance is required by th mortgage company not the state.
Indeed. My overstatement. Ridiculous, though. Some of these companies have captive clients.
Natually, my insurance didn't pay a penny, so I got a bill from the hospital for nearly $600. After finally getting my heart to slow down, I paid that bill. A few days later, I got a separate bill from the doctor (apparently, the $600 was for the cost of the needle and thread and the rent on the chair I sat on). The doctor's bill was $640, so I guess that doctor's assistant is paid over $3600 an hour. Naturally, they refused to lower the bill because I had insurance, even though it wouldn't pay anything. Since the rejected amount was counted toward my deductible, they said they couldn't reduce it any more (me getting so much benefit from it, you see).
All told, those seven little stitches cost me over $1200, and for all I know, more bills will come in for the cost of the air I breathed or the magazines I read in the waiting room. BTW, when I was a kid in rural Texas, I cut the same arm on the other side and got five stitches. Our family doctor patched it up, and I think charged $50. This is why, as much as I despise Michael Moore, his next movie is going to be a hit.
People don’t need health insurance. They need health care. The problem is health care costs too much. Health insurance has contributed significantly to the high cost of health care. So the solution is more health insurance!!???
If we got health care costs under control, we wouldn’t need to have insurance for the vast majority of medical procedures.
I’m not mandating federal price controls on health care, instead relax restrictions and regulations on health care that force the costs up.
Me? I’d start with tort reform.
They seek to control the means of production. The Health Care System is another means of production.
That's 'cause it hasn't really started yet -- just preparation. Wait a few weeks.
Union members have had to contribute their dues money to the DNC for years; whether or not they were a democrat!
“Many of these people don’t have insurance, so hospitals get subsidized by the government, which means taxpayers must pay.”
No, actually the uninsured pay 300 to 400% more for emergency care than those who carry insurance. Insurers and the government have the power of numbers and money to negotiate what they will pay hospitals. The uninsured pick up the entire tab times 3 or 4. I won’t even get into the hospital’s unbundling tricks, unnecessary treatments and other frauds. The uninsured who pay their bills subsidize both the insured and Medicare.
Didn’t know that.
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