Here is my idea: KEEP THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF HEALTH CARE. End Medicaid, phase out Medicare and end all talk of Obamacare. Let people take care of themselves. That is what freedom is all about. You take your chances, rise or fall on your own merits and live with the consequences.
I live in a state that the insurance company cannot rule agaisn’t you for a pre-exisiting condition.. It just drives me batty when I hear that...I read that post earlier a woman in Mass. health care was a right.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2435762/posts
Just keep the government out of it please.
This is not a direct relationship. Health insurance is not a limited-supply product, on which demand can drive up prices.
In fact, it's the opposite. Any one company can write coverage for every single person in the world. There is no "supply" problem at all -- and better, the more people an insurance company covers, the lower their risk and therefore the less they have to charge. So driving up demand will actually DECREASE prices.
But indirectly, the actual HEALTH CARE is limited. If twice as many people try to go to the doctor, they will not be able to find enough doctors, so doctors would be able to charge more -- until we get more doctors through medical training.
However, we could help solve that problem if we loosened restrictions on who could be primary care physicians. Doctors are overtrained for that role, which is why under HMO rules a lot of that work is done by nurse practitioners. You bump up to a doctor if the problem's solution isn't obvious.
If we relax restrictions, some people can be gatekeepers after a 4-year college degree, driving up supply and lowering costs since those gatekeepers won't have 10 years of expensive medical school to pay for.
TO do this, you need tort reform, so people can't sue when the gatekeeper makes a mistake.
The Federal Government would never be able to keep its hands off the “pre-existing conditions” fund, just as it hasn’t kept its hands off of Social Security contributions. They would issue funny bonds, just like they have for SS, which we would redeem via our tax dollars. So, we’d pay twice: once for the fund and then through higher taxes/inflation.
The Federal Government would never be able to keep its hands off the “pre-existing conditions” fund, just as it hasn’t kept its hands off of Social Security contributions. They would issue funny bonds, just like they have for SS, which we would redeem via our tax dollars. So, we’d pay twice: once for the fund and then through higher taxes/inflation.
It's a simple answer...High Risk Pools.
A majority of states have them, if you don't qualify for the standard risk pool, you can get into the high risk pool.
You should be able to get the same level of coverage as standard risk people for a little higher premium.
Most risk pool rates are less than Maine's community rating/guaranteed issue mess that everyone would have (if only they could afford it).
If later you can qualify for the standard risk pool, you can get the lower rates.
High risk pools are designed for the guaranteed chronic treatment patients. In other words, previously uninsured cancer and AIDs patients can still get coverage and have high claims...the claims are just paid out of a different fund than the standard risk pool.
That isn't entirely correct. As I understood it, back in the days when I toiled for an insurance company, "Pre-existing conditions" meant that an individual had been treated for something in the past. There was an interval of 6 months before that individual could obtain a new policy, if that individual had stopped paying for health insurance, or otherwise had a break in coverage.
Maybe I'll finish reading the article later...
ping