Post Grad Living

My words are in bold.

poorrichardsnews:
Just when it looked like there might be some hope for our federal government, the GOP goes and talks about keeping parts of Obamacare if it’s struck down by the Supreme Court.

I know. Almost everyone knows someone who has had trouble getting health insurance because of a pre-existing condition. It’s an awful situation. But rest assured, government intervention will only create bigger problems for everyone else.

How so? What “bigger problems” does PPACA create? Is it a “problem” that kids can stay on their parents’ insurance until their 26th birthday? Is it a “problem” that eligibility for Medicaid will be expanded? Is it a “problem” that insurance companies won’t be able to deny coverage to (or pull coverage from) someone with a pre-existing condition?

Have you ever asked yourself why the government put the mandate in the law in the first place? Why do they care if you buy insurance? It’s to pay for the pre-existing conditions portion of the law. If people know that an insurance company will be forced by the federal government to accept them, regardless of condition, why would anyone ever get insurance? They would just wait until they got in a car accident or until they got a disease to buy insurance. This is, by definition, not insurance. Insurance companies will go out of business if this law is put into place. It is unsustainable.

The purpose of the mandate is to prevent the free-rider problem. You’ve alluded to it already, but the free-rider problem occurs when an individual chooses not to purchase insurance and ends up taking advantage of the health care system when he gets sick/injured. The result is higher premiums for everyone who has insurance. In theory, the mandate eliminates the free-rider problem - but the PPACA (“Obamacare” is a pejorative term and has no place in intelligent conversation) doesn’t fix the free-rider problem because the fines for not buying insurance are lower than the cost of insurance. In other words, PPACA doesn’t do enough. And by the way, insurance companies will not go out of business. Insurance companies exist in the rest of the industrialized world - most of which has universal coverage, by the way.

Insurance companies are not health providers, nor are they charities. They make money measuring risk. It’s just like a casino. Everyone can’t be a winner. If everyone won in Vegas, the casinos go out of business.

So in the game of life, you lose if you get cancer, and that’s just too bad? Right. Ok. That’s a good attitude to have toward our society.

Don’t fall into the trap. All of the law is bad. It must be repealed and replaced with more freedom, not more government mandates.

This is just rhetoric that appeals to people who can’t think/do research for themselves.