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#1
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At least the overall number of people that happens to hopefully narrows? I think a large portion are just going to opt out and pay the tax anyway.
IDK the uptick of it really. Maybe it will get people eventually thinking of fully nationalized medical care like so many other countries have? If the republican reaction is any indication I'm not holding my breath. | ||
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#3
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#4
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At least you aren't funding a bunch of eastern/southern European immigrants piggybacking on NHS healthcare in Britain.
Saying that makes me racist by media standards btw... I'm now a bad person [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] | ||
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#5
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I'm 30 and havent had health insurance since i was 18. In those 12 years ive broken my hand twice and had 3 doctors visits for colds/pinched nerve. I look at it this way. I've spent about 6k in medical bills in 12 years so i'm still ahead rather having insurance to cover me all those years. I will pay the penatly atleast the first year if not the 1st 2 years. depending on what the actual fee will be 3rd year i might get insurance or just work part time and get welfare [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
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#6
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#7
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I began working for my company a little over a year ago, and they require that I carry health insurance as part of the terms of my employment. It's only around $56 a month, but were it elective, being under 30 and in relatively decent health I probably would not have opted in. This past february I messed my knee up pretty bad, and ended up with a patella sublexation. That night I went to the ER and had an x-ray. Were I not insured that would have wound up costing me $900. Later that week I went to an ortho and he had me get an MRI. I honestly don't even remember what that cost, but I think ballparking it around $1500 is more than fair. After that I went through 2 months of Physical therapy. Out of pocket that would have cost me $1900, my insurance covers 90% of PT costs, I payed $94. The MRI I paid a $600 deductible for. The ER visit ended up costing me about $300. All told this cost me under a grand. Without insurance I would have been looking at about $4,500-$5,000. I also pay around $4 a month for dental insurance that offers a max coverage of $1,000 per year, and I've used that for a year. In the last year and a half I've gotten ~$6,000 worth of medical expenses taken care of for $1500 + ~$60 a month for 18 months. Now obviously my plans aren't terrible, and my employer covers a good chunk of the monthly costs.. but my injury was nowhere near "catastrophic" and aside from my dental (I really let my teeth go throughout college), being young and healthy absolutely none of this was expected. Without insurance it would have sucked. A lot. I can't even imagine what a large injury, or even something more common such as a pregnancy would wind up costing somebody who was uninsured. I don't relay the story to say "Obama care is awesome!" but rather to point out that for every story like yours, there are probably a pretty decent amount that are just like mine. I'm the same as you with my car insurance. I live in a state that does not require it, however I've paid in my entire driving-aged life because if I hit somebody I sure as fuck don't want to be sued for an insane amount of money. I'm not entirely sure I agree with saying that the amount our employers end up paying in to our insurances would wind up in our paychecks. It would be nice, but there is just no way that I believe I would see much, if any of that money as direct-pay compensation. Anyway, I'm off-topic, and rambling, but just wanted to say, that for everyone that pays in and doesn't use it, there are those that do. Personally, I don't think it's worth the gamble, even at a young age. That's at least kind of why I enjoy the notion of those that are going to gamble paying SOMETHING into the system regardless on the off chance that something terrible does happen to 1/10000 that do and the rest of us get stuck with the costs. | |||
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#8
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Also, keep in mind that I could afford a $5k injury like yours every 18 months or so and still only break even with my insurance. It's pretty insane really. I know there are a lot of people who like to go to the doctors office for every little issue, and that's fine. I just shouldn't have to subsidize these peoples' hypochondria. As for the employer compensation part.. Any employer looks at the total cost of employing someone, and that includes the health care portion. If you removed all employer health care tomorrow, employers would suddenly have a windfall of extra profits. If you think this would just go on forever, you don't know the first thing about business. People would begin to demand more actual compensation, and this would lead to much more room to poach talented individuals and compensation would rise until it's near where it is it with the health care included. There are probably better ways (other than a sudden 100% shift to no employer based insurance) to make sure this process is as smooth as possible. Also, you should understand just where the marriage of employment and health insurance began. It started in WW2 when FDR had placed various wage controls on industry. Industry then began to offer health insurance as a backdoor compensation, and they eventually got this written off on their taxes as well. | |||
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#9
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http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/...countries.html http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolynm...e-big-picture/ Quote:
Companies are greedy. Employees ALWAYS want more compensation. As you mentioned, if they were to stop contributing to employee health plans, the company would instantly have much more profits. The only thing that would make those companies interested in putting that money into direct compensation for their employees would be to stay competitive when recruiting talent (you mentioned this also). I don't think there is any reason to assume that this would be the case. All of the companies in the industry already have a good amount of talent. The proverbial "line" regarding compensation has already been drawn. The benchmark is there. One company may use some of it's new profits to raise it slightly, but there is no way that they are going to use 100% of their new saved money to directly compensate employees in an attempt to get more talent. A slight raise (2%-5%) industry wide would still not account for nearly what the employer was paying in the first place to cover their employees. | ||||
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#10
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I like the idea of self-insuring, but I hate the idea of a 1 million dollar++++ hospital visit
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