If there is a mandate to buy private health ins and no public gov't administered plan, will you....

[Shagbark Hickory]

go along with it and buy a private plan?
Things to consider:
Unlike the auto insurance mandate most states have, you can't opt out by not driving your car.
Lets say you are wealthy and can pay all your medical expenses in cash. Why should you need to buy insurance? That's really not fair.

I'll tell you this much, if there is a mandate to buy into a private healthplan, then put my name on the roster for prison because I ain't gonna buy it on principle alone. I refuse to pay the insurance companies one red cent.

(Added by edit) --->
The insurance companies are sleaze that have been spending billions of dollars to block reform.
They not only don't deserve getting millions of new customers, the additional profits they would obviously take in would go towards future campaigns to block reform.
And these are private companies afterall. They will find loopholes in the laws to drop people. All the regulation in the world wouldn't make me trust them.

A mandate doesn't do anything to punish these corporations for lying to, stealing from and killing thousands of people each year. It rewards them and I'll have no part of that.

[stray cat]

1. I like having health insurance and my employer pays for most of it

of course I'll keep it!

[hobbit709]

2. Buy it with what money?

Pre-existing conditions. I'm not healthy enough and too old(59) to get hired for a real job and not disabled enough to get disability.

[endarkenment]

8. No exclusions for preconditions and no gouging either

and if you cannot afford it it is subsidized so you can afford it.

[hobbit709]

10. Don't hold your breath for that one.

[Hello_Kitty]

21. Really? Define "so you can afford it".

How much will the subsidies be and who will get them? From what I've seen in the House plan if you are over 400% FPL (which is about $45k a year) you will be expected to pay up to 12.5% of your income for insurance. Have you started making 12.5% more lately?

[endarkenment]

32. I guess we will find out what the details are if and when a bill passes.

Did you think there would be no additional individual cost for single payer?

[Hello_Kitty]

33. A single payer tax would be progressive.

The more money you make the more you will pay toward it. I very seriously doubt someone making $45K a year would be paying 12.5% of her income as her share of a single payer tax.

[endarkenment]

35. I don't disagree with you.

But I refuse to oppose mandates simply because they aren't as good as medicare for everyone. We've been there, we lost this same fight 16 years ago and we are getting all set to lose it again.

[Hello_Kitty]

39. And I refuse to support them based on wishful thinking

Uninsured people, contrary to popular misperception, are not the main cause of high insurance premiums. It's estimated that the uninsured add 8% to the cost of insurance for people with coverage: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/24/cost-shift-uninsured/

Forcing people to buy insurance will save you 8%. What about the other 92%?

Edit to add this post I did recently about the way the uninsured are being demonized. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6174218

[sinkingfeeling]

3. You do realize you'll have to pay something for a public option if there's one, don't you?

[Shagbark Hickory]

5. Yes. But I don't view the government as the enemy. The ins companies could care less if we liveOrDie

[Wapsie B]

9. Yes just like we're paying for private policies now.

We're already shelling out money to insurance companies. Only difference is it's not a government tax. It's still money out of our pockets.

[DevonRex]

4. WTF? Prison?

:eyes:

Look, I get your meaning but nobody is gonna throw anybody in prison.

[Shagbark Hickory]

6. Really because that's what they do when they catch you driving without insurance.

How else are they going to enforce it if you don't comply?

[closeupready]

13. I tried to make this point last week. Obama will NOT say he endorses garnishing wages, because

that is precisely what Hillary backed during the primary campaign and he attacked her mercilessly for that position. But that will probably be part of the 'solution'.

[SoCalNative]

25. No one is thrown in jail for driving without insurance

Your car might be impounded and there is a fine involved.

[aaronbav]

37. In Georgia, in addition to your car being impounded,

you WOULD in fact be arrested and taken to jail for driving without insurance... Can't pay the fine - you are looking at more jail time.

[truedelphi]

40. Yes and the fine is a stiff one. Something on the order of $ 1,200

If you have that money sitting around, you can pay the fine. If you don't pay that fine, there will be a warrant out for your arrest.

There are people who have sat in jail for such small things as not paying that fine.
It is part of the poverty cycle.

[Shagbark Hickory]

41. What happens when you don't pay the fine?

[aaronbav]

44. JAIL - also as soon as the insurance company notifies

the state that your insurance has lapsed (which it is required by law to do), your Georgia Drivers License is automatically suspended, so you are also looking at charges/fines/jail time for driving on a suspended license

[Old Codger]

11. Maybe not

Prison but there will be penalties applied, what will they be? How will they be enforced? jail time for not paying, suspend drivers licenses, take it out in the form of a payroll tax (for these with jobs) Attach your paycheck(for those with jobs) , if no penalties it is worthless to mandate it.. So what's it gonna be?

[Shagbark Hickory]

14. I'm all for a mandate, just don't mandate me to pay a private company and make some CEO pig richer

[sinkingfeeling]

18. Ok, but private companies will be providing the actual care. So it doesn't matter if your premium

goes to the feds or an insurance company. They will turn around and pay your doctors (private practice) and hospitals (for-profit corporations).

[Shagbark Hickory]

26. It's not the providers that I have issues with.

The insurance companies are sleaze that have been spending billions of dollars to block reform.
They not only don't deserve this, the additional profits they would obviously take in would go towards future campaigns to block reform.
And these are private companies afterall. They will find loopholes in the laws to drop people. I still don't trust them.

A mandate doesn't do anything to punish these corporations for lying to, stealing from and killing thousands of people each year. It rewards them and I'll have no part of that.

[Hello_Kitty]

28. Yeah, so? Roads and schools are built by private companies too.

But I pay taxes to the state and federal government to pay for them. And I want it to stay that way.

[closeupready]

17. Obama is flip-flopping on health care.

Walk back with us through the mists of time to early 2008, and you might remember then-candidate Barack Obama defending the rights of hard-working people so they would not be forced to buy health insurance.

Obama's position was different from his two nearest rivals, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, who included mandates for individuals to buy health insurance in their plans for reform. It was an issue that got downright contentious on the campaign trail.
---------------------------------
Let's contrast those comments with what Obama said on CBS News on July 17, 2009, after Democrats in the House of Representatives unveiled legislation that includes a mandate.

"Do you believe that each individual American should be required to have health insurance?" asked Jonathan LaPook, an M.D. and a medical correspondent for CBS News.

"I have come to that conclusion," Obama said. "During the campaign I was opposed to this idea because my general attitude was the reason people don't have health insurance is not because they don't want it, it's because they can't afford it. And if you make it affordable, then they'll come. I am now in favor of some sort of individual mandate as long as there's a hardship exemption."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jul/20/barack-obama/obama-flip-flops-requiring-people-buy-health-care/

[Shagbark Hickory]

27. By "healthcare" you must mean "health insurance" reform Classic example n/t

[closeupready]

29. Yes, sorry. That's what I meant.

n/t

[endarkenment]

7. This is not my favorite program implementation but Romneycare

for all of its faults, and it has many, has managed to increase coverage, of some sort, in Mass.

"Lets say you are wealthy and can pay all your medical expenses in cash. Why should you need to buy insurance? That's really not fair."

Oh boo hoo. You buy insurance because a) you are not an idiot; b) it is required in order to keep everyone in the pool.

'Everyone in the pool' is a key concept to keeping per capita costs down. The rich and the young and the healthy have to buy coverage just like everyone else.

[Shagbark Hickory]

12. Then call it a tax. Don't require a wealthy person to have to deal with and make pmts to a private

health ins company.
romneycare sounds like a swell temporary solution for a rich state like mass but that's not reform, it's corruption.

[Hello_Kitty]

24. Romney care is turning out to be horribly expensive for the state

And they are having to exempt thousands of people (10 to 20% of people who don't qualify for subsidies depending on which report it is) from the mandate because the only insurance they can afford is so expensive. They recently had to cut back coverage on legal immigrants.

'Everyone in the pool' is a key concept to keeping per capita costs down. The rich and the young and the healthy have to buy coverage just like everyone else.

Which makes perfect sense in a single payer plan. Under a pluralistic profit-driven system, forcing a few million healthy young adults into plans will not lower costs all that much. The mandate is not the magical panacea you think it is. It doesn't address the main problem, which is insurance companies skimming 30% of every health care dollar for themselves and denying people care.

[endarkenment]

34. everyone in is essential to any reform

Look I am not a fan of mandate systems, but I do think they can be made fair and affordable. However, everyone has to be 'in' for any of these systems to work. Healthy people have to be paying in so that sick people can get care while they aren't paying in. If it is a universal payroll tax or a purchase mandate, we are all going to pay for care even if we aren't using it right now.

I absolutely agree that mandates do not address the 30% surcharge imposed by the insurance companies. But I will support *any* incremental reform that moves us toward universal coverage. What we really cannot afford is another 16 year wait to try again.

[Texasgal]

15. Buying a private plan doesn't

ensure that you'll be insured!

Case in point: My niece... She is a sales rep, she is an independent contractor. She pays for a private plan. She is young, 28 years old and just recently diagnosed with MS. her PRIVATE insurer dropped her right after her diagnosis thus making it almost IMPOSSIBLE to get another private plan. She now has a "preexisting" condition to deal with.

It's INSANE! This why we need a major overhaul in our medical system!

[Shagbark Hickory]

16. That too! Of course there is talk of forcing privates to accept people regardless of pre-x cond. nt

[closeupready]

20. But will those with pre-x cond. pay higher premiums?

And if so, will they effectively be priced out of the market? Or priced out of meaningful coverage that actually does anything besides giving people a slip of paper saying that they are covered when they really aren't?

[Shagbark Hickory]

43. The public option in HR 3200 also has variable rates.

[Scarsdale Vibe]

36. Health insurance will be highly regulated.

It will be illegal for insurance companies to drop people when they get sick or deny them coverage for pre-existing conditions. There is a huge amount of regulation in HR 3200 when it comes to basic benefits and the the new health insurance exchange.

[Texasgal]

38. what's ridiculous is that

some people don't think there is a problem with our lovely health insurance!!

I mean, HELLO! Why hasn't this issue been adressed already? This should be CRIMINAL!

[Shagbark Hickory]

42. Is anything highly regulated in this country?

[Jeep789]

19. Yes. I won't like it but I will do it.

Hopefully, they will, at least, be required to cover anyone and not to raise rates based on conditions (pre-existing or otherwise).

[Mojambo]

22. Nope. I can barely afford auto insurance.

It won't be about principle for me. Mostly it'll just be about being too goddamn poor.

[Bluenorthwest]

23. I'm insured, but most I know are not.

And their question is who is going to come get the blood from the turnip, and how?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

30. If I have to,

I know which insurance company I'd go with, because I file insurance claims for a doctor. There's one company that I would NEVER buy insurance from, even if it meant going to jail, because they never pay for anything.

[guitar man]

31. depends on what it costs

they can mandate all they want, if I can't afford it, I can't afford it. If it's cheaper than what I'm scraping to afford now, then it might not be a bad deal. If they price it out of reach, fuck 'em, raise my wages or go suck it.