Can this health care reform work without mandating health insurance?

[GOPBasher]

I'm genuinely asking here. It doesn't seem to me like it could work, but I hope I'm wrong and I want to hear other arguments. What I'm thinking is that, short of a single-payer or otherwise socialist system, this health care reform won't work without mandating insurance coverage.

You cannot tell insurance companies that they must cover people with pre-existing conditions if we don't bring everyone into the system to spread the risk. This way, people can remain uninsured until they have a problem, and then they can sign up for insurance. To cover this, insurance companies will have to raise the premiums tremendously on everyone who is covered.

Furthermore, what do we do with people who have no insurance and end up in the emergency room? They must be treated by law (which is good). But the hospital can't get any money from them, so to recoup the money they must raise their prices on everyone who is insured. This is one of the major reasons our health care costs have sky-rocketed so much in recent years.

Even if we had a public option, I don't see how that would work either, because people would still have to pay something to get it.

In short, I think we would either need a single-payer or fully socialist system (neither of which is not happening, unfortunately), OR we must have the insurance mandate. I'm no expert on any of this, however, and I want to hear what anyone else has to say.

[Ron Green]

1. Why should we have to settle for something "short of" Single Payer?

That's the question that ought to be asked everywhere, over and over.

[GOPBasher]

4. I doubt we can get ten votes in the Senate for single-payer.

Single-payer is great, but there are other systems that work just as well. Germany, as just one example, doesn't have single-payer; they have hybrid system that is similar to what this health care plan would usher in. 100% of their population is covered, and they spend roughly 10% of their GDP on health care. It works every bit as well as single payer.

[pampango]

5. Why should we settle for anything less than a National Health Service like Britain has?

That would be better than single payer.

[MadHound]

2. Yet if we do put in the mandate, given the law's ineffective price restraints,

Insurance companies would be handed a mandated monopoly, we will see our premiums shoot through the roof, and the destruction of the middle class as more and more of a family's money is devoted to paying insurance premiums.

This law was the worst possible outcomes of the reform debate, and I'm happy that it is getting taken apart. We can start over and actually craft something that is reasonable, with a public option, that doesn't kill the middle class.

[BzaDem]

6. "We can start over and actually craft something that is reasonable"

Yeah. All we need to do is go around the country giving speeches and the Republican House (probably for the next decade due to redistricting) will happily enact a new bill with a public option. They'll even put in a trigger for Single payer, and another trigger for a National Health service if Single Payer doesn't meet some metric.

[Xolodno]

3. Its going to put a huge...

..financial squeeze on the Insurance Companies...they will lose customers as rates go up. Then, the individual states will take a hit as more and more goto the "emergency room". If it comes to that...

The insurance companies have just become the football to be tossed and ran around with. Either they repeal or they revise...just a question of whose going to get the highest score at the end of the "game".

[BzaDem]

7. No, it does not work without the mandate. But the mandate will be upheld. The judge made a crucial

error regarding the necessary and proper clause that has even right wing judicial sites pointing it out. He basically read the necessary and proper clause out of the constitution.

[badtoworse]

8. If the judge mad an error...

why wouldn't it be corrected on appeal? There are other suits pending and it seems likely to me that the SCOTUS will have the last word and not be limited to what this trial court ruled.

[BzaDem]

10. It will likely be corrected on appeal (unless the 5 Supremes want another Bush v. Gore). That's my

point.

[GOPBasher]

9. I see. That's good, imo. n/t