Manhattan Buckeye;1467335 wrote:One of the most odious moves by the administration is trying to get young people on board in a system that ultimately screws them.
The propaganda encouraging young people to buy insurance they don't need is nothing more than a ploy to offset the insane costs involved in insuring everyone, including those with pre-existing conditions and people that have been on disability for decades.
To use a real insurance analogy - auto insurance. This would be like ObamaAutoProtection telling people that are 45 years old, with clean driving records that drive a Buick that their auto premium needs to double or triple just so Crazy Harry that drives a Corvette with multiple violations gets a more reasonable rate for his insurance.
It isn't a perfect analogy since some believe that we should provide "free" health coverage for all, even though some have lived the life of Keith Richards and managed to survive...like Keith Richards. But the ultimate point is ObamaCare relies on young people paying more in premiums (even though they certainly have less assets and income to pay them) than they would otherwise for reasonable insurance coverage, to offset the massive costs in insuring those that require far more healthcare but can't pay for it. Obama wants a single-payer system, Obama realizes that a single-payer system would be shockingly expensive and inefficient (to the point the public would never go for it) so they've opted for this middle ground where they shame the young into paying for the old, as if they don't have to deal enough already with the deficits inherited.
Single-payer healthcare systems are
more efficient and
less expensive everywhere in the world. Medicare is more efficient than private insurance. If we had the healthcare costs of countries with single-payer healthcare we would be looking at federal budget surpluses into perpetuity.
The only argument against it is that, because Medicare becomes the monopolistic price setter (instead of monopolistic providers like Hospitals gouging insurance providers and patients in our current system) it can drive out providers or refuse to pay for things....i.e "rationing"
We went with Obamacare because Obama thought he thought trying to go for single-payer when we've evolved as an employer based system was unnecessary. He has said as much regularly dismissing single-payer promoters as being unrealistically idealistic. He shut down Anthony Weiner's Medicare for All Act.
And like I've said before...under Obamacare...high deductible catastrophic coverage should be available in the state insurance markets. And, if it is not, it is because young people don't want to buy it enough so that Insurers won't offer it...Or, because Insurers choose not to offer it. There is nothing in the affordable Care Act that stops employers from offering high-deductible catastrophic insurance to healthy, young workers or from insurance companies from doing it.
All the coverage over California's Exchange "Cover California" has even discussed how the "cheapest plan available" is the non-comprehensive, catastrophic plan with an average price across the region of $184 per month for a 25 year-old non-smoker...not bad for California!
So Conservatives have this boner for catastrophic coverage and here it is being offered by teh librulz in Cover California
And yes, even young healthy men, who for example are at the highest risk for testicular cancer, need at least catastrophic coverage...and they often refuse to buy it. If they do not buy it and pass those costs onto others, they ought to pay for their negligence with a pigovian tax to internalize this cost as well as to discourage this behavior.
