How can insurance companies include preexisting conditions without a health care mandate?
If there’s no mandate, and insurance companies are forced to give me affordable health care regardless of preexisting conditions, that means I only have to get health insurance when I come down with cancer. I hear many Republicans stating that they are all for barring insurance companies from excluding those with preexisting conditions, but none of them explain how you can do so without a national mandate to buy health insurance like we have with auto insurance.
August 11th, 2010 at 9:10 am
Republicans can’t think holistically. You’ll never get through to them.
Republicans, quick — what does “holistic” mean?
Didn’t think so.
LOL.
August 11th, 2010 at 9:28 am
Expand Medicare and Medicaid to include everyone would solve the problem. Permit those who wish to have private insurance.
August 11th, 2010 at 9:51 am
right-wingers live in a right-wing utopian dream world. ALL of their policies depend on the world being a perfect place and all people doing the right thing and not trying to take advantage of the system.
When someone does, they just shrug and say AH-HA see libs! your ideas failed.
expanding medicare and medicaid to include everyone would not solve any problems. the problem is that most doctors won’t accept the stuff for office visits foricing people who need nonemergency treatement to go to the ER for it, costing tax payers evern more.
And the health care bill did allow people to buy their own from their employers or on their own.
August 11th, 2010 at 10:30 am
how “can” they? they can do whatever they want.
You should be asking why WOULD they.
There is no good reasons for an insurance company to insure a house that is already on fire.
A mandate would be required for any sane business person to do that.
And people that plan to get insurance AFTER they get sick, are the reason our healthcare system is broke. Not enough healthy people paying in to cover the people that are sick, so the premiums for those of us that purchase healthcare insurance are high. because the people without get sick anyway and then leach off the hospital and the hospitals have to pass their losses on to the insurance companies, who pass the costs on to us.
By the way….I haven’t heard any Republican on here saying they support preventing insurance companies from denying pre-existing conditions. I mean seriously, if you expect the insurance companies to accept them, they are either forced to instantly take a loss (which make NO business sense at all, and they ARE businesses), or make the premiums so high that the sick person is effectively paying the full hospital bill anyway, or to jack up the rest of our premiums a bunch even though we were responsible.
August 11th, 2010 at 10:56 am
What they do is limit benefits related to the existing condition for the first year of coverage.
I’ve never supported any action to prevent insurance companies from protecting themselves from the financial ravages of having to immediately cover pre-existing conditions in full. That would kill insurance companies, which would not be a good thing at all.
Of course, better than a mandate would be free-market solutions to the problem, so that there could be interstate competition for insurance, giving people more choice and the benefit of lower costs due to more competition between insureres. Throw in tax credits for individuals at the same level that companies get for offering health care as a benefit, and you have created a condition where people can own their own insurance policies, and which will be portable for them, so they do not keep having to worry about it when they change employment.
And, as ever, there is nothing in the Constitution that gives the federal government any authority to have any control or direct any resources to health care or health insurance.
August 11th, 2010 at 11:52 am
That’s what Obama said today to the Republicans at their retreat (Kind of funny that they even need one at all given the hard work they’ve put in this year! )
They said they have ideas. It’s been a year and so far they at the stage of ideas. I do not think that they have an ability to solve issues. They are so good at having ideas though, aren’t they?
The point is that this all about words that can score points. There is no way to govern without strict regulatory mandates, other than jailing all the corporate lawyers indefinitely.
August 11th, 2010 at 11:59 am
Insurance companies all require a waiting period and you would not be covered during that time usually 6 months to a year. I don’t think the mandatory insurance rule will pass because it takes away freedom of choice. Look at the protests over government insurance for qualifying people. Americans want to choose a private plan over a public one even if it costs more. They feel private enterprise is better for American than the government. Rejecting people with a pre-existing condition is only one part of insurance reform.
August 11th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
Well, if there were no insurance companies or government coverage at all, sick people who showed up at a hospital would either have to find some way to pay the bill or not get treatment. Perhaps they would take out a loan if they didn’t have that kind of money handy. Why can’t we do that?
I’m not necessarily talking about involving banks. But what’s unfair about an insurance company requiring a person with a pre-existing condition to sign a contract to remain a customer or pay them back? That wouldn’t be too different from cellphone companies forcing you to stay with them after they give you a free headset.
That way you have a choice. Cover yourself beforehand and you’re free to leave whenever you want. Cover yourself afterward and you’re obligated to make up the difference. Everyone wins!
August 11th, 2010 at 12:54 pm
I have been looking into this topic quite a bit lately. I am recently out of work, my company closed and even the COBRA plan is being eliminated so I can’t buy COBRA anymore. With that, I thought the company or whomever was taking it over was breaking some sort of law and they had to let me have COBRA anyway. Was I wrong? Yes.
In my search for answers, I found many different websites that gave me info and many of them I received calls from a variety of insurance agents trying to sell me some insurance. In a nutshell I found out the following;
If someone want to ensure (make sure, not protect) they have insurance options, they need to get insurance when they are healthy. Someone on this post said it perfectly, “How can an insurance company insure a house when it is already on fire?” We all know the answer. So, people need to get there own insurance before they get sick.
If there is a mandate that everyone gets insurance, affordable needs to be relative. This means that the insurance company needs to be able to charge a sufficient premium over the entire group of people in the carriers portfolio, to ensure adequate funds are available to pay the claims. This means that people that are sick need to pay more for their insurance, or participate more in their health care expenses.
Otherwise we will have healthy people paying way too much for their health insurance.
Everyone needs to make sure their representatives and senators know this is how they feel.
You see, health insurance is not rocket science. It is, simply put, a company collecting from a bunch to cover the expenses of a few. The healthy people pay a little, but need even less, the sick people pay more, and typically need more than they contribute. But in the end, it all needs to balance out. The healthy people get to pay less than the sick, but a little more in premiums than what they will need for there health costs so that when (not if, but when) something big happens, they have the ability to pay.
Someone in this post said we need medicare to be expanded to cover everyone. Well, I for one do not like that idea. Every year we see our Medicare benefits in jeopardy. We know the medicare system does not work already. My father has medicare. Basically most of those on medicare are sick, or will be soon. It is expensive to treat the typical medicare recipient. Can we really burden this plan anymore than it is already? There are not any simple answers to that question, but certainly not a blanket one of “lets expand medicare!”
There is a website that has a lot if videos that I think helped me understand how health insurance works. This is not the only one. It just happens to be pretty easy to understand. And I did not have to sign in or give my name or phone number so that I get a bunch of calls from insurance people. (I did get a quote and put a bogus name and e-mail address, I got the quote and no-one called me.)
http://www.insurancequotesandmore.com.
August 11th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
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