Independent Study States Obamacare To Drive Up Healthcare Costs 32%

Not that this is a surprise to anyone as it was widely expected.

http://www.soa.org/News-and-Publications/Newsroom/Press-Releases/ACA-Driven-Changes/

 

When the first talking points about Obama care came out, the biggest one was that those who were uninsured would be required to buy health insurance. Wow! Brilliant! Force them to buy it, problem solved. Are you kidding me? Like any piece of shit legislation that goes through Congress, be assured it will help corporations and business, not the people.

 

This bill is such a ridiculous POS. It doesn't absolutely NOTHING to address the actual problems and issues associated with our healthcare system and is just driving costs up higher and higher.

 

I like certain aspects of the bill but the mandatory tax and the effect on the economy is problematic.

 

Which aspects do you think actually help solve the real problems in our current system?

 

Great question.

Probably none. But, as an example, I like the idea of no caps on what a policy will pay.

 

Was at a dinner last night with 6 other doctors, industry leader types they were going off on how fucked the costs are going to be. Insurance reimbursements are already shit to begin with, they're absolutely frightened about the future of medicine. Basically said this will kill private practice.

But then again, I went to a talk on Monday with Healthcare IT/startup type people who seemed opportunistic about the money the government is throwing at it right now. hah.

get dat money grab.

 

Another interesting tid bit is that under Obamacare all free medical/dental clinics are now illegal and they MUST charge. I think this drives up the cost of healthcare as well.

 

I met with a group of dentists recently and they tell me that under Medicare they recoup about 20% of the costs they need to charge. Obamacare will be aboout 10%. Most of them will refuse to see Medicare or Obamacare patients as a result.

 

the no preexisting conditions and the requirement to spend a certain percentage of the insurance companies income on medical procedures are both good additions also.

Considering the rate of increase from 2000-present, Im not sure 32% by 2017 is not worse that the status quo. Here is a chart from 1950-2010.



There are lots of things wrong with the PPACA but Ive yet to hear a better option amongst all the complaints.

 

I don't know much about this particular study, but is the Society of Actuaries a good source for studying this? Major components of Obamacare are the elimination of pre-existing conditions, eliminating caps on lifetime payments, and capping insurance company non-medical expenditures.

Seems to me like the job of actuaries is to figure out how much pre-existing conditions will impact payouts and how exposed an insurance company is to lifetime payments. And they would seem to make their living on the non-medical expenditure side of insurance. Basically, Obamacare is actively seeking to eliminate their jobs, isn't it? If so, it's not hard to see why such a society would produce a study saying Obamacare is bad.

I haven't thought about actuaries very much, so I could be wrong. And I'm not denying there could be perfectly valid reports on how Obamacare will drive up costs. I just find this particular organization suspect.

 

As a rule of thumb, it's bad to get government involved in anything. They always muck it up.

Case in point: The TSA

I worked at the airport for a couple years when I was a kid and the private companies that were handling the security check points were doing just fine. The attacks on 9/11 were not a result of bad security on their part. The box cutters that were used in those attacks were completely legal to bring on a plane. Since the TSA has taken over, airport security has become a complete joke. Every time I go to the airport I see no less than six of those blue-shirted fuckers standing around in groups chatting it up. Such a waste of money. The government has no concept of budget or how to manage money. They always overspend and use money where it's not needed. The government budget should be overseen by an independent commission that is selected by the public and changes regularly. All of the numbers should be public and any excess cash should be dealt with in an efficient manner. I had an internship on the city level and I couldn't believe how money is handled. If they have money left over at the end of the year, they don't want to admit that their budget exceeded their needs so they basically just blow the extra money on stupid shit so they can get the same budget the next year. Just ridiculous.

 

Are you sure this is true? I wasn't able to find anything to support it.

 

While I do agree with you regarding TSA and 99% of other instances, I feel that there are some industries that hurt the nation as a whole by the greed of being privatized. Healthcare is one of those industries, the other is Prisons and most people have no idea that’s its even an issue.

Private prisons are a pet cause of mine and something that I feel is terribly overlooked because "being tough of crime" is a great selling point for politicians. In theory they are great as they take the burden off the state and reduce cost for housing the inmates the state already has, because they are being run as a business and not a government entity. In reality what happens is these prison companies create more inmates by lobbying our politicians to increase penalties and prison terms for crimes and they support failed costly policies such as the War on Drugs, and Immigration. The war on drugs is obvious, do drugs get prison time not rehab, the immigration is less obvious but just as destructive as these companies make big bucks off of housing illegals in border states till they are deported. If you don’t view this as a potential conflict of interest and a big problem then look up the stock symbols CXW and GEO, two of the biggest private prison companies. That’s right you can actually trade these companies who base their profits on their inventory of prisoners. This is actually a good investment for the savvy stock trader as the USA already has almost a quarter of the world’s prison population Another issue with a lot of these prisons is they put local companies out of work as they manufacture goods in their prisons at slave wage costs.

Here’s some extra reading on the subject for those who care.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/b...ral-prisons-for-contracts.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-w-whitehead/prison-privatization_b_1414467.html
http://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/private-prisons
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=393846&CategoryId=12395
http://www.policymic.com/articles/2...e-using-the-drug-war-to-generate-more-inmates

So as you can see socialized is not always a bad word, and privatized in not the answer to everything.

 

Seems like privatized prisons could work if we changed the way we paid for them. Instead of just paying the company for every year they house someone, adjust the payments based on recidivism. If a prison releases and is then forced to re-admit a criminal on a new charge, they get paid less. Give the prison an incentive to care about the long-term viability of the ex-con and it'll start factoring that into how it treats its prisoners. Without that incentive, it's entire mandate is to simply cut costs at every turn.

 

The report says that costs in Massachusetts will come down 12.8%. This tells me that Obamacare is cheaper than Romneycare.

Obama designed this around Romneycare, which sends a lot of profit to insurance companies, to get Republican votes, but got none. When Democrats get more power, the middlemen will be whittled down. The best case model is single payer, like Medicare.

 

Socialization? Good idea?! Just takes us a few steps closer to communism! I like the way you think!

 

Yes. Medicare is such a wonderful solution and something we should strive to get the entire country on. /green font

 

Did you read all the criticisms in this thread about the bill costing too much because of the profits it sends to large companies? Read it again!

 

You like turtles