Originally posted by: TruePaige
Originally posted by: shira
Originally posted by: TruePaige
Does absolutely nothing to address pre-existing conditions and cost of chronic care. What a piece of shit.
Private insurers are willing to overlook pre-existing conditions exclusions if EVERYONE has coverage, which is exactly what this plan would do. Problem solved.
As to chronic care, I'm not sure what you're referring to. Please be specific. And also please inform us what plan does a BETTER job on whatever you mean by "chronic care" than this one.
Really? They are? Didn't see that in the article. I mean why would I expect people who currently cut a large chunk of people out to not just continue to exclude them and rake in even more cash.
Chronic care, you know conditions that require frequent, expensive visits to specialists or emergency rooms. Conditions that require lots of medication which isn't covered by affordable insurance plans, etc..
A better plan? Universal Health Care. Cradle to the grave full coverage.
Even for the current, proposed legislation, the "deal" is that insurers would accept a requirement to insure all comers - even those with pre-existing conditions, at a reasonable price, as long as there were a mandate for EVERYONE to be insured. The reason for this is that without a mandate, health-care consumers reverse cherry-pick (low-risk consumers opt out, and only the sick remain). So you need everyone paying into the system to make the numbers work. The same applies to this new concept.
Specialist care would obviously be covered if it were above the 15% deductible, as would emergency room visits. However, because demand would be reduced (fewer people are going to visit specialists if they pay for thousands of dollars out of pocket before their coverage kicks in), costs would go down.
With everyone covered, the "paradigm" of people using emergency rooms as their "PCP" would vanish. Again, a reduction in demand and therefore cost.
This IS cradle-to-65 "UHC" (it wouldn't be "to grave" only if Medicare continued), so I don't understand your point.
Your original criticism was that costs weren't controlled. Cradle-to-grave UHC that pays for everything does NOTHING to control costs OR imposes severe rationing to control demand. The ONLY way to control costs without rationing is to give consumers an incentive to NOT use services - to reduce demand.
I'm not sure I'm understanding what your problem with this concept is, as it seems to provide virtually everything you say you want.