Let the unintended consequences begin.
Assuming the Obamacare law passes with the Reconciliation amendments…
So here is my personal unintended consequence. I’m currently insured through a state reinsurance pool (similar to the Obamacare pools). Because I had COBRA when I quit my job in 2002, and it ran out after 18 months, I became eligible for this expensive policy – but there was no preexisting condition tests. I’m 54 now – and paying about $1,250 a month to buy my own individual insurance policy, which is pretty complete.. (it does have some copays and deductibles)
Because I spend all my time doing this work on a web site that produces no income, I have virtually no income (especially with interest rates this low). I took a beating in 2009 in capital losses on mutual funds (which you can only deduct a little bit a year), so I actually had a net loss for 2009 and losses to probably carry me for years…. On paper, I’m well below the Federal Poverty Level.
One of the requirements to remain in the assigned risk pool is that you NOT become eligible for Medicaid or other group insurance plans through work. I’m not eligible for Medicaid because I do have assets. I own my home, I own my car, I have money in the bank, stocks, mutual funds, etc…
One of the Obamacare provisions requires states to remove the asset test requirement. As long as your IRS income is less than 133% of the poverty level (about $13k for a single person), you’re “In” Medicaid when that provision kicks in (2014?), I will become eligible for “FREE” low income health insurance coverage.
Because I will become eligible for Medicaid insurance, I WILL lose access to my good insurance that I pay for – even thoujgh I have no interest in becoming a government parasite.
Obama! Obama! Obama!
We rich people adore you!
Oh, plus I’ll get free dental care, which I don’t have today!
Obama! Obama! Obama!
Art, will you be introducing “Unintended Consequences II” to cover Obamacare?
Is there enough terabytes of disk space available?
Pointing out the obvious that everyone in government knows, but pretends they don’t. These laws are always based on assumptions that they don’t change people’s behavior – just straight line “today” into “tomorrow”, other than the known demographic changes, privisions of the law.
Social Security was going to cross the “breakeven” line and starting cashing in IOUs 4 years from now – but people who are on unemployment insurance for 2 years are paying nothing into social security, and people 62+ are more motivated to take early retirement if there are not good jobs or their employer lets them know they should consider doing it… Social Security had to cash in its first IOU last month.
Then you create “fixes” to the unintended consequences, which create more unintended consequences….
I was skimming the Heritage Foundation site – there is stuff I’ve heard Hannity mentioning.
If an employer hires a person who would otherwise quality for the low income asisstance pool but are not carrying their own health insurance, the employer has to pay an extra $3k/year “penalty” into the shared risk pool… or if you have a couple where one person has spouse coverage so both are covered, but the wife (let’s say) is not currently working – then if she takes a job, her new employer has to pay her husband’s employer a portion of the premium (or is it the other way around?)… and what if they get divorced? What if he then loses his job? What if he dies? What if it’s a gay marriage? What if it is discovered he has more than one wife?….. What if he is arrested and goes to prison? What if he is not citizen and decides to go back “home”? la la la…
In reality this whole bill is a response to the long and unintended consequences of Medicare / Medicaid…those of us who purchase our own coverage have been swept up in a price increase spiral caused by the government’s intervention into the consumer relationship between customer (patient) and vendor (doctor). Due to the partial reimbursments of the government…ie an X-Ray “costs” $50 but the government “pays” $20 for Medicare / Medicaid so the hospital charges $200 for the X-Ray to get the $50…
Now that the government is going broke from the obligations to the participants in the system, and the baby boom looms, the only way to “fix” the thing is to take control of costs for ALL of us.
I’m oversimplifying, but you get the drift. I have had an HSA for almost 3 years and I love it…no insurance company hacks get between me & the Doctor…I ask what things cost (it drives him crazy…he never used to know…but recently, he does) and we work together to do what is reasonable, necessary and best for my health. He likes it because if he wants a more specific blood test, he doesn’t have to craft a BS story just to slip it past the insurance company. I like it because I have insurance but I also have responsibility and control…at least for a little while more.
You are exactly correct. The only reason I carry health insurance is to protect me from those fake list prices. The worst possible position to be in is to be uninsured and have assets. My $34,000 4 day hospital stay last fall ended up costing the insurance company about $11,000 – and I’m not sure I even believe that number. Had I called up 911 with no insurance, there is no reason for the hospital to reduce the bill, other than if I hired a lawyer to force them to negotiate.
One of the things that still surprises me is how a number of politicians and pundits point out the healthcare bill is a piece of landmark legislation that is the next Social Security and Medicare. Do people not realize those programs are boondoggles? I hear about how people have become more informed consumers, yet they believe such nonsense. Or is the Big Lie being repeated with the expectation that it will become “Truth?”
My father struggled with this a lot, and it also formed part of my belief system. As I mentioned elsewhere, he was totally blind [he had RP, which slowly causes your retinas to not react to light]… The State of Pennsylvania had a “Blind Pension” that sent a check every month… that later was absorbed into Social Security Disability. Because he was gettnig a check every month and would lose that check if his income became too high, that motivated him to not work very hard. He never quite understood why a man would go to work everyday if you didn’t have to.
But the real internal conflict started when he hit 62 and became eligible for Social Security Retirement. After he totally stopped working, and started spending time with other retirees, he became more aware of how getting a government check quickly turns away rational thought. Most of the seniors around him were FDR “Greatest Generation” types who were immune to any thought their check was coming from forced extraction of money from their children (and their abiliity to start families), not from some long ago promise by a dead man.
In the “good old days”, children took care of their parents’ needs in their old age. Social Security and Medicare created two new dynamics. Because the children were paying more and more in taxes to support the program, children began to view “taking care of their parents” as something the government does. Ship Grandma off to the Nursing Home – she can’t come here and live with us… On the other side, parents knowing that they had a government safety net would care less if their children turned into screwups or would force them out of the family rather than working to address their problems. The “end game” is that since the bond of responsibility was broken between parent and child, it removed a lot of the motivation for people to marry and have children. That IS the end game. Just look at the birth rates in countries with strong socialist safety nets. The society creates temporary “wealth” by avoiding all the costs of raising children for a generation, but that is not a sustainable social model.
I’ve had an HSA for 4 years now and have been very happy with it. It has allowed me to have services that normal insurance would not pay for in spite of the fact it allowed me to improve my health and not have to go on multiple prescriptions.
I was able to pay for a medically monitored weight loss program which helped me to lose almost 50 pounds which kept me off blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes medications, all of which I was borderline in needing prior to my weight loss… Most of the people who completed the class with me were able to either step down their dosage of their medications or transition off them completely….
The HSA also allowed me to pay for acupuncture to treat a case of tennis elbow which had not cleared up after 3 months even after a round of anti-inflammatories from my physician. Additionally, I was also able to pay the co-pay for my son’s neonatologist when he was born and had to spend 5 days in a NICU because he was born premature since you can pay for co-pays of family members even if they are not covered on your health insurance (the kids are on my wife’s insurance)…
Under Chairman Obama’s new legislation, the HSA and Flexible Spending Accounts I have found the new regulations related to them:
1. Contributions capped at $2,500 per year (prior to this, the cap was decided up by the employer)
2. You can no longer pay for over the counter medications with these funds
3. The penalty for withdrawal for a non-eligible expense rises to 20%
The other unintended consequece of Social Security is that it eliminated the idea that “saving for a rainy day” is a virtue or even necessary. I can’t count the number of people I have known who spent every penny they ever made during their working years because they knew the government would take care of them in retirement. They discovered the annuity the government gave them vis a vis Social Security was a pittance, but this discovery came too late in life for them to do anything about. Now that health insurance is an entitlement, what incentive will anyone have to live prudently?
Sort of the same idea from a different angle – who came up with the notion that “living paycheck to paychecK” or “being one paycheck away from having on money” is a reasonable way to manage your finances?
A handful of us old fogies (who probably had Depression era parents) understand this, but it’s like we’re so far out of the mainstream that there is no chance of every convincing people that what they’re doing is not smart….
Why don’t you try ads on here? You get thousands of visitors a day, right?
A logical question. Because there is no revenue here (and that’was a deliberate conscious choice), broadcasters who have sue happy lawyers who might be inclined to send out Cease and Desist letters or claim Copyright Infringement or want to control what you say about them are discouraged from doing that. 100% of all my revenue is $0.00. No lawyer is going to chase after that.
MCC (Morris Commuications) is the only radio company that has ever written to ask that I not link to their streams. They were motivated by things said by StreamAudio who was trying to prevent other sites from “making money” by “hijacking” the station’s streams and bypassing their ads. MCC apparently didn’t do any homework before writing me, since I don’t publish raw URLs and there is no revenue stream or ads here.
Accepting money from people always comes with strings. I don’t need the money.