Obamacare

[giblets]

His alternative reason is that it's ok to let one person die to save another person.

Did Jesus die to save you?

[Jon Miller]

You might qualify for Medicaid; check it out. You would also be able to afford health insurance if your current Medicare contribution went to your own needs instead, but old people are more important than the young.

I would also qualify this with 'you might be able to afford health insurance if we paid european prices for healthcare instead of american prices".

JM

[kentonio]

HC is correct in his opposition to the minimum wage. I'm pretty sure even Paul Krugman thinks it's a dumb idea (or at least he did, back when he was a real economist and not an unusually credentialed pundit for the New York Times). And yes, the reason the minimum wage is dumb is identical to the reason the employer insurance mandate is dumb. The difference is that the price of the minimum wage is so small as to be negligible whereas the insurance mandate is not.

Who gives a **** what krugman thinks? It's a live policy that is in action in countries around the world. The same ideologically minded people keep delivering the same scaremongering about it which is repeatedly shown to be wrong.

[giblets]

The teen unemployment rate is very high.

[regexcellent]

And it probably wouldn't be were it not for the minimum wage.

[Elok]

Couldn't every U.S. demographic group's unemployment rate presently be described as "very high"? I hear it's getting better lately, but I don't think it's all rosy yet.

[MrFun]

According to HC you don't care about your health, really, and so deserve to die if you get a serious illness.

JM

I know

[MrFun]

You might qualify for Medicaid; check it out. You would also be able to afford health insurance if your current Medicare contribution went to your own needs instead, but old people are more important than the young.

Wow. Did you just reply to one of my posts without an insult?

[Jon Miller]

Nice post.

JM

[Tupac Shakur]

Interesting article.

There are currently tens of millions of Americans without health insurance. Some can’t afford coverage at going rates. But as recently as 2009, one in seven applicants were rejected by the four largest insurance companies, who refused to sell them insurance at any price. Uninsurable Americans are mostly sick to begin with: They have heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and other pre-existing conditions that set off alarm bells for insurance sellers.

Ask why the already-sick can’t buy insurance and you get an immediate and seemingly obvious answer—their health costs are too high. But just because covering people with pre-existing conditions might be more expensive doesn’t explain why they can’t buy insurance at all. At any price. Shouldn’t they be able to buy insurance at a higher rate than healthy people, a rate that would protect the insurance company from the greater costs of their coverage?

An intriguing answer to that question comes from Nathaniel Hendren, a graduating Ph.D. student at MIT, in a study that got him offers from economics departments at Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton, among others. According to Hendren’s argument, not only are sick people a lot more expensive to care for, but they also know a lot more about what their cost of care is likely to be in the future. And it’s this inside information that makes the market for covering pre-existing conditions break down.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/2012/03/pre_existing_conditions_the_real_reason_insurers_won_t_cover_people_who_are_already_sick_.html

[DaShi]

It seems that insurance companies are rejecting them because they have a pretty good idea what the cost of care for those sick people will be in the future.

[regexcellent]

If you know what the cost is going to be you don't need insurance.

[regexcellent]

Medical insurance covering pre-existing conditions is like buying a car insurance policy today which covers the vehicle you totaled last week.

[DaShi]

When my body breaks down, I just leave it at the side of the road.

[BlackCat]

When my body breaks down, I just leave it at the side of the road.

Oh, that's where you left you brain.