Is this for real? Health insurance is now going to be made mandatory and it is going to cost $3800 if you do not sign up? An average person is who makes $20,000 dollars a year is going to lose 20% of their WHOLE YEAR of wages right off the bat. They complain about so many people being at the poverty level and now are going to force them even lower. I think for the next election we should make some more new history - seeing as how this has been the trend for the last few elections - and put in an independent as president. I think without a doubt that these are the wrong people to put the future of our health in the hands of. Why does everyone think this has to be done immediately? They have waited for so long already and from what is being published in the newspapers these ideas are some of the worst I have ever heard. I think we should wait until we get some people who have some real vision for our future are not not going to cater to everyone who has their hands in the health insurance pie. Does it not seem to you that the US government is now wanting to be incorporated? How many businesses does the US government already own or have a share in that is in competition with private business? Now we own automotive companies. And next is the insurance companies. Does this sound like a democratic government or even a republic? SOunds more like the big 'C' is coming to power.
Bottom line? Democrats are stupid. There's no other way to explain such ludicrous ideas and ideology.
locpicker, did you come here directly after reading the newspaper? I find that if you relax a bit, take some time to think for yourself, then post, it tends to result in your posts having more facts and less outrage. A good example would be this thread. What you are describing comes from a plan introduced by Democratic Senator Max Baucus. You can review all of the HCR bills here. The same liberal Democrats you are trying to paint as idiots actually agree with you. They don't want this plan either... Damn, there goes that argument. Now what? Immediately you say? There hasn't been major health care reform in the United States since Lyndon Johnson.... Define immediately.
That is more or less what Romney did in Massachusetts. Because when people don't have health insurance, someone still ends up paying for them.
I make purchase. I pay bill. You buy, you pay. I like that system. You buy, no pay? Then you get visit from Guido. Some people choose not to buy health care. That is their right. If they are financially sound and can provide for their own care out of pocket, why fine them? The fines guys? Its a TAX in disguise. Its a way to make people that do not want to pay for it, pay for others.
I don't jack about domestic U.S. affairs but on the face of it, this sounds a good thing: to force everybody to have a medical insurance. This will allow the insurance prices to drop: those who really can't afford it (and prove they can't) will get a discount. This is also the case in Switzerland: I was employed there for 3 years and I HAD to pay 150$/month (cheapest I could find) for a SWISS medical insurance. They didn't even care that I already have an Israeli and a German one.
This why America is headed towards collapse, we've become a nanny state where the government wants to take care of anything, this is the socialist healthcare plan Obama is giving to us. I, for one, will not pay for health insurance and I'm not paying the damn fine either.......these guys can rot in hell. America should do things the way most countries do them..........if you get sick or ill, and you don't have money to pay for care, you're screwed, as simple as that...in most countries they will flat out deny you service at the hospital if you don't have money. The United States is supposed to be the "land of the free." How in the hell can you call yourself free when the government forces you to pay for something you don't need? Who in the hell says we all need health insurance anyway? Think about it. If you exercise, take vitamins everyday, eat right, and avoid engaging in risky behaviors, you don't need health insurance, and if you manage your finances wisely, you should be able to easily pay for any treatment you do need out of pocket. For instance, I'm self employed and I DO NOT have any insurance. I don't pay for it because it is too expensive, and I don't need it. Recently I had to get dental work done, and it cost me just over $2,000. Sounds like a lot of money? It is, but guess what? Because I manage my finances well, and I have created a business that generates cash flow, and I save and invest my money wisely, $2,000 is not a lot of money and I easily paid for out out of my pocket. I had no control over this dental issue and the dentist said there was nothing I could have done to prevent it. In a worst case scenario, you always have the option of traveling to a country like Mexico where the healthcare costs are a fraction of the U.S. costs. Of course, we wouldn't have to travel to foreign countries for healthcare if the US government managed its own damn finances well. High health care costs are the result of inflation, wars in foreign countries we shouldn't be in(which wreck our finances), and a failure to use sound money and balance the budget. The thing you and so many people who think this is a good thing can't see is that it is another form of control, another way for the government to take away our freedoms. They make it sound so sweet, they talk about how they care about us and want us all to have affordable healthcare..............don't be naive. Government never has and never will give a shit about you and me. The only thing they care about is collecting taxes and controlling the people, and forcing them to get healthcare is one more method for accomplishing this.
Exactly beacuse of people like you, who can afford and choose not to, a compulsory medical insurance is a good idea! And what if you injured yourself in a ski accident and needed 240,000$ worth of hospitalization period? no control over that either. Most of the world's advanced countries have a compulsory medical insurance for everybody. There are different models but the motto is one: "everybody must be insured". Some countries, like Switzerland, go to the extreme (see my prev. post). The USA should join the club.
And what if space aliens land on the White House lawn tomorrow? It is obvious you didn't read my post, because I clearly said: If you exercise, take vitamins everyday, eat right, and avoid engaging in risky behaviors. I think you and I can both agree that skiing is a risky behavior, and I wouldn't be caught dead in the mountains skiing even if I did have insurance, and I definitely wouldn't be skiing without it. The EU is completely socialist with some of the highest taxes in the industrialized world, and it is because of things like compulsory insurance. We don't need compulsory health insurance, if health care was affordable health insurance would be cheap and people could pay out of pocket. It is bad economic policies that cause high health care costs, as well as a high cost of living in general. This country has been around for more than 230 years, we have gotten along fine without compulsory health insurance, we can continue to survive without it. Obama is interfering with the free market; you don't need to force people to pay for health insurance, they will buy it on their own once it is affordable; its called supply and demand. Do you realize that the AMA(American Medical Association) is basically a cartel that is designed to control healthcare? In this country, in the past, anyone could become a doctor. A 150 years ago, people sold herbs and all kinds of medicine, you name it. Some of it was BS, of course, and these people didn't make any money, but there were and are people who know natural remedies that don't require expensive treatment. AMA is directly involved with the government, they have a monopoly on the medical industry and this means high prices. Then you have inflation, which drives up the cost of healthcare. If the government left the market alone and returned the U.S. to sound money we wouldn't need mandatory health insurance. We didn't need it 120 years ago, why do we need it now?
It is easy to say you would avoid risky behavior but many times it finds you anyway. People get injured by the acts of others all the time. You can't possible think that all accidents are avoidable. I do not think your arguments against insurance are very logical, as sincere as you are in your belief that it is good for you. Whether the government should mandate it is another question entirely.
Simply living is a risky behaviour. You could be stricken with a sudden, random illness tomorrow without warning; you could misstep off of the curb and break an ankle or your wrist; you could get mugged and get assaulted and injured. There's a million different things that could happen to you without you ever being able to foresee them. Anyway proclaiming that you don't need insurance because you take vitamins and don't engage in risky behaviours is beyond naive. I'd call it stupid. LOL. Vitamins.
Take this disease for example. My friend just recovered from it. Its a type of cancer that hits young men, and the treatment involves many irradiations and months in hospital. Most of the cases recover completely. If one gets this one and he is not insured: he's gone. This is something you can't "avoid", can you? The only reason why in the EU the insurance is mandatory is exactly because of people who think "I'll just avoid engaging in risky behaviors"... But there is a more profound justification for making it compulsory: if u're healthy, your money now goes to treat the elder and the sick. When you get older and sick , the youngster of the next generation will fund your treatments. Not to mention that if everybody must be insured, the competition between insurers will raise, the price will drop, and the service will be better. USA must join the world. Even in Cuba everybody is insured.
I don't believe there is anything wrong with insurance per se. It is a necessity in all advanced societies, for instance, when I ship in my gold and silver from out of state I always insure it. If you invest in rental real estate you want to make sure your properties are insured against natural disasters or unruly tenants. If you're a basket ball player in the NBA you need insurance in the event you're injured. And of course, driving with insurance is definitely a good idea. The problem I have is when the government suddenly says "we all need to have health insurance, regardless of our background." I, like the founders of this country, believe in controlling my own destiny. I believe it is I, not Uncle Sam, who should decided whether or not I need health insurance. If health insurance here in the U.S. was, lets say, on average, $10 per month, then I'm sure over 90% of the population would have it. Even $20 per month would be reasonable. But this is an impossibility right now because health care itself is so expensive. Why is health care so expensive? This is what Obama refuses to talk about, because he can't talk about why health care is expensive without talking about the economy, and he can't talk about the economy without talking about the corruption of the Fed, government deficit spending, the national debt, and our failure to back our currency with gold or silver. All the problems we face as a nation today are interconnected. If the we didn't have a gargantuan national debt, if our government avoided spending $3 trillion+ on the wars in Iraq an Afghanistan, if we went back to Constitutional money and backed our currency with gold, inflation would practically be eliminated and not only would health care be affordable, but housing, energy, food and everything else would be affordable as well. This plan is just as bad as Hillary's Universal Healthcare, it sounds so good to most people because they can't see under the surface. Are you willing to give up your freedom for security? This health insurance issue raises this very question. If you agree with Obama's plan, then you are willing to give up freedom for security, because you will give up your freedom to either choose to have or not have health insurance so that you can get the "security" of having it. But by doing this you lose your freedom of choice. If the founding fathers thought we needed universal health insurance, it would be in the Bill of Rights or Constitution. It is not. The least Obama can do is let the states decide, but we today live in a nation where all power is concentrated in the hands of Washington DC, and that spells doom for the rest of us.
[ My only response to this is that you are right, there are disease out there which can pop up and you have no control over them. But forcing everyone to pay for insurance is not the answer. The answer is to create a competitive environment where costs for health care are low, which will translate into low health insurance costs. Then there is no reason to force people since they will have a financial incentive to pay. If health insurance here in the U.S. was $10, this would not be an issue, because virtually anyone can afford $10 per month. Most of us are used to prices of everything going "up" over time, but according to economic principles, it should not be this way. Take personal computers for instance. Back in the 1980s, a PC was really expensive, a new one would generally cost well over $5,000. By the early to mid 1990s, PCs had fallen to around $2,500. Today, you can walk into a store and get a brand new desktop or laptop computer for under $500. The reason for this is because computer manufacturing companies got better and faster at building them, and as Moore's Law states, the processing power doubled every 18 months while the price fell. In any industry, as a society becomes faster and more efficient at producing a product, its cost should always fall, not rise. But in our society, we see the cost of things going up for the most part. The reason for this is because the government continues borrowing money instead of raising taxes, because raising taxes would be unpopular and they would not get elected. But borrowing money is taxing the people indirectly, because it leads to higher prices later on. I don't know why computers are cheap today while healthcare costs are high, I'm not an economist so my knowledge of this area of limited. What I do know is that healthcare SHOULD NOT be this expensive. Costs should be affordable, and health insurance should be affordable as a result, the only thing I can say is that the healthcare industry is corrupt, and Ron Paul has alluded to this on multiple occassions. I don't think it is fair for younger people to pay for the treatments of older people; and when I'm old, I would not want young people paying for me. It isn't right, money is being taken from one group and given to another. If a young person "chooses" to pay for an older person, then that is fine, but forcing them is not right. Older people have had decades to build wealth, if they've managed their finances and investments properly, at the bare minimum they should have hundreds of thousands, if not millions. When I'm a senior, I intend on having so much wealth and cash flow coming from so many businesses and investments that it would be unnecessary for me to need younger people to pay for me. I would not want to burden the younger generation anyway, it is a dead weight loss.
You are lost tesla. Health insurance can not be 10$/month, and the only way that the prices WOULD drop, is if the insurance is made mandatory. money is always being taken from one group and given to another. what do you think is done with your tax money? they irrigate only your backyard with it? and also the speeches about freedom are not in place, as there are countless other examples where the state brutally interferes with the same kind of "freedom", freedom of your pocket: all kind of regulations from gas prices to cigarrette prices, charges, etc'. The reason to make the insurance compulsory is simple: people are not responsible enough to do it by themselves. This is why in all countries in the world you get a tax benefit if you save for a very long term, right? I assume in the US it is the same. You should just look at it as a new kind of tax. this time --> a good tax, one that might save your life.
I disagree. But then I'm one of those people who think it's wrong for the government to force us to have car insurance as well. It's basically giving those insurance companies a business model where their customers have no choice but to buy their product. The insurance companies then take that business but muddy the waters so much with their own rules and regulations the government can't properly regulate it.... If you get in an accident your insurance should pay for YOU and YOUR damages. Period. If the other person had no insurance then they don't get anything. That's how it should work. The government forcing everyone to have insurance literally gave the insurance industry incentive to NOT provide a good product. In fact they took their product and diluted it even more with even more worthless sub products that you have to purchase individually. Liability, SR-22, etc.. Forcing everyone to have health insurance via fines has been proven to not be the answer. Making it affordable and regulating it so the insurance companies can't just make shit up as they go -- is.