by Outcast_Searcher » Thu 24 Mar 2016, 15:27:47
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'I') pay my 1.5% medicare & .5% disability insurance in Oz since I was 15. I am 50 next year & have never needed surgery & have been to the GP Doctor about 10 times in 30 years- I am subsidizing a lot of unwell peeps & hypochondriacs.
And that's the way insurance works.
Thats not how health insurance works here in the USA. Obamacare is set up so those conventional old-fashioned insurance rules no longer apply.
With Obamacare the premiums and deductibles are high enough that some people think theres not much reason to sign up and pay premiums until they actually get sick. If the sad day finally comes that you need medical care you can just enroll in Obamacare then. The program has to accept everyone who applies and there are many exemptions that allow people to sign up outside of the "enrollment periods."
Once you are sick then sign up and pay one month's premium and you are immediately covered and you can immediately go to a doctor or a hospital and get treated.
Then, after the surgery or whatever, you have the option to drop the coverage again and stop paying premiums. Your insurance will continue for another 3 months anyway even if you're not paying premiums.
Its an amazing innovation----Obamacare is a health insurance plan that you don't have to pay into until you are actually sick, and then you are cured you can stop paying into it until the next time you need it. Then just sign up again.
Win-Win!
Clearly Obamacare is a mess and aspects of it need to be cleaned up. And over time, I'm sure they will be. In fact, over time it may well prove to be SUCH a mess that the Democrats get what they wanted all along, a fully socialized system.
For one thing, the penalties for not having coverage are now being enforced (starting with the 2015 tax season) and will rapidly escalate. Over time it won't make sense to try to game the system like this, since it will get expensive and hard to get away with.
Also, given all the problems with the former system (a disastrous complex kluge which arbitrarily didn't pay legitimate claims, kept people out of the system, rescinded policies on people who got sick, and drove prices to the point that the voters DEMANDED something else -- Obamacare just has a different set of problems, and overall might even be a move in the right direction.
For me, as a responsible person all my adult life, my greatest fear was that once I retired early and bought my own BC/BS private quality policy, that if I became seriously ill they'd find a way not to pay, hide behind their phalanx of lawyers, and I'd simply be screwed. As far as I know, Obamacare has ended that, and that behavior at least is certainly illegal.
Yeah, the mess needs to be cleaned up. It's not like Medicare is perfect, but it works pretty damn well for seniors. Don't make the imperfect the enemy of the good just because you love to bash Obama.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.