PLAYER57832 wrote:Show examples. Part of the point is that just because you buy something called "insurance" doesn't mean it actually provides real protection. Young, very healthy individuals (very few families, if any) could have bought insurance for cheaper.... but once they got sick, their costs woud skyrocket or they would wind up with no insurance at all because insurers were free to set lifetime limits and dump sick clients.
In other words, they might be able to get something cheaper for a time, but not in the long run. This has never been about the immediate. It has always been about long term costs and for everyone, not just a few people.
Yes, and that is the point I was making. People do not have a choice to purchase an inferior product. It is the worst kind of government control, if you're a real liberal and not just a progressive statist. Since you're a progressive statist perhaps you don't mind that the government requires you to purchase a product with a minimum coverage amount to protect yourself.
I have yet to see a consensus as to the long term cost benefits of the Affordable Care Act; the CBO continues to revise estimates as to the cost. As of the latest data available (summer of 2012), the Affordable Care Act will cost the federal taxpayers $1.168 trillion over a ten-year period (2012 through 2022). Some other interesting notes from the report:
CBO and JCT’s projections of health insurance coverage have also changed since last March. Fewer people are now expected to obtain health insurance coverage from their employer or in insurance exchanges; more are now expected to obtain coverage from Medicaid or CHIP or from nongroup or other sources. More are expected to be uninsured. The extent of the changes varies from year to year, but in 2016, for example, the ACA is now estimated to reduce the number of people receiving health insurance coverage through an employer by an additional 4 million enrollees relative to the March 2011 projections. In that year, CBO and JCT now estimate that there will be 2 million fewer enrollees in insurance exchanges. In the other direction, CBO and JCT now estimate that, in 2016, the ACA will increase enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP slightly more than previously estimated (but considerably more in 2014 and 2015), and it will reduce the number of people with nongroup or other coverage by 3 million less and the number of uninsured people by 2 million less than previously estimated.
Compared with prior law, the ACA is now estimated by CBO and JCT to reduce the number of nonelderly people without health insurance coverage by 30 million to 33 million in 2016 and subsequent years, leaving 26 million to 27 million nonelderly residents uninsured in those years (see Table 3, at the end of this report). The share of legal nonelderly residents with insurance is projected to rise from 82 percent in 2012 to 93 percent by 2022. According to the current estimates, from 2016 on, between 20 million and 23 million people will receive coverage through the new insurance exchanges, and 16 million to 17 million people will be enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP. Also, 3 million to 5 million fewer people will have coverage through an employer compared with the number under prior law.5
