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Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

nytimes.com

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Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

#71

Post by joe_the_user »

rdouble wrote: post #61
haploid wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can give you one perspective. Moral hazard and fairness. The vast majority of costs borne by and in the US healthcare system are the results of overeating, oversmoking, and underexercising. Period. Heart disease, many forms of cancer, diabetes, most forms of pancreatic, gallbladder, and adrenal conditions, are largely the result of personal choice . Setting aside for a moment the fact that congenital defects, hered…

The same lifestyle diseases are at the top of the list for every country that already has some form of universal health care.

Yes, it's not like US-style unhealthy behavior stops at the US border...

Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

#72

Post by harold »

My wife and I are healthy. But we've seen our rates more than double in the last year. I've heard many stories like the one referenced in the article where healthy people are having hard time even finding insurance.

A friend (a plumber) told me the other day that he was really struggling to afford insurance for his family because his premiums had more than doubled as well. He said he had incurred 3 rate increases in 3 months.

I'm just curious how many people have seen any benefit yet from health care reform? I know most of it doesn't go into effect until 2014. But something is seriously out of whack here.

Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

#73

Post by wtracy »

krschultz wrote: post #18
sammcd wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think she could buy insurance if she really wanted. I've thought about this a lot because I could easily be in this situation. If I did anything on my own I would need a group plan quickly. You only need 2 people to create a group. So you can buy insurance its expensive, here is how you do it. 1) Start a company. 2) Hire another employee (this costs a lot) 3) Make a group health insurance policy for the company. Th…

It's not the difference between a family and a company, its the size of the group. Thus the costs for a company with 10,000 people is far different than a company with 10. Also, if you have a group of 2,5,10 or 20, the insurance company has an easier time denying you because if you get pissed and drop them, its not a big loss for them. In contrast, if you deny the right person at a 10,000 person company, they lose a…

Actually, has anyone tried banding a group of startups together until they have several thousand employees, then buy insurance as a bloc?

Another idea I've kicked around: Create a sort-of incubator where, on paper, all of the startup founders and employees are employees of the incubator group. Then the incubator can handle the whole mess of both insurance and income taxes. (Bonus: Since the "incubator" now has a ton of developers on tap, it could double as a consulting agency.)

Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

#74

Post by caf »

haploid wrote: post #54
jimbokun wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I just can't understand any of it." Neither can those of us who live here. I mean, I can kind of understand the series of historical accidents of how we got here. What I can't understand are the politicians promising to fight tooth and nail to roll back the very minor reforms just enacted, and all of the people who enthusiastically just voted them into office last election, based on that platform.

I can give you one perspective. Moral hazard and fairness. The vast majority of costs borne by and in the US healthcare system are the results of overeating, oversmoking, and underexercising. Period. Heart disease, many forms of cancer, diabetes, most forms of pancreatic, gallbladder, and adrenal conditions, are largely the result of personal choice . Setting aside for a moment the fact that congenital defects, hered…

It's not really moral hazard, since that implies a rational choice is being made to make themselves sick because they know that they won't be bearing the financial costs. However, there are a plethora of non-financial costs to the diseases you've mentioned - up to and including death - so the moral hazard is mostly avoided.

It's simply that some people make irrational, bad choices, and the incentives on the whole make no difference.

Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

#75

Post by tom_b »

In the past three years, I have made significant career decisions based on the insurance costs and coverage of the employer.

In one case, I turned down what was clearly a great hacking gig with a hacker whose work I really respected. The root issue there was that not only was the position a lot less in salary than I was previously making (this was fine and known when I started looking into the job), but the huge cost of obtaining a private policy for myself and my family blew me away. I was quite naive and assume I would be paying a small multiple more (2x or 3x) but the numbers looked to be at least double that.

So, the cost of health insurance prevented me from taking a pay cut to do more interesting work. Of course, the employer was pretty strapped, if they had higher money to offer, I would have been all over it. The private health policy costs just took me by surprise.

Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

#76

Post by [deleted] »

joe_the_user wrote: post #69
haploid wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can give you one perspective. Moral hazard and fairness. The vast majority of costs borne by and in the US healthcare system are the results of overeating, oversmoking, and underexercising. Period. Heart disease, many forms of cancer, diabetes, most forms of pancreatic, gallbladder, and adrenal conditions, are largely the result of personal choice . Setting aside for a moment the fact that congenital defects, hered…

I'd have up voted you if you hadn't said "period". Unhealthy behavior is a biggie but anyone that says "here, this ONLY is the problem" just adds to the mess. The US health care system is melange of many complex and perverse incentives. I recall a study saying unhealthy behavior adds at most 50% to costs but costs have increased many more times than that in the last thirty years. The billing system, medical education…

[deleted]

Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

#77

Post by sportsTAKES »

I find it absolutely impossible to believe that her coverage was denied for the reasons she described - I have been approved for and paid for my own insurance for years (including my family's insurance) with medical issues far more serious than those.

I concede that the system is totally messed up and the new health care bill makes it even worse.

Employers shouldn't be required to provide health benefits - eliminate the necessity of group plans.

Open up the state lines, allow insurance companies to compete for your business and watch prices drop dramatically. I'm certainly in favor of some basic oversight but not the egregiously burdensome regulation of the current system.

Anecdotally speaking, I have several friends, colleagues and family from various backgrounds that are doctors and nurses in different states and I have yet to find one of them that agrees the new health care bill is a good idea. They all think it dramatically complicate how they treat patients and ultimately marginalize the overall quality of care they will be able to provide. (Again, this is anecdotal but has definitely influenced my opinion. I have been shocked to find out that not one of these people I know actually support the new bill. Having said that, I know there are those that agree with the new bill.)

Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

#78

Post by troels »

sammcd wrote: post #11
krschultz wrote: post #6

The subtle but crazy part about this is at the bottom when it details the author: "Donna Dubinsky, a co-founder of Palm Computer and Handspring, is the chief executive of a computer software company." I'm going to go out on a limb and say money is not an issue for Donna, yet she still can't even buy insurance if she wants to. I've always thought healthcare access was a bigger hurdle for entrepreneurs than tax rates.…

I think she could buy insurance if she really wanted. I've thought about this a lot because I could easily be in this situation. If I did anything on my own I would need a group plan quickly. You only need 2 people to create a group. So you can buy insurance its expensive, here is how you do it. 1) Start a company. 2) Hire another employee (this costs a lot) 3) Make a group health insurance policy for the company. Th…

The idea isn't that stupid. You just need to be more than 2 people. Is there any reason why a group of self-employed people can't go together and get insurance as a group? If the group is relatively homogenous and are able to pay the bills, surely the insurance companies would be interested?

Re: Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

#80

Post by jacques_chester »

Dramatize wrote: post #45

I'm glad we don't have these issues in Australia. The American healthcare system would be one of the only reasons not to move there to start a business.

Australia has a hybrid public/private system. You can rely on the public system for pretty much everything, but only catastrophic medical services are well-funded (and even then ...). Otherwise you will need to get used to waiting in a queue.

Private health insurance then allows you to get the frills and to do so without waiting.

If you have private cover and need surgery to treat a non life-threatening issue, then you can usually get it done almost immediately. If you don't have private cover, you may be waiting for years.

Still, in US terms, our private cover is very cheap. I'm a single, non-smoking, exercising male, 30 years old. I pay about $1200 a year with a $500 gap. But I also pay $20,000 in taxes, a goodly portion of which make their way into the public health system (and far too much of which goes into middle class welfare, but that's by the by).

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