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$27,000 a Year for Health Insurance. How Can We Afford That?

nytimes.com

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Re: $27,000 a Year for Health Insurance. How Can We Afford That?

#11

Post by jqpabc123 »

billy99k wrote: post #2

The affordable care act doubled most people's insurance over night (This happened to me and almost everyone I know). Nobody wants to mention this, because it makes their side look bad. Until we can admit where there are problems, there will never be a solution.

The fundamental problem is the very idea of private "health insurance".

Market forces naturally create low rates for those who don't need insurance and unaffordable rates for those who do. But over time, everyone gravitates from the former to the latter.

The "free market" does not offer a practical solution to every problem. Tariffs are an open admission of this basic fact.

Re: $27,000 a Year for Health Insurance. How Can We Afford That?

#13

Post by aleph_minus_one »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #11
billy99k wrote: post #2

The affordable care act doubled most people's insurance over night (This happened to me and almost everyone I know). Nobody wants to mention this, because it makes their side look bad. Until we can admit where there are problems, there will never be a solution.

The fundamental problem is the very idea of private "health insurance". Market forces naturally create low rates for those who don't need insurance and unaffordable rates for those who do. But over time, everyone gravitates from the former to the latter. The "free market" does not offer a practical solution to every problem. Tariffs are an open admission of this basic fact.

The problem rather is the insane amount of red tape involved if you want to set up your own health insurance company. Thus hardly any competition for the established player arises.

The result is what any arbitrary textbook about economy will tell you: if there are large barriers to entry into a market (i.e. the opposite of "free market"), the customer won't get the positive consequences of a free market, but instead oligopolies will form - with their negative consequences.

Re: $27,000 a Year for Health Insurance. How Can We Afford That?

#14

Post by nicole_express »

ChrisRR wrote: post #4
billy99k wrote: post #2

The affordable care act doubled most people's insurance over night (This happened to me and almost everyone I know). Nobody wants to mention this, because it makes their side look bad. Until we can admit where there are problems, there will never be a solution.

As a non-american this is the first I'm hearing of this. I would've thought if the majority of americans' health insurance had double overnight then there would've been massive uproar. Can you explain what's happened?

I wonder if this is a regional issue; didn't do anything of the sort for me and people I know in Massachusetts, but there the Affordable Care Act wasn't that different than the existing "Romneycare" state regulation. In cases where state regulation was much lesser I guess it likely had a bigger impact.

Re: $27,000 a Year for Health Insurance. How Can We Afford That?

#15

Post by AlotOfReading »

triceratops wrote: post #10
ChrisRR wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-american this is the first I'm hearing of this. I would've thought if the majority of americans' health insurance had double overnight then there would've been massive uproar. Can you explain what's happened?

He's exaggerating. It wasn't literally overnight but over several years.

The ACA was intended to reduce the rate of rate increases, not reduce the cost overall. The proper comparison is to what the rates would have been without the ACA.

As usual, actual studies are all over the map on this. The white house said it was successful at that. NBER said it wasn't, but rates didn't double for a long time. We know rates of large increases went down for a few years, but small increases became nearly universal to compensate.

Re: $27,000 a Year for Health Insurance. How Can We Afford That?

#17

Post by jdlshore »

billy99k wrote: post #2

The affordable care act doubled most people's insurance over night (This happened to me and almost everyone I know). Nobody wants to mention this, because it makes their side look bad. Until we can admit where there are problems, there will never be a solution.

That doesn’t pass the sniff test. I was self-employed and self-insured when the ACA took effect and my premiums immediately dropped when I purchased through the Marketplace (and it wasn’t subsidized).

It sounds like you either had junk insurance or you’re exaggerating things to score points.

Re: $27,000 a Year for Health Insurance. How Can We Afford That?

#18

Post by AlotOfReading »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #13
jqpabc123 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental problem is the very idea of private "health insurance". Market forces naturally create low rates for those who don't need insurance and unaffordable rates for those who do. But over time, everyone gravitates from the former to the latter. The "free market" does not offer a practical solution to every problem. Tariffs are an open admission of this basic fact.

The problem rather is the insane amount of red tape involved if you want to set up your own health insurance company. Thus hardly any competition for the established player arises. The result is what any arbitrary textbook about economy will tell you: if there are large barriers to entry into a market (i.e. the opposite of "free market"), the customer won't get the positive consequences of a free market, but instead…

There's around a thousand organizations in the US that have gone through the paperwork to set up as a health insurance company and continue to file paperwork to that effect.

Re: $27,000 a Year for Health Insurance. How Can We Afford That?

#19

Post by altairprime »

Our country can afford it because it’s the last reliable source of privatized growth in revenue growth per year left in our economy. (A.I., by comparison, has merely a one-time effect of reducing headcount per dollar earned, and the Internet stripped away 99% of consumer-originated postal mail so there’s no growth left from privatizing that anymore.) So from a political standpoint it’s either maintain the health insurance nightmare or preside over the collapse of oligarchical capitalism.

That’s what this article fails to comprehend: the problem isn’t that health care is being done poorly, but that it’s the only source of GDP growth in the U.S. economy. All of the points it makes are fine points, but they’re irrelevant to the cause of the problem, so they will have little effect on the problem.

Re: $27,000 a Year for Health Insurance. How Can We Afford That?

#20

Post by monospaced »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #16

I'm in a EU country, in total I pay also around 15.000 EUR per year

In Germany a couple of two software developers would earn above the threshold of ca. 70k EUR per year each and therefore pay each around 15.000 EUR per year, which would be higher than the number given in the article ($27.000 for a family in US vs. around $35.000 in Germany currency converted). This applies for the public insurance where adults each have to be insured but kids are included for free.

People with lower incomes pay proportionately less, government employees and high earners can also switch to private insurance where they get much better service but for non-government employees this comes with risks and has to be done at a younger age.

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