In a revamped health care system envisioned by senators, people would be required to carry health insurance just like motorists must get auto coverage now. The government would provide subsidies for the poor and many middle-class families, but those who still refuse to sign up would face fines of more than $1,000.
The details were unveiled Thursday July 2, in a health care overhaul bill supported by key Senate Democrats looking to fulfill President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.
Called “shared responsibility payments,” the fines would offset at least half the cost of basic medical coverage, according to the legislation. The goal is to nudge people to sign up for coverage when they are healthy, not wait until they get sick.
[continued at The Seattle Times]
If you were given a choice, would you vote for or against this proposal? Why?
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22 responses so far ↓
1
Steve
// Jul 4, 2009
Seems reasonable to me. Te alternative is like allowing people to sign up for flood insurance only after they’re underwater. Calling it a health tax is misleading political doublespeak.
2
Chris
// Jul 5, 2009
No, “health insurance” is doublespeak, and it should be renamed as “sick insurance” so we can have an honest discussion about its merits.
Do you know why don’t healthy people don’t like to sign up for health insurance? Some of them realize that self-administered preventative care and health maintenance is a much better deal.
Under this proposal, people who spend the time and effort to keep themselves as healthy as possible, will pay twice. In other words, it is a health tax.
3
Chris
// Jul 5, 2009
Flood insurance is a bad analogy. Imagine you live in a condo complex filled with pyromaniacs, who insist you pay your “fair share” of the fire insurance, based upon the “inevitability” that the entire building will go up in smoke.
Now, the insurance adjuster knows all your neighbors are criminally insane, and prices the group policy accordingly. You are not allowed to move to a different building, or to otherwise opt-out of the plan.
Does that sound reasonable to you, Steve?
4
Chuck
// Jul 5, 2009
By the numbers, the healthy people will be paying too much. But individually it is a different thing. Someone can be healthy with a very unhealthy lifestyle. That is very different from a healthy person with a very healthy lifestyle.
5
J.D. Meier
// Jul 5, 2009
I don’t think I’ve ever used medical coverage for health. It’s always been unexpected emergencies.
6
S.Smith
// Jul 6, 2009
My health insurance is Taijiquan (and a few other tricks). I negotiate real, cash prices with doctors and dentists. Most of them like it and I save a bundle.
I’d vote no. I’d not ever sign up, too.
7
Scott
// Jul 7, 2009
The price of new techniques and technologies goes up, sure, but the price of old ones keeps going down. We have safe drinking water and safe food, we have no deadly epidemics or plagues, and we have anti-biotics.
As we say on Passover, ‘it would have been enough!’
What will they come up with next, a government agent to hold our hand while we’re crossing the street?
The only reason for a young healthy male to get sickness insurance is to protect his home or other accumulated wealth assets from long odds.
8
Mark
// Jul 7, 2009
Yes.
Ultimately we already pay this ‘tax’. When people default on hospital payments we, the tax payer, pick up the bill. Due to financial reasons some people don’t get treatment until they have spread whatever they have to their entire family and most of their friends. This ends up costing the tax payer more far more than a simple 1-2 week course of antibiotics. (and far more than a $10 immunization a few years back)
Quick disclaimer. I likely have a bias on this since I’ve worked on ambulances and had to walk away from someone who is probably going to die within a week since he refuses to go to hospital and bankrupt his family. In those situations you walk slowly in the hope that he will go unconscious before you drive off since then you can actually get him to hospital and save his life.
9
John Jr.
// Jul 7, 2009
This is probably do to the fact that everyone in the Senate is living off of an array of supplements and chiropractic adjustments every day. Some of us actually live off of a healthy diet and good exercise. Maybe instead of health care insurance we should look at our education system.
10
Thomas Tan
// Jul 12, 2009
I’d like to get more information about the bill and possible side-effects, but I think the link you provided doesn’t go to the same article.
11
Chris
// Jul 12, 2009
They actually changed the article after I linked to it. I think this is the original text.
12
Helene
// Sep 6, 2009
Mandated coverage sounds like another give back to the private insurance companies. A win-win situation for them but not the public. Unlike auto insurance, driving a car is a privilege and having auto insurance is a necessary expense. We don’t choose to get sick and need to pay for health care. A single payer system or “medicare for all” would level the playing field for all Americans.
13
Chris
// Sep 6, 2009
Gold star for Helene, and David Goldhill:
14
Health Wonk Review
// Sep 17, 2009
This article featured at Healthcare Technology News.
15
Chris
// Sep 28, 2009
Mike Adams, Natural News, quoted for truth:
16
Chris
// Nov 8, 2009
17
Lauren
// Apr 22, 2010
Well, Obama has removed my freedom to use alternative medicine rather than western, materialistic, superficial medicine. In my ten+ years as an adult (I am a thirty-two year old artist in perfect health) I have had medical insurance a few times, but mostly I have only had catastrophic insurance. In my years without mainstream insurance I learned that holistic medicine has cured illness that could not be healed by doctors.
I voluntarily choose not to have mainstream insurance because I’ve learned that much of the medicine and prescriptions given me by doctors has not been able to cure ailments that holistic medicine has completely removed from my body. Therefore, I purchase the cheapest form of insurance (catastrophic insurance) to help pay for emergency bodily repair.
As of Obamacare passing, I will now be forced by gun and threat of jail to purchase a PRODUCT that I do not want.
I am now forced to purchase a product because I am alive and breathe air. BTW, this is a product I cannot afford.
My messge to America is “Stop listening to the media because there is nothing altruistic about collectivism and losing freedom.”
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