At work lastnight quality and myself was discussing insurance prices going up from $200 a month to $300 a month (because the company are greedy punks) the discussion turned to Obama care..
Now why the help would they make it so you either have insurance or you get fined $200? If you don't pay the fine you get thrown in jail..how much sense does that make??? The way I see it, if you can't afford insurance then how can you afford the fine? I have a feeling that more than a few people are gonna be going to jail.
What are your thoughts on this?
Well, FIRST thought that comes to mind is perhaps you should get some of the facts straight before you start lambasting something you don't know a whole lot about. I spent some time researching this since I'm laid off right now and have no insurance myself, and what I've found is there are still a LOT of unanswered questions about how it's all going to work. I have yet to see any definitive info for what the penalty will be, or how it will be collected (some say an additional form will be required, some say they will take it out of your return if you don't pay, some say they can garnish your wages, etc. while others say no to all of this). But despite the confusion and debate as to what the actual laws will be, one thing there IS consensus on is that there will be no criminal charges for not paying. I have also not seen a reference to this $200 figure you mentioned for a fine. What I HAVE read is the consensus seems to be the penalty will be $95. Also, read mentions of certain exemptions that will allow some people to not carry insurance without penalty. A lot of it is still up in the air.
Here's a very recent article going over what is known thus far:
Readers ask, we answer! What happens if you don’t pay Obamacare’s tax penalty?
Honestly, my biggest concern with Obamacare is that a degradation in the quality of healthcare employees is eminent. In the likely event that Obamacare will put a cap on what it's willing to pay a doctor for X service, many people planning on becoming doctors will feel it's no longer worth the enormous costs in education (not to mention time, effort and stress) to pursue a career in the medical field. I know I've talked to a lot of people in the medical field who have said many older doctors will be looking into retiring early because it won't be worth continuing to work. I don't think most people realize the full scope of impact this plan will have on the nation.
Now on to the part that most Americans REALLY hate me for saying (because the truth hurts): If you want to know the truth as to why health insurance costs are going up so much,
you need only look in a mirror. A couple decades of Americans saying "fuk you, I'll eat whatever I want and be as lazy/sedentary as I want" are the REAL reasons why prices are escalating as they are. There is a direct correlation in the time lines of how unhealthy we have gotten as a society over the last couple decades, and how expensive insurance has gotten. Look at the line for the family health care premiums from '99 - '09, and look at the one for increase in percentage of obese Americans in the same time frame.
They are literally almost identical. We have gone from around 15% of the population being obese in the 70s, to almost 40% today! Forget about FAT. I'm talking OBESE! That is HUGE! *badom bom psshhh* Obesity is almost always accompanied by high blood pressure, and/or high cholesterol, and/or blood sugar problems, and/or heart disease, etc. And since changing the lifestyle that got you to that point is not something most people are even going to take into consideration, getting on several medications usually ends up being the solution, which is reflected in what we spend on "health".
1 Burning Health Care Question We Have to Answer
Consumer spending rose roughly 6% per year from 1980 to 2011. Over that same period, total spending on health care services climbed 7.7% per year while prescription drug spending sped ahead at 11% per year. Perhaps even more striking is the fact that health care services made up less than 10% of total consumer spending in 1980, but now comprise more than 16%. Prescription drugs accounted for a mere 0.7% of consumer spending in 1980, but the nearly $300 billion that we now spend on pills is almost 3% of total spending.
A 2010 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lamented:
No state has met the nation's Healthy People 2010 goal to lower obesity prevalence to 15%. The number of states with an obesity prevalence of 30% or more has increased to 12 states in 2010. In 2009, nine states had obesity rates of 30% or more. In 2000, no state had an obesity prevalence of 30% or more.
Think about it. At the end of the day, an insurance company is still a business out to make money. If everyone and their mother is running off to their doctor every second because
they screwed up their own health through their lifestyle choices, and then a hefty portion of those people also now have to take at LEAST one medication
for the rest of their lives, obviously, the average cost of medical bills per person is going to go way up, and the insurance companies have to foot the bill. Well in order to stay in business, this now means they have to increase their prices enough to cover the higher cost of all those bills AND still be profitable. So in essence, the people most b1tching about how they can't afford insurance anymore are usually the ones responsible for it being that expensive in the first place. The problem becomes most Americans don't want to be told the truth. They want to be told what they want to hear. They want to be able to "exercise their freedoms" (no pun intended), and when the consequences for those choices inevitably come along, they want to blame someone else/have someone else pay for them. That is why I unfortunately have no hope for this nation ever recovering. If we can't take responsibility for the choices that have caused the demise of this nation, there is no way to stop the downward spiral, much less reverse it.