Kaiser Foundation Tracking Poll: ACA

[Loren Pechtel]

I did not assume anything. I asked a hypothetical question that may or may not have anything to do with his personal healthcare situation.

Moreover, why aren't you proudly trumpeting the fact that Obamacare pays out subsidies and puts people who would be high cost risks to insurance companies into pools as if they aren't.

There's little question Obamacare does these things by intent, so if you wish to be the loyal and dutiful Obamacare fanboy you should be defending them as being awesome not acting like they are dirty and there is something wrong with taking them.

The thing is the old system had people pay in and then all too often toss them out on their ass and not cover them when they needed it. (Get sick, you can't work, you lose your coverage.)

I receive no subsidy, I'm not asking for a subsidy. All I'm getting is what a fair system would have provided in the first place--continued coverage. Some years back they fixed this for changing jobs--if you were covered by your old employer the new employer couldn't impose pre-existing condition restrictions on you. Unfortunately, they didn't apply this same fix to the individual market.

 

[dismal]

I did not assume anything. I asked a hypothetical question that may or may not have anything to do with his personal healthcare situation.

Moreover, why aren't you proudly trumpeting the fact that Obamacare pays out subsidies and puts people who would be high cost risks to insurance companies into pools as if they aren't.

There's little question Obamacare does these things by intent, so if you wish to be the loyal and dutiful Obamacare fanboy you should be defending them as being awesome not acting like they are dirty and there is something wrong with taking them.

The thing is the old system had people pay in and then all too often toss them out on their ass and not cover them when they needed it. (Get sick, you can't work, you lose your coverage.)

I receive no subsidy, I'm not asking for a subsidy. All I'm getting is what a fair system would have provided in the first place--continued coverage. Some years back they fixed this for changing jobs--if you were covered by your old employer the new employer couldn't impose pre-existing condition restrictions on you. Unfortunately, they didn't apply this same fix to the individual market.

You paid for your coverage for a year. You did not pay enough to cover your entire life. Like if you buy term life insurance -- you don't die that year you get no future benefit if you die the next year.

If they were required to cover you for the rest of your life by insuring you this year they would have to charge you more now.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The thing is the old system had people pay in and then all too often toss them out on their ass and not cover them when they needed it. (Get sick, you can't work, you lose your coverage.)

I receive no subsidy, I'm not asking for a subsidy. All I'm getting is what a fair system would have provided in the first place--continued coverage. Some years back they fixed this for changing jobs--if you were covered by your old employer the new employer couldn't impose pre-existing condition restrictions on you. Unfortunately, they didn't apply this same fix to the individual market.

You paid for your coverage for a year. You did not pay enough to cover your entire life. Like if you buy term life insurance -- you don't die that year you get no future benefit if you die the next year.

If they were required to cover you for the rest of your life by insuring you this year they would have to charge you more now.

Except they are normally required to cover you for the rest of your life! Each year you pay the premium for your age, they don't get to ask medical questions anymore. They don't get to say "you got cancer, we aren't going to renew your policy next year."

 

[dismal]

You paid for your coverage for a year. You did not pay enough to cover your entire life. Like if you buy term life insurance -- you don't die that year you get no future benefit if you die the next year.

If they were required to cover you for the rest of your life by insuring you this year they would have to charge you more now.

Except they are normally required to cover you for the rest of your life!

Well then, this must not have been a problem.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Except they are normally required to cover you for the rest of your life!

Well then, this must not have been a problem.

Read!!!

The life insurance companies are--that's the whole point of guaranteed renewable. Likewise, disability coverage normally works this way. Health insurance is another matter, it used to be that when you lost your job you lost it and private policies would eventually spiral out of control and you would lose them also. All I'm asking for is the same degree of protection with health insurance as with life & disability.

 

[bilby]

Well then, this must not have been a problem.

Read!!!

The life insurance companies are--that's the whole point of guaranteed renewable. Likewise, disability coverage normally works this way. Health insurance is another matter, it used to be that when you lost your job you lost it and private policies would eventually spiral out of control and you would lose them also. All I'm asking for is the same degree of protection with health insurance as with life & disability.

There is nothing so useless as doing, with great efficiency, that which should not be done at all.

 

[untermensche]

http://kff.org/interactive/health-t...publics-views-on-the-affordable-care-act-aca/

Maybe someone can post the chart I'm on an iPad and don't know how to do it yet.

The unfavorable is consistently a little higher than the favorable. For me personally it is favorable because I have a preexisting condition and I work for a small company that doesn't provide health care.

I'm curious, would you view a law favorably that required all your neighbors to chip $100 into a hat and give it to you?

He is still paying for his health insurance. Nobody is paying for it for him.

Insurance is about spreading risk.

Not charging anybody more for preexisting conditions is just another way to spread it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Read!!!

The life insurance companies are--that's the whole point of guaranteed renewable. Likewise, disability coverage normally works this way. Health insurance is another matter, it used to be that when you lost your job you lost it and private policies would eventually spiral out of control and you would lose them also. All I'm asking for is the same degree of protection with health insurance as with life & disability.

There is nothing so useless as doing, with great efficiency, that which should not be done at all.

I do not see how this is remotely a rebuttal.

 

[Bomb#20]

Insurance is about spreading risk.

No it isn't. If ten ship owners all write contracts with the same Lloyd's of London underwriter, the risk hasn't been spread; quite the reverse. That doesn't make what's going on not insurance. Insurance is a type of garbage removal service -- it's about paying somebody enough to get him to agree to take risk off your hands, full stop. Whether it spreads the risk or not is incidental.

 

[Duke Leto]

So, going back to the OP, there's an absolutely critical caveat that has to be made about the poll as it is currently formatted.

It's asking whether their view of the law is favorable or unfavorable, so it's rolling into the unfavorable category those persons who don't like ACA because it isn't Liberal enough. These people view the law unfavorably, most likely because it uses the private insurers, but would probably not want it repealed. It's a bit hard to get a handle on how significant a group that is though.

I looked up this Fox News poll from December of 2013, and compared it to the Kaiser poll from about the same time. The favorability rating according to question #23 ("Are you glad Obamacare passed?", which is slightly different but probably not enormously so) is net 16 points unfavorable, compared to Kaiser's Net 14 points unfavorable. Fox News generally has a slight Republican bias in its polling. Kaiser's inclusion of refusals also muddies the waters a bit. Fox News' majority in favor of repealing ACA is at that time was 12 points in favor of repeal. So it looks very much like the number of folks who dislike ACA from the left was around 2-3% in December of 2013.

So I'd conclude that the number of folks actually wanting to go back to before ACA is now less than a majority, and predict that the trend of increasing favorability will continue as the ACA remains in force and the world doesn't end.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Insurance is about spreading risk.

No it isn't. If ten ship owners all write contracts with the same Lloyd's of London underwriter, the risk hasn't been spread; quite the reverse. That doesn't make what's going on not insurance. Insurance is a type of garbage removal service -- it's about paying somebody enough to get him to agree to take risk off your hands, full stop. Whether it spreads the risk or not is incidental.

Actually, the risk has been spread even then.

Yes, it's the same underwriter but in effect that underwriter has 10 ships, not one. Losing one ship is losing 1/10th of their assets, not 100%.

 

[Bomb#20]

No it isn't. If ten ship owners all write contracts with the same Lloyd's of London underwriter, the risk hasn't been spread; quite the reverse. That doesn't make what's going on not insurance. Insurance is a type of garbage removal service -- it's about paying somebody enough to get him to agree to take risk off your hands, full stop. Whether it spreads the risk or not is incidental.

Actually, the risk has been spread even then.

Yes, it's the same underwriter but in effect that underwriter has 10 ships, not one. Losing one ship is losing 1/10th of their assets, not 100%.

But there's ten times as much chance he'll lose one ship; he's a lot more likely to lose two of those ships than any of the ten shipowners were; he might lose ten ships; you appear to be assuming one ship was 100% of one shipowner's assets; and you appear to be defining "risk" as a quantity measured in relation to total assets rather than as the product of the probability of a loss and the number of pounds sterling to be lost -- the latter is what Lloyd's gets paid to haul away.

Now it's certainly true that people's capacity to bear a given risk is affected by how rich they are and how diverse their existing risk portfolio is; the fact that people vary in this respect is what makes insurance contracts mutually beneficial, just as the fact that different people have analogous practical reasons for subjectively valuing the same machine differently from one another is what makes the buying and selling of machines mutually beneficial. But that's orthogonal to the issue of whether the machines are cars that GM is spreading to a million buyers or manufacturing equipment that a hundred machine makers are concentrating in GM. It may well be that insurance usually tends to spread risk when those who agree to accept the risk are being rational -- there's a reason the industry is now dominated by joint-stock companies instead of 18th-century Lloyd's-style individual adventurers. But it's still insurance even in the cases where it's concentrating the risk.

 

[bilby]

There is nothing so useless as doing, with great efficiency, that which should not be done at all.

I do not see how this is remotely a rebuttal.

You can fart about as much as you like trying to improve health insurance; but you can't polish a turd.

Insurance is a shithouse way to provide healthcare. Government provision of healthcare on a medical needs basis, paid for by general taxation is, observably, the best option.

Fucking around trying to improve insurance is futile. The best possible system still won't be very good.

Price signals are the wrong way to ration healthcare; a professional board of qualified doctors should choose who gets what treatment, using quality and duration of life as the criteria; and the cost should then be recovered via progressive taxation.

 

[untermensche]

Insurance is about spreading risk.

No it isn't. If ten ship owners all write contracts with the same Lloyd's of London underwriter, the risk hasn't been spread; quite the reverse.

The ten ships each pay a reduced rate, less than the replacement cost, because the insurer takes the risk that all of them won't be lost. It is this risk that justifies the profits of the insurer.

The risk is spread so the ship owners can afford the insurance.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Actually, the risk has been spread even then.

Yes, it's the same underwriter but in effect that underwriter has 10 ships, not one. Losing one ship is losing 1/10th of their assets, not 100%.

But there's ten times as much chance he'll lose one ship; he's a lot more likely to lose two of those ships than any of the ten shipowners were; he might lose ten ships; you appear to be assuming one ship was 100% of one shipowner's assets; and you appear to be defining "risk" as a quantity measured in relation to total assets rather than as the product of the probability of a loss and the number of pounds sterling to be lost -- the latter is what Lloyd's gets paid to haul away.

I am defining risk as related to the % of assets lost. That's what has the impact on the entity bearing the risk.

- - - Updated - - -

I do not see how this is remotely a rebuttal.

You can fart about as much as you like trying to improve health insurance; but you can't polish a turd.

Insurance is a shithouse way to provide healthcare. Government provision of healthcare on a medical needs basis, paid for by general taxation is, observably, the best option.

Fucking around trying to improve insurance is futile. The best possible system still won't be very good.

Price signals are the wrong way to ration healthcare; a professional board of qualified doctors should choose who gets what treatment, using quality and duration of life as the criteria; and the cost should then be recovered via progressive taxation.

UHC has an extreme problem with the people who make the standards as to what's proper care are also the people who pay for meeting those standards. The result is the care in UHC countries is never up to what it should be.

 

[bilby]

But there's ten times as much chance he'll lose one ship; he's a lot more likely to lose two of those ships than any of the ten shipowners were; he might lose ten ships; you appear to be assuming one ship was 100% of one shipowner's assets; and you appear to be defining "risk" as a quantity measured in relation to total assets rather than as the product of the probability of a loss and the number of pounds sterling to be lost -- the latter is what Lloyd's gets paid to haul away.

I am defining risk as related to the % of assets lost. That's what has the impact on the entity bearing the risk.

- - - Updated - - -

I do not see how this is remotely a rebuttal.

You can fart about as much as you like trying to improve health insurance; but you can't polish a turd.

Insurance is a shithouse way to provide healthcare. Government provision of healthcare on a medical needs basis, paid for by general taxation is, observably, the best option.

Fucking around trying to improve insurance is futile. The best possible system still won't be very good.

Price signals are the wrong way to ration healthcare; a professional board of qualified doctors should choose who gets what treatment, using quality and duration of life as the criteria; and the cost should then be recovered via progressive taxation.

UHC has an extreme problem with the people who make the standards as to what's proper care are also the people who pay for meeting those standards. The result is the care in UHC countries is never up to what it should be.

Reality does not agree with you.

 

[ksen]

But there's ten times as much chance he'll lose one ship; he's a lot more likely to lose two of those ships than any of the ten shipowners were; he might lose ten ships; you appear to be assuming one ship was 100% of one shipowner's assets; and you appear to be defining "risk" as a quantity measured in relation to total assets rather than as the product of the probability of a loss and the number of pounds sterling to be lost -- the latter is what Lloyd's gets paid to haul away.

I am defining risk as related to the % of assets lost. That's what has the impact on the entity bearing the risk.

- - - Updated - - -

I do not see how this is remotely a rebuttal.

You can fart about as much as you like trying to improve health insurance; but you can't polish a turd.

Insurance is a shithouse way to provide healthcare. Government provision of healthcare on a medical needs basis, paid for by general taxation is, observably, the best option.

Fucking around trying to improve insurance is futile. The best possible system still won't be very good.

Price signals are the wrong way to ration healthcare; a professional board of qualified doctors should choose who gets what treatment, using quality and duration of life as the criteria; and the cost should then be recovered via progressive taxation.

UHC has an extreme problem with the people who make the standards as to what's proper care are also the people who pay for meeting those standards. The result is the care in UHC countries is never up to what it should be.

care in uhc countries has better outcomes than the us version. study after study has shown this.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

UHC has an extreme problem with the people who make the standards as to what's proper care are also the people who pay for meeting those standards. The result is the care in UHC countries is never up to what it should be.

care in uhc countries has better outcomes than the us version. study after study has shown this.

Study after study? I see the OECD report showing up again and again. In other measures I see the US simply being one of the pack--considering the number that don't get care the care those who do get care must be substantially above that of the UHC countries.

 

[Bomb#20]

No it isn't. If ten ship owners all write contracts with the same Lloyd's of London underwriter, the risk hasn't been spread; quite the reverse.

The ten ships each pay a reduced rate, less than the replacement cost, because the insurer takes the risk that all of them won't be lost. It is this risk that justifies the profits of the insurer.

Huh? A shipowner is going to pay less than replacement cost even if the underwriter only insures one ship, because it isn't certain to be lost. What justifies the profit is that the deal is to mutual advantage because the insurer is less risk-averse than the owner.

The risk is spread so the ship owners can afford the insurance.

I'm starting to get the impression that you're failing to distinguish between spreading the risk and diversifying the risk. It's diversification that brings the premiums down.