Supreme Court to Consider Health Care Law

I don't think it matters whether the Supreme Court throws out the entire law or just the individual mandate. Without the mandate, the bill is pretty much useless anyway.

Insurance premiums are determined based on how much risk the insurer is taking on by covering you. Requiring insurers to cover pre-existing conditions only works if there is a larger pool for insurers to spread out that risk - which the mandate would guarantee. Take away the mandate, and insurers will simply jack up their premiums to the moon and/or make you buy crappy policies that have such high deductibles and copayments/coinsurance that you still can't afford to pay for your healthcare. Yeah, they'll cover you, but only at such an exorbiant price that you can't afford the policy anyway.

 

The griping about the mandate continues to baffle me. The whole purpose is to bring 25-year-olds into the pool to bring down rates, because otherwise healthy people opt out. It's a weapon against adverse selection, a textbook market failure.

 

No offense, but I honestly couldn't tell you one position you've taken here, nor recall one disagreement we've had.

On the other hand, I guess I make an impression.

 

It's one of their favorite boogeymen and one that has netted them oodles of money in donations in recent decades. Why stop now?

And it will be somewhat pertinent regardless of the outcome here because two of the court's "progressives" - Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer - are both north of 70 years old and could retire between January 2013 and January 2017. A Republican president with a Republican-controlled Senate can completely remake the court.

 

Ah, OK. I was like, "I don't remember this guy being on my long list of enemies here."

 

I guess we're going to find out, huh?

 

A lot will depend on the wording of the decision. You think it's a slam dunk. I think it's a grey area to be decided. Simply upholding the law doesn't show one or the other, but their reasoning in upholding the law would say a lot.

 

Yeah, that's part of the complaint.

Healthy 25-year-old (males, especially) aren't being brought into the system and charged according to actuarial predictions, they're being asked to subsidize the system.

That's not insurance. That's a tax.

Call it that.

People aren't arguing for government health insurance, they want government provided health care.

 

But what baffles me is that the 25-year-old men aren't the ones complaining about the mandate.

 

It won't just be the healthy 25-year-olds. It will be the entire middle class. This is a massive, regressive tax increase on the middle class, paid directly to insurance companies.

 

They're too busy showing their ass at NFL games ... [/crossthread]

 

OK, healthy 27-year-olds.

Or 32-year-olds.

Or health people of any age who are pretty sure that they won't get sick, and decide that the price of opting in is greater than the predicted price of opting out.

All the actuarial tables in the world cannot penetrate a person's secrets.