throwaway9848
Joined 13 years ago
Joined 13 years ago
Unless we want to decide as a country to not subsidized healthcare for those that can't afford it and to allow hospitals to refuse treatment without upfront payment... then let's be honest about what's happening there, too. The money comes from somewhere, it's every bit as much of a wealth transfer.
I know less about the age rating bands. Off the top of my head, it's to smooth costs over a lifetime. So it's a wealth transfer from your young self to your old self, if you have typical health care costs over your lifetime: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361028/
edit: http://www.rwjf.org/content/dam/farm/reports/issue_briefs/20... for more on age banding.
... And actually, I completely reject your characterization of it as a wealth transfer. It's insurance. You have no idea if you're going to need it. You may be in a car accident and badly break your legs, and require corrective surgery and rehab. You may get pneumonia or a bad MERSA infection. If you haven't saved up a few hundred thousand dollars and you show up at an ER, then the wealth transfer is to you when the hospital eats the cost and passes it along to properly insured people. That's not even going chemo/surgery should you develop cancer, god forbid.
edit: Hey downvoter, let me educate you - the worst thing about a coverage gap used to be the potential to have an illness classified as a preexisting condition, and then to never be able to get private insurance coverage again. The ACA prohibits that practice by insurers as of next year. Here, I even dug up a pre-ACA article on the practice for you, served up on a silver platter: http://articles.latimes.com/2006/sep/17/business/fi-revoke17
edit 2: You know what, prospective downvoters can kiss my butt. Sorry that you don't like the health care reform law. It may be a total mess, but it's no worse that it was before. The only people that are pissed off are healthy, young people (hello, HN) that are paying next to nothing for individual coverage that is garbage. Get sick or old and then tell me how bad the ACA is.
You may have some kind of soy allergy. Your gas and breast experience is neither universal nor typical.
I won't question your unusually strong feelings towards PETA, but please don't confuse what they do with animal welfare. Also, your bad feelings towards your father will do you no good in life, and you should try to get on decent terms with him before he dies (considering his advanced heart disease).
A guy in his 50s or 60s (well past when the boys are pumping out huge amounts of testosterone) drinking _3 quarts_ of soy milk per day is not exactly typical.
This seems like an incredibly market distorting policy. Social welfare programs provide hard floors on quality of life: you don't have food? food stamps. you don't have medical care? medicaid. Some people live longer than they financially planned? universal old-age poverty insurance (social security).
This has all the feel of letting the more financially/business-sophisticated citizens go hunting on one of those hunting ranches with borderline tame 'game'.