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[Andir]

Yeah, I thought the same thing.
Irony: Andir and RedKing find some common ground, but too late....

It's never too late... and everyone has common ground.

[mainiac]

Only 77% of tax payers recieved a tax refund. In 2010 42% of house-holds had no tax liability. The lower income portions of the population, who are the people this individual mandate intended to force to buy insurance, pay no direct federal taxes.

Intended to force to buy insurance by giving them an exemption because there isn't a mandate if your income is low enough?

The people who don't pay income tax are mostly seniors and the poor, both of whom are covered by other parts of this.

Believe it or not the people writing this law weren't massive freaking morons.  They actually thought through the stuff that took you all of 5 seconds to think up.

[RedKing]

I think a lot of the furor will die down once the real meat of it actually gets implemented in 2014, and people see what the actual numbers are for their specific situation. As with most new government proposals, it's the opacity of the whole equation that makes it scary. There's no simple calculator they can go to and see how it's going to affect them. And because it has to apply to so many people, there's a slew of variables in the calculation that make it tricky for even informed people to calculate.

[Mr. Palau]

Only 77% of tax payers recieved a tax refund. In 2010 42% of house-holds had no tax liability. The lower income portions of the population, who are the people this individual mandate intended to force to buy insurance, pay no direct federal taxes.

Intended to force to buy insurance by giving them an exemption because there isn't a mandate if your income is low enough?

The people who don't pay income tax are mostly seniors and the poor, both of whom are covered by other parts of this.

Believe it or not the people writing this law weren't massive freaking morons.  They actually thought through the stuff that took you all of 5 seconds to think up.

Many of the poor people who do not pay taxes are not poor enough to qualify for medicaid, which is the alternative you mentioned.

Most people who pay no taxes, have taxes taken from their paychecks and are then refunded. You should know how that works.

The only people who can get away with it are those who have no legal income, or those choose to have no taxes withheld from their paychecks. And the later may (or may not, dunno would have to read more on it) get into trouble if they do not pay their full tax bill including the insurance fee.

I'm talking about those 23% that will recieve no tax refunds, and hence can not have anything withheld.

Edit: Whoop, NVM, Medicaid is much, much bigger than I thought (hey, I've never known anyone on Medicaid so how was I supposed to know?). Apperantly the law will expand it to 95M people, which is around 33% of Americans. And 33%>23% so everyone will be covered. I was wrong.

[RedKing]

Only 77% of tax payers recieved a tax refund. In 2010 42% of house-holds had no tax liability. The lower income portions of the population, who are the people this individual mandate intended to force to buy insurance, pay no direct federal taxes.

Intended to force to buy insurance by giving them an exemption because there isn't a mandate if your income is low enough?

The people who don't pay income tax are mostly seniors and the poor, both of whom are covered by other parts of this.

Believe it or not the people writing this law weren't massive freaking morons.  They actually thought through the stuff that took you all of 5 seconds to think up.

Many of the poor people who do not pay taxes are not poor enough to qualify for medicaid, which is the alternative you mentioned.

Source?

[Mr. Palau]

Only 77% of tax payers recieved a tax refund. In 2010 42% of house-holds had no tax liability. The lower income portions of the population, who are the people this individual mandate intended to force to buy insurance, pay no direct federal taxes.

Intended to force to buy insurance by giving them an exemption because there isn't a mandate if your income is low enough?

The people who don't pay income tax are mostly seniors and the poor, both of whom are covered by other parts of this.

Believe it or not the people writing this law weren't massive freaking morons.  They actually thought through the stuff that took you all of 5 seconds to think up.

Many of the poor people who do not pay taxes are not poor enough to qualify for medicaid, which is the alternative you mentioned.

Source?

My false sense, based on a reletively privledged upbringing, that medicaid was much smaller than it actually is. See above edit.

However, for quite a few people the cost of the fine will be less than insurance. Although nto much less so any rational individual would rather just pay more and get much mroe benefits than pay slightly less and get nothing.

[GlyphGryph]

Which is basically exactly how it's intended to work, heh. Like most tax incentives, it's just an incentive.

[RedKing]

And thus, it's not a horrible law.

Honestly, the part I don't get is why people wouldn't want insurance, in our medical system. Yes, you may be young and healthy. You'll still need to go to the doctor periodically. Even an annual checkup isn't cheap if you don't have insurance. Regular trips to the dentist aren't cheap.

There's this mentality that this is somehow about "lazy, fat slobs who don't take care of themselves bilking the rest of us" that ignores the fact that even for the average person, medical costs are not cheap.

[GlyphGryph]

Because none of that stuff is cheap with insurance either, and we can't afford it either way?

I spent quite a while uninsured since there were literally no other options for me.

I would be uninsured right now if I didn't live in a state that mandates because quite frankly it is nowhere near the optimal use of the money at this point in my life. Every dollar you spend insuring against failure is a dollar you can't spend seeking success - it's the same for every single other decision in life.

[RedKing]

I understand that concept, but the problem is that we as a society are unwilling to allow the full consequences of risk-seeking activity when it comes to healthcare. In other words, if you don't have insurance and you get deathly ill, the hospital will not (or at least is SUPPOSED to not) say "Well, that was your choice when you chose not to seek insurance" and leave you to die on the curb.

Without the potential full extent of failure, it's an unfair tradeoff. In the same way that bailing out the banks for engaging in risky, high-profit/high-risk financial activity just encourages bad behavior...but we have to because the societal downside of allowing them to fail damages everyone.

It's not going to kill society to let the uninsured die in the gutter, but it certainly lessens the value of having a society in the first place.

[Flare]

Analogues depend on type, not magnitude. If the structure of the analogue fits well, it works.

And you're talking local taxes and local issues. The types don't match. The analogue fails.

The "every square inch" argument is just kind of silly, btw. Substantial use is derived. That suffices. I also leave crumbs in a carton of fries!

That's hiding behind semantics, the issue you're raising is that someone should not be taxed for something that he or she won't use. Whether you call it local, foreign, or even right next to you if you're not using it your argument applies to this as well whatever you want to call it. The important part of the analogy is that you're not really using it, not that you call it local and that this some how makes it that case that you somehow pay for and use it, when you don't really use it.

As for indirect effects, this too takes place in universal medical care, and probably far more since a few people missing or suffering from medical conditions in society can be worth a lot more than a few pot holes near the industrial parts of the city.

As long as you are taxed, and this money is not spent directly on you, you're going to be paying for things that you won't use or see the benefit of, and sometimes, this is going to be indirect to the point of being insignificant.

[Mr. Palau]

Well even if we were willing to accept that as a society you would still see a lot of people dying of preventable diseases due to the logical decision that only a small percentage of uninsured people will ever get deadly diseases and most will just get to keep a little extra money in their pocket. The small percentage of poepl who did die would be pretty large, in terms of absolute numbers.

It's actually quite similiar to the decision the banks made. There is a very small risk of me getting a deadly illness, and there is a very small risk all of my mortage bets will blow up at the same time.  Each one is deadly, to the person or to the firm, but each one is also very unlikly.

Analogues depend on type, not magnitude. If the structure of the analogue fits well, it works.

And you're talking local taxes and local issues. The types don't match. The analogue fails.

The "every square inch" argument is just kind of silly, btw. Substantial use is derived. That suffices. I also leave crumbs in a carton of fries!

That's hiding behind semantics, the issue you're raising is that someone should not be taxed for something that he or she won't use. Whether you call it local, foreign, or even right next to you if you're not using it your argument applies to this as well whatever you want to call it. The important part of the analogy is that you're not really using it, not that you call it local and that this some how makes it that case that you somehow pay for and use it, when you don't really use it.

As for indirect effects, this too takes place in universal medical care, and probably far more since a few people missing or suffering from medical conditions in society can be worth a lot more than a few pot holes near the industrial parts of the city.

As long as you are taxed, and this money is not spent directly on you, you're going to be paying for things that you won't use or see the benefit of, and sometimes, this is going to be indirect to the point of being insignificant.

I think that the rational for an individual to put up with forcibly increased medical costs, for him, is that it could increase the efficiency of the country's economy. If you have to make a sacrifice for a more efficient system then ultimatly it might pay you back in the end due to increased economic activity in the country as a whole making it better for you.

[GlyphGryph]

RedKing,
Your question wasn't why people wouldn't want nationalized healthcare, it was why they wouldn't choose to purchase insurance.

And even bringing it down to the minimum level, I think "unable to afford it" is a pretty good excuse.

If you want to talk more about insurance in general....
Personally, I'm completely opposed to insurance for routine procedures - it's a perverse incentive that utterly distorts the market and results in a situation that leaves everyone worse off, including the insurance companies. I think if we really want healthcare for everyone, we should nationalize it (and not just nationalize insurance either, which compounds the problem).

I think we should be able to purchase healthcare plans instead of purchasing insurance plans - I'd love to be able to just pay a pile of money each year and get a guarantee that the doctors and hospital will do their best to make me healthy because it helps their bottom line. I'd love a situation where the incentives would actually line up.

Insurance doesn't do that - in fact, it does the exact opposite. It encourages doctors to push for multiple visits, extraneous tests, and unneeded procedures with actual patient care as only a secondary concern, since patients getting better doesn't help them in the slightest (talking from an administrative and organizational standpoint here). It's impressive that hospitals put patient concerns as high as they do, honestly, but there's absolutely no incentive to keep down costs here or act in reasonably economically efficient ways.

Insurance is, and only functions well as, a safeguard against things that are unlikely to happen. Insurance for regular dental visits are perhaps the most retarded thing our country has ever invented.

Why the hell would you need insurance for regular procedures? There is no possible way adding a middleman could work out for anyone but the middleman in this sort of situation. It would be like buying insurance against an empty gas tank - for 200 dollars a month, you get as much gas as you need! (of course, you only average 80, but ignore that!)

What it means, though, is that the gas company has no incentive not to jack up their prices - after all, you don't care, you'll hop into whichever one is closest.

It means they have no incentive to work efficiently - they can just pass the costs onto your insurance company.

And the insurance company, just to stay afloat, has to pass those costs on to you.

It's a bad, bad system.

[Leafsnail]

I swear you used to make actual arguments rather than just acting aggrieved in every single thread.  Can't you go back to doing what you did before?

[GlyphGryph]

I should add that I am ALREADY hearing more and more comments about how now that everybody needs to pay for it, my own actions and risk-assessments should become more and more government controlled because now other people are magically paying more for it somehow.

And honestly, I would rather have a society where the poor die regularly than a society where no one is ever allowed to take risks, harsh as that may sound, and keep in mind that I was until recently one of the poor and have always felt the same way.