For Those Who Decide Not To Buy Health Insurance Required By The ACA

Many of these folks are using the importance of individual freedom as an excuse for their refusal to purchase medical insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Others just want to spend their money elsewhere, like on cigarettes, alcohol, junk food, etc.

There should be an addition to the ACA law to address this issue. That being, for those who refuse to buy health insurance, they must take financial responsibility for any and all medical expenses they incur. This addition would make medical bills collectable by wage garnishment, or by the sale of property of the patient or person responsible for the bill. The medical debt could not be discharged through bankruptcy or any other tactic. A married couple could have both salaries garnished and divorce would not offer relief for medical debts to either.

Since most of these health insurance rebels are conservatives and neoconservatives, and insist that everyone take personal responsibility, they should welcome such an added provision to keep the dead beats in line.

However, before these dissidents make a decision they will regret, they should research the statistics on diabetes, heart disease, and a few of the other maladies occurring more and more as the U.S. population grows fatter and fatter. This is especially true with people in their twenties, they still have the misguided belief of youth that they are invincible.

Families with young, adventurous, athletic children can expect injuries that will require medical attention. The sedentary children are prone to obesity, high cholesterol, high blood glucose levels, high blood pressure and the diseases that go with them. Many of these youngsters will need treatment and costly medications in their early teens that just a decade or so ago were not needed until a person was in their forties, fifties, or even sixties.

A reality check could change the minds of most members of this resistance movement towards the ACA, but right-wingers rarely venture into reality.

http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/aca-poll-uninsured-and-unenthusiastic.html/?a=viewall

For those interested, the following are links to help in researching the growing need for health insurance for young people and children:

http://millionhearts.hhs.gov/abouthds/risk-factors.html

http://www.cdc.gov/pdf/facts_about_obesity_in_the_united_states.pdf

http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/obesity/facts.htm

http://www.uwhealth.org/healthfacts...lexMember-Show_Public_HFFY_1126674575154.html

http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/diabetes-statistics/

 

A small percentage of those who aren't taking it are doing exactly what I did 25 years ago when the company I worked for Offered me and insurance plan that would pay 70% of the first ten thousand and everything after that. I told em I'd just as soon go bankrupt over the whole ball of was as the 3 k I couldn't pay anyway. If you can't afford a five figure deductible why buy the plan? The need of young people for this plan is growing pretty much in lockstep with the growth in opulation of that age group. Even funnier young peopl;e with sever health issue probably aren't employed or are underemployed and will be eligible to sign up for medicaid. And please the numbers we've been shown thus far show that far more people are qualifying for medicaid than you lefties thought.

The chickens are really coming home to roost this time. You tools are busily trying to adopt a European style economic system that insures chronic unemployment among a significant proportion of those under the age of 30, while simultaneously expecting this group to bear the burden for the old and the poor and it is going to blow up in your faces.

 

Face it, people don't like being told what to do by you and your statist ilk. You people managed to (*)(*)(*)(*) up our healthcare system with a level of incompetence that's breath taking to say the least. Good job.

 

Then you and garyd believe the dead beats should be forced to pay their medical bills. Bankruptcy should not make it possible for these dead beats to make others pay for their medical care. Good for you.

 

I guess they're deadbeats because they refuse to support the true deadbeats like you by paying higher premiums. Irony is a mother (*)(*)(*)(*)er.

 

Uh you should know that the overwhelming number of people showing up in emergency rooms for the sniffles weren't young people but medicaid receipients who never even bothered to try to find a regular doctor or couldn't because the reimbursement schedule was so low that no doctor could take more than a handful of them and stay in business.

 

You guys really should find a reliable source of information, your arguments have the stench of FOX News BS.

 

Actually this partcular bit comes from an admissions nurse at a small town hospital.

 

You should try putting forth a coherent argument. Face it, nobody takes you big government tools serious.

 

You and your fellow righties haven't truly addressed the OP, you've just been justifying why you should not be forced to pay for your own medical bills, and your pitiful excuses aren't working.

 

What about me? An overeducated and underemployed leftist? Are you going to tell me the same thing? I don't want insurance and won't buy it either. I also have no money. My girlfriend is in medical school and we essentially live off her student loans. It is an incredibly sparse existence and one I have essentially no disposable income. I am asking for money for Christmas and asking for it early, so I can buy others Christmas presents, otherwise I wouldn't be able to afford a present for my niece and nephew. I also happen to be a fit guy in my twenties. I don't need insurance, but good thing you are calling for me to take personal responsibility!! I imagine you say the same for all food costs, heating costs, etc. People should be held personally responsible for covering any costs, am I right?

PS. The hypocrisy of both sides disgusts me to no end so very often, but the Democrats supporting Obama's corporatist handout insurance policy. His neoliberal economic advisers. His Bush like foreign policy and surveillance state. Obama IS everything any self respecting left winger SHOULD hate. But since he has the right letter next to his name, I am forced to read half-assed defenses of this (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*) bag from "liberals" across the internet.

 

Do you want to eliminate Medicare as well?

 

Our system was (*)(*)(*)(*)ed up already!! That is why our system is screwed up!! Republicans ignored the problem because the wealthy weren't affected and Democrats decided to give a handout wealthy corporations by mandating that people buy their product!! Our healthcare system is the most expensive in the world, and we receive outcomes that are no better and often worse than other countries who pay FAR less per capita for their healthcare. We badly needed and still badly need effective healthcare reform. It is just the case that Obamacare doesn't fit the bill.

 

What does that have to do with anything I said? I don't want to be forced to buy a product from a capitalist I can't afford, don't want, and have no need for. Seems like an incredibly sensible position to take, but in this world where sense is such a foreign concept, it seems absurd!!

 

During the debate of the ACA, the Congressional Democrats caved to the Republicans on the single payer plan. The profits of Big Insurance were jeopardized, and the GOP would not tolerate that.

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Have you investigated your state's exchange?

 

Do you actually believe that (*)(*)(*)(*)? In 2009 Democrats had the presidency, house, and a filibuster proof majority in the Senate!! We got that god awful bill because of Democrats, not Republicans!! Republicans are wrong about essentially everything they do in my estimation, and their only real solution seemed to be tort reform (despite the fact that tort reform would save little money, tort reform had been passed by Bush, and many states passed tort reform bills of their own already), but their lack of solutions didn't force Democrats to advance a bad solution!! That was something Democrats chose to do, because they get a LOT of money from the health care industry and the industry spent A LOT of money lobbying for the mandate!!

 

How would you solve the health care issue?

 

that's good OP, but how about the fact that the ACA is the only national healthcare plan in the world that uses an insurance mandate WITHOUT removing the profit from the very coverage that is mandated? which is one of the reasons why a single payer system would actually cost us half a trillion dollars LESS than our current mandate plan

http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2012/0312friedman.pdf

which in turn is hurting the already declining middle class more than anyone else, as they are the ones who are poor but not quite poor enough to qualify for a subsidy... and for what? so some people can profit off of legislation

http://rt.com/usa/white-role-fowler-health-464/

but to your credit, this IS an American conservative's healthcare plan.. it was invented by the GOP and backed by politicians like Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney before it was ever accepted by the democrats. Massachusetts was the very first state to install the mandate plan themselves and it just so happens they have the highest premium costs in the entire country

 

poor and false excuse


the democrats had the super majority when the ACA past, they didn't need a single GOP vote to pass a single payer plan... and it just so happens they didn't get a single GOP vote from the house of representatives OR the senate when the ACA was passed..... (in other words, the ACA got 0 votes from the republicans and STILL passed)

they needed absolutely 0 GOP support to pass healthcare reform

 

I agree with you completely.

I was piSSed when the single payer option was scrapped, and am one who does not wholeheartedly support the final ACA law, because it doesn’t go far enough.

But, it is a start, and with all of the obstructions thrown in the way of the state exchanges by Republican governors, and the technical problems with the federal web site, the evolution to the single payer system is a definite possibility.

However, if the GOP is offered the opportunity, they will not only repeal the ACA, they will also end Medicare. That is something the Republicans have longed for since the Medicare law passed nearly a half-century ago.

The right-wingers might think they want the Republicans to put an end to Social Security and Medicare, in the belief they will be refunded all of the money withheld from their paychecks over the decades. Wrong. The SS trust fund will be absorbed to give further tax cuts to the one percent.

The ACA has problems, but for tens of millions of Americans, it’s better than anything this nation has had so far.

 

What are you talking about? There is <1 Million people on the exchanges, and even that number is inflated by people who haven't actually bought their plans or paid their first premium.

What infuriates me the most, is this insistence on taking the law by its letter, instead of by real world experience with similar models.

For comparison, the letter of the 2010 re-authorization for NASA says that "the (NASA) Administrator:

(5) shall take appropriate actions to ensure timely and cost-effective development of the Space Launch System and the multi-purpose crew vehicle"

But this isn't consistent with maintaining the same-old cost-plus contracts and legacy hardware. Costs will run up just the same as they did under Bush's Constellation, because there is no incentive for them not to. The letter of the law, is as "matter of fact" as it is irrelevant and wrong.

Congress inherently contradicted themselves here without realizing it, and this is the same Congress who designed the ACA.

Screw intentions! If the plan's outline doesn't meet economic muster, it will fail. Congress' law will not trump Supply & Demand, and it's we who became the collateral damage of their folly each time they try.

 

As normal you're not even close to being honest.

 

You have no clue what you're talking about. The democrats had the votes to pass whatever they wanted.

 

so you are against subsidies for the insurance, so everybody has to pay for their own medical insurance ?

Oh i get it, you want subsidized but you don't want them to be subsidized.

 

My wife's best friend is an ER nurse...and you are exactly correct, except you didn't mention the illegal aliens that use it as a free clinic!