Re:Health insurance companies are useless
by tptacek on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @01:27PM
(#20627404)
I worry that this is the classical HN analysis: axiomatically derived from premises that seem intuitively true but are empirically false.
So, to start with, the ACA lowered the rate of growth in health insurance premiums. If it had done nothing else, you'd ostensibly still be better off with it. But it did more than that: it also provides Americans with guaranteed-issue insurance, which did not exist previously. What people in general seem not to understand about health insurance rates is that they've been skyrocketing since the early 2000s. Employers have been having uncomfortable conversations about health benefits long before the ACA.
More broadly: health insurance isn't expensive because it pays for day-to-day care. Health costs are dominated by chronic illness and inpatient/outpatient procedures, not the overhead of people visiting their GPs.
I'm sorry you had an insurance policy you liked that the ACA killed off. But huge numbers of policies, including from health insurance giants, were abusive: they were marketed (effectively!) as real solutions, but had exclusions and coverage caps that made them worth very little if you actually wound up in a situation where you truly needed insurance. We're better off without those policies.
So, to start with, the ACA lowered the rate of growth in health insurance premiums. If it had done nothing else, you'd ostensibly still be better off with it. But it did more than that: it also provides Americans with guaranteed-issue insurance, which did not exist previously. What people in general seem not to understand about health insurance rates is that they've been skyrocketing since the early 2000s. Employers have been having uncomfortable conversations about health benefits long before the ACA.
More broadly: health insurance isn't expensive because it pays for day-to-day care. Health costs are dominated by chronic illness and inpatient/outpatient procedures, not the overhead of people visiting their GPs.
I'm sorry you had an insurance policy you liked that the ACA killed off. But huge numbers of policies, including from health insurance giants, were abusive: they were marketed (effectively!) as real solutions, but had exclusions and coverage caps that made them worth very little if you actually wound up in a situation where you truly needed insurance. We're better off without those policies.