Comment · Tue, July 30, 2013
Stephen Colbert gave a shout-out to Tea Party group FreedomWorks for stepping up its’ efforts against the Affordable Care Act: “Don’t fall for it, young people. You don’t need insurance. You’re gonna be young and healthy forever.”
What they were answering
MeloJelo · 6 points
It does nothing to lower actual healthcare costs. It's merely insurance legislation.
Actually, it does. Simply by everyone having coverage, people will be able to go to the doctor regularly and get check-ups and preventative medicine, whether than foregoing going to the doctor because it's too expensive, then finding out in the ER a couple years later that they have full-blown, out-of-control diabetes or cancer or heart disease.
Those conditions are very expensive to treat, so catching and treating them early will greatly reduce the cost of health care.
Additionally, the payment model for health care is changing with the ACA. Instead of paying fee for service (i.e., the more services a doc provides, the more he gets paid), health care organizations will be paid based on patient outcomes and standard rates for treatemnts (e.g., you get $10,000 for this surgery, unless the patient is readmitted to the hospital within the next month for complications, then you are docked $2000).
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb
No they won't! The cost of paying the fine for not having insurance is much less than current private insurance. Not to mention the out of pocket deductibles are going up every year, so there is no way lower income families can pay the $3K to $5K out of pocket before the insurance starts picking up the bill. Even if you live in a state with an insurance exchange, the fine is much less.
The idea you think the Affordable Healthcare Act is, I can get behind. I agree with you. However, the bill that was passed is not what you think it is. We are going to need to go with a plan like Canada has, if we are ever going to see the results you are alluding to. This insurance bill is going to do nothing but drive up costs until it's a no-brainer to go socialized healthcare.
I like many of the parts of the bill, but as a whole I don't think it's what most people think it is. There are so many better ways that we could have reduced costs and made access more affordable.