[jackmercer]

“The system runs on such narrow margins that even a 5% increase in Medicaid will be rapidly fatal.”

Physicians and medical groups can reject medicare patients can they not? Also, to what economic data are you referring to conclude that a 5% increase in Medicaid patients would be rapidly fatal? We have had bigger jumps than that in the recent past without practice fatalities.

I am not saying that this isn’t a backdoor to single payer healthcare or “medicare for all” by crashing the private industry, which I actually think Obama wants to do, I am just trying to figure out how he’s gonna do it.

There will certainly be new regulations in place such as no lifetime caps on insurance and no denial of pre-existing conditions but I am still trying to understand how these bills are going to hurt the private insurance market by forcing 30 million new customers to buy from them.

[GloriaJane]

You sound like you work for obama. All gung ho for obama care.

And no! You're wrong when you said: "Those poorer are already on Medicaid." They are not! My family, case in point. My sisters grown kids, all three can't afford insurance but are not on Medicaid. My own son, he sells his blood right now to get by. And that's how most of the people I know live. From pay check to pay check, if they can get work, they don't have insurance but their not on medicaid.

And the medicaid system will be flooded. And every state knows it. That's why so many of them are standing up and saying they're going to be fighting obamacare.

[Truth29]

Another aspect is that the plan won’t force 30 plus million to buy health care. The fines are too low. Combine a requirement that plans cannot deny coverage due to a preexisting condition and high premium costs and many will make the economic decision to pay the fine and wait till they need health care.
They will then sign up and immediately cost far more than they pay.

[srmorton]

It will destroy private insurance companies because the fine for NOT buying private insurance will be less than the cost of the insurance. Young people will chose to pay the fine rather than purchase insurance since they cannot be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition. They can wait until they get sick to purchase insurance.

The fatal flaw for the insurance companies is that they can not survive if they are expected to cover pre-existing conditions without the pool of the insured being increased by bringing in young, healthy individuals. As explained above, there is simply no incentive for those people to enter the system until they actually get sick.