Posted on 02/18/2016 9:54:35 PM PST by kik5150
Yes, although the premiums would be gigantic if people could wait until they're sick to sign up. And even if you somehow got around that, high-risk pools obviously would have much higher premiums.
But Trump's answer precludes that anyway. If you're solving it in the free market via high-risk pools, then you're not mandating that insurance companies cover people with pre-existing conditions because there wouldn't be any need for high risk pools if there was a requirement to cover people with pre-existing conditions.
There is also the issue of Trump promising that everyone will be covered. You simply cannot promise that unless there is an individual mandate to buy insurance.
There's no need for contest. "I'm for the mandate." is bad no matter what the context.
Wow, that was a short clip without room for context or explanation. I wonder why?
so what context would make the mandate sound good to you?
Feel free to get the transcript to explain the contest that makes this look good for Trump.
Absolutely. That's why the ACA ended up with individual mandates despite Obama saying he was against them during the campaign.
Before the ACA, insurance companies could exclude people with pre-existing conditions. That created a market incentive for people to stay covered, else any conditions they developed while not covered wouldn't be covered if they later signed up for insurance.
But if you impose a regulation that says insurance companies must cover people with pre-existing conditions, that eliminated much of the incentive for people to remain covered. Rather than paying those big premiums everyone month, just pay the little stuff out of your pocket. Don't sign up unless/until something major happens that will be cost you a lot of money.
That sounds great for consumers, but it is not viable for insurance companies to only be collecting premiums from people with expensive claims. They'd go broke fast.
So, if you're going to require insurance companies to cover everyone with pre-existing conditions, you have to mandate that healthy people buy coverage so that their premiums will balance the cost of covering people who are sick.
That's why Cooper phrased the question the way he did - if Trump supported no exclusion of pre-existing conditions, did he then also support the individual mandate that is closely linked to it?
It's fairly typical of what he does when people try to pin him down on details.
Trump made a good point. He’s been open about his position on healthcare and it gets an enthusiastic response at his well attended rallies. It certainly hasn’t hurt him any in the contest.
The entire clip is much better and explanatory. The short clip was a hit job.
Thanks for your reply. I totally get the cost/losses involved by signing up only when Ins. was required. I guess that is also why the sign up window exists too. Huh, have to see how this pans out?
Okay, I'm confused. So he does support an individual mandate to provide insurance?
And how is he going to ensure that "everyone" is covered? Because I have been looking for an explanation of that, and nobody seems to have one. I've been told that he doesn't support single payer, and in this thread, I've been told that he doesn't support an individual mandate. But without either an individual mandate or single payer, you cannot possibly be sure that everyone will have coverage, because there inevitably will be some people who'd rather save on premiums than pay for coverage.
Even under Obamacare, not everyone is covered.
And before you say "Medicaid", you basically don't qualify for it in a lot of states if you make more than the poverty level, yet people making that little often can't afford coverage. So how is he going to ensure that all those people are covered?
And presumably, if he has been "open about his position on healthcare", you can direct me to a link that answers those questions.
Look at the show, they were talking about pre-existing conditions, that’s the mandate he likes. So sick of this crap, look at the facts before you put out phony talking points.
In a nutshell, this is how the Swiss health insurance system works. They are the most insured (some would say overinsured) people in the world. They all have renters insurance, travel insurance, etc....
They have private insurance companies — some of them sell all over the world as well — and every company sells three levels of plans. Ward, semi-private, and private. Private is the highest cost and the most services, and of course it does mean that when you are hospitalized you have a private room. Semi private is what pretty much everyone has, with most services covered, and when hospitalized you are sharing a room. Ward is very cheap, even the poor can afford it on their stipend, and the elderly on theirs. It covers less, but all basics are covered, and in the hospital the patient is in a ward, with many beds in a large room. Even Ward is not shameful or disgraceful, and the care seems good.
All accidents, no matter how they happen, are covered by the employer. This removes the cottage industry of trying to prove that a person was injured on the job or not. I worked in HR and filed the papers for accidents at our company. The guy in accounting who was a pro hockey player had the most injuries, but we had a lot of skiing accidents as well.
There is no workman’s comp, and doctors will “write patients off work” for many months at a time, but workers are too ashamed to stay away that long. There is more social shaming and fear there; though the sick and injured could find a way to have a doctor write them off work for months, they do not. They stay away less than they should.
Swiss medical care is not as forward thinking or even as hygienic as here. But it’s decent. At the high end, there are doctors doing some of the world’s best treatments. There is not the lawsuit protection we have here, no CYA testing. Doctors are gods, so they won’t be as careful as they are here (for fear of malpractice). But they do have a good handle on covering everyone.
It has been raining where I am at for 7 days in a row. When someone is asked around here what do you think of the weather? People often say... “You gotta love that rain.” And believe me they do not mean that they really love the rain. Donald Trump does not support forcing people to buy health insurance. That is not his position. If this latest interpretation gets back to him... my guess he will clarify it for you and then of course you and Ted Cruz will say he is lying... LOL
What Trump supports and he has only said it about ten thousand times is opening up markets across state lines to increase competition among insurance companies. When companies have a near monopoly their is no incentive for them to force providers to keep expenses down. He has said that he also wants to continue encouraging health savings plans.
My wife was in a serious car crash... she had to have three discs in her neck fused together. After the surgery she spent a short time in recovery and then her gurney was pushed into the hall and someone else pushed her off to the side to get her out of the way. And there she sat for the next five hours. She didn’t get her medication or any attention for five hours. Of course I was waiting to see her and the receptionist in the waiting area kept making up stuff to keep me appeased. Finally, I forced them to track her down.
A month later we got a copy of the bills and they came to over $80,000 dollars. As I went over it I noticed that the bulk of the hospital charges were for six hours spent in in “intensive care”. I called the hospital and they of course denied that the charges were bogus. So I called the insurance company and explained what happened which is why I am posting this.
They said that if there was a problem with the bill that it was our responsibility to get it straightened out, and that they were not going to “waste” any of their time to try and do it. You see to “save” money my employer actually paid the bills and the insurance company just administered the money and kept a percentage. The more they paid out, the more they got paid. It took me over a year, but I finally got the charges from the hospital reduced by over half.
This is the type of non-competitive BS that has allowed healthcare expenses to go up unchecked. Since I retired, my wife and I have been using Christian Healthcare Ministries which has an exemption from the “mandate”... it costs a quarter of what we were paying for Health Insurance and protects our financial interests better than what our insurance did. We also have a healthcare savings plan that has tax advantages for us. So even with the “mandate” we have not been forced to buy an “Obamacare” plan. Do you think that Trump is going to take that away?
You think it’s funny? I know people who haven’t been to the Dr due to no health insurance. I disagree with Obamacare for many reasons but it has helped some people...people I know...such as people who work at a Fortune 500 company as contractors because that’s all that available and they’re glad to have the jobs that haven’t been sent to India. Literally.
Very funny, huh?
That will change as Switzerland becomes more "multicultural", as we've seen in Sweden.
Yes, some of those things do happen, but their latest refugees are not even allowed to work.... Not a good sitch.
And that right there is just Trump showing his ignorance. It wouldn't be a medicare type system if the folks needing the coverage were under 65. It would be Medicaid, which everyone knows isn't worth a damn ...just like the veterans healthcare system that is failing as we speak.
Trump is just showing how liberal/leftie he is by promoting more big government "solutions" that don't work, have never worked and never will work, by promoting anti-constitutional mandates and more liberal bandaids applied to an open, gushing wound. To Trump, government IS the solution...just as it is to any liberal. And where, exactly, are Americans dying in the street in America due to "lack of health coverage"? Where have they ever died in the street due to lack of health coverage? And no, I'm not talking about the homeless who choose to live on the streets. Has Trump ever head of an ER?
Rush is leading off his show today totally destroying Trump on this. Suck it, Trump Chumps.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.