Health Insurance for Expediters; What do You See?

ATeam

Senior Member
Retired Expediter
I woke up this morning to news that while millions of people visited the web site, only six people actually enrolled and in the next couple days, less than 500 did. Much will be made of those low numbers as outspoken people seek to score political points with the sound bytes those numbers provide (what a bonus to the critics!), but I'm willing to wait a bit longer to gain a true sense of the true numbers.

Nevertheless, my main concern remains. Diane and I have health insurance and our costs are increasing to help cover the millions and millions of people who are expected to enroll and thereby gain health insurance for the first time. But where will the money come from to pay for those millions?

Even if we pay a couple thousand dollars a year more for the coverage we have now, how far will that go? Even if we end up paying $10,000 a year for good coverage, how far will that go?

If a healthy family of four heads to the local doctor for first-ever physical exams, that couple thousand from us will be used up. Then that family's grandma develops a condition for which basic surgery is required along with a three day hospital stay. That will cost thousands more. Before, the condition would have been ignored and grandma would have died a premature death because it went untreated for too long. But now she is in the system, costing the system more.

I know of a truck driver who passed out from a heat stroke on a loading dock while unloading his truck. The dock workers brought him around but he absolutely insisted on not calling an ambulance or going in, because he had no health insurance. Now, if he is enrolled in the system, he likely would have agreed to an ambulance ride to the ER and the expense that involves.

The trouble is, Diane and I already are paying increased costs. How many more paying customers are there out there to cover grandma's surgery, the family's annual physicals, junior's visit to the doctor that would not have been done before after he sprains an ankle and gets x-rays, and the trucker's heat stroke? And that's in the first year. Next year, it develops that grandpa's kidney's need dialysis. Where will the money come from to pay for that?

And let's not forget that Diane and I may one day get sick and need care too. We would reasonably expect that the money we paid in over the years would help to cover our claims, but with us paying for millions of previously uninsured, will that be the case?

Don't get me wrong. I strongly believe that all of the people listed above should be able to get the health care they need. But I just don't see Obamacare as the solution. With millions of new people in need of health care expected to come on board, and with the billions in costs they will produce, the notion that there will be enough healthy people also enrolling to cover the costs seems like a false hope to me.

It's not an even-up transfer. When a lone patient can easily generate over $100,000 in claims for a hospital stay, I do not think that there are enough healthy people out there to contribute enough each to cover the millions of people who will generate billions in costs for expensive treatments (even physical exams are expensive).

And when the healthy people find out that their premiums are unaffordable, and that, because of the new preexisting condition rules that allows them to enroll not now, but later when they actually need treatment, they will not enroll and instead save money by paying the fine. This does not seem to me to be a system that is sustainable.
 
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paullud

Veteran Expediter
Way too simple.

Where's the drama? Where's the intrigue? Where's the chance to ask "do ya want some cheese with that whine?"

Simple? It is a bad system and we know it. There is no drama or intrigue. It is way more expensive and the plans provide less so it has nothing to do with drama, it is called common sense. Continuing to expand welfare is just a completely stupid idea because we can't afford the programs we have already and we have to many leeches, again common sense.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using EO Forums mobile app
 

OntarioVanMan

Retired Expediter
Owner/Operator
I woke up this morning to news that while millions of people visited the web site, only six people actually enrolled and in the next couple days, less than 500 did. Much will be made of those low numbers as outspoken people seek to score political points with the sound bytes those numbers provide (what a bonus to the critics!), but I'm willing to wait a bit longer to gain a true sense of the true numbers.

Nevertheless, my main concern remains. Diane and I have health insurance and our costs are increasing to help cover the millions and millions of people who are expected to enroll and thereby gain health insurance for the first time. But where will the money come from to pay for those millions?

Even if we pay a couple thousand dollars a year more for the coverage we have now, how far will that go? Even if we end up paying $10,000 a year for good coverage, how far will that go?

If a healthy family of four heads to the local doctor for first-ever physical exams, that couple thousand from us will be used up. Then that family's grandma develops a condition for which basic surgery is required along with a three day hospital stay. That will cost thousands more. Before, the condition would have been ignored and grandma would have died a premature death because it went untreated for too long. But now she is in the system, costing the system more.

I know of a truck driver who passed out from a heat stroke on a loading dock while unloading his truck. The dock workers brought him around but he absolutely insisted on not calling an ambulance or going in, because he had no health insurance. Now, if he is enrolled in the system, he likely would have agreed to an ambulance ride to the ER and the expense that involves.

The trouble is, Diane and I already are paying increased costs. How many more paying customers are there out there to cover grandma's surgery, the family's annual physicals, junior's visit to the doctor that would not have been done before after he sprains an ankle and gets x-rays, and the trucker's heat stroke? And that's in the first year. Next year, it develops that grandpa's kidney's need dialysis. Where will the money come from to pay for that?

Don't get me wrong. I strongly believe that all of the people listed above should be able to get the health care they need. But I just don't see Obamacare as the solution. With millions of new people in need of health care expected to come on board, and with the billions in costs they will produce, the notion that there will be enough healthy people also enrolling to cover the costs seems like a false hope to me.

It's not an even-up transfer. When a lone patient can easily generate over $100,000 in claims for a hospital stay, I do not think that there are enough healthy people out there to contribute enough each to cover the millions of people who will generate billions in costs for expensive treatments (even physical exams are expensive).

And when the healthy people find out that their premiums are unaffordable, and that, because of the new preexisting condition rules that allows them to enroll not now, but later when they actually need treatment, they will not enroll and instead save money by paying the fine. This does not seem to me to be a system that is sustainable.

It will be with tax increases....welcome to universal healthcare
 

rollincoal

Veteran Expediter
Owner/Operator
Why can't health care be a service like any other service? Did people need health insurance 50 years ago? Wasn't there a time when doctors were paid cash or check for their service just like a barber? They even did house calls. Unnecessary layers upon layers of red tape created the excessive costs we have now. It created a need for an industry, health insurance, where there was none nor any need for it. This is what happens when government programs get created and the government gets involved in anything. I understand we are in modern times and things like a CAT scan cost money but my feeling is without government programs, red tape, and a bloodsucking insurance industry hospital's and doctors would have to compete to provide a service like that and prices would dramatically decrease. Or maybe that is just too simple?
 

eggd1ver

Seasoned Expediter
We are all about being healthy as we can they are things that happen in life we can not see or control as I know first hand. I had to have a liver transplant 7/7/2007 for the simple reason my wife got a blood transfusion when she had her son at the time they were not screening blood and she contracted hep c. With out knowledge of what she had for many years I also got it by the time we found out it was to late for me she got treatment for her condition and is doing fine.

So in the ins. issue my wife work at bank of America we had real good ins. we paid a very good price for it we didn't mind paying we want to pay our way in life. As we all know the down turn in our economy came. My was in middle management and with the cost of my transplant and on going med. and treatment she was down sized she keep cobra ins for 18 months after wards I on the other hand was drop like a hot potato with no way of getting ins in this country anywere at any price so were does that leave people like me in this country. Is there any one in this biss can afford two thousand dollars of meds each month with about another twenty thousand dollars worth of test and doctors visit yearly. I don't want to be a welfare case in this country I have work and payed my taxes all my life and still pay them. So I am not sure were this AHC law is going I have read a lot of it I thought but it is so big no way to read it all. there things that could work and a lot of it has nothing to do with what this country needs for a heath care system. there is one thing me and my wife has notice since the turn down in the country that hospitals were about the only new construction going on while we were driving though the country makes you think were all the heath care money is going.
 

ATeam

Senior Member
Retired Expediter
there is one thing me and my wife has notice since the turn down in the country that hospitals were about the only new construction going on while we were driving though the country makes you think were all the heath care money is going.

I'm glad you mentioned that. Diane and have noticed the same thing too. At the depths of the Great Recession, hospital and medical facility construction was booming and it still is. We delivered a number of loads, mostly compressed gas and medical equipment to these places under construction. Billions of dollars are being spent to build not just medical facilities but grand, stately monument hospitals supported by billboard advertising located in prime freeway exit locations that maximize visibility.
 

WanderngFool

Active Expediter
Simple? It is a bad system and we know it. There is no drama or intrigue. It is way more expensive and the plans provide less so it has nothing to do with drama, it is called common sense. Continuing to expand welfare is just a completely stupid idea because we can't afford the programs we have already and we have to many leeches, again common sense.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using EO Forums mobile app

I was simply making a joke, not necessarily a good one.

If you want to get serious, ok. There is a simplistic element of truth in saying there are too many leaches. What folks that dwell on the number of leaches fail to see, is that there numbers are quite small and readily exaggerated for political gain (and TV ratings) and economically it's insignificant anyway. A far greater economic good is created by social safety nets than what they cost. The more entreprenuerial risks regular people can afford to take the more our economy thrives.

So dumbing things down to an Ayn Rand one-liner that happens to sound good over a couple of beers doesn't serve much of a purpose imo.

But having said all that, I wake up every morning with a profound belief that no one is going to hand anything to me, and if I want any success in this world it's on my shoulders to earn it.
 

WanderngFool

Active Expediter
We are all about being healthy as we can they are things that happen in life we can not see or control as I know first hand. I had to have a liver transplant 7/7/2007 for the simple reason my wife got a blood transfusion when she had her son at the time they were not screening blood and she contracted hep c. With out knowledge of what she had for many years I also got it by the time we found out it was to late for me she got treatment for her condition and is doing fine.

So in the ins. issue my wife work at bank of America we had real good ins. we paid a very good price for it we didn't mind paying we want to pay our way in life. As we all know the down turn in our economy came. My was in middle management and with the cost of my transplant and on going med. and treatment she was down sized she keep cobra ins for 18 months after wards I on the other hand was drop like a hot potato with no way of getting ins in this country anywere at any price so were does that leave people like me in this country. Is there any one in this biss can afford two thousand dollars of meds each month with about another twenty thousand dollars worth of test and doctors visit yearly. I don't want to be a welfare case in this country I have work and payed my taxes all my life and still pay them. So I am not sure were this AHC law is going I have read a lot of it I thought but it is so big no way to read it all. there things that could work and a lot of it has nothing to do with what this country needs for a heath care system. there is one thing me and my wife has notice since the turn down in the country that hospitals were about the only new construction going on while we were driving though the country makes you think were all the heath care money is going.

It's all one big roll of the dice, isn't it? Who's healthy and who isn't I mean. It sounds like you'll benefit from Obamacare. I didn't really get a read on where your earnings are atm but there are subsidies for people that are having trouble there.
 

davekc

Senior Moderator
Staff member
Fleet Owner
I was simply making a joke, not necessarily a good one.

If you want to get serious, ok. There is a simplistic element of truth in saying there are too many leaches. What folks that dwell on the number of leaches fail to see, is that there numbers are quite small and readily exaggerated for political gain (and TV ratings) and economically it's insignificant anyway. A far greater economic good is created by social safety nets than what they cost. The more entreprenuerial risks regular people can afford to take the more our economy thrives.

So dumbing things down to an Ayn Rand one-liner that happens to sound good over a couple of beers doesn't serve much of a purpose imo.

But having said all that, I wake up every morning with a profound belief that no one is going to hand anything to me, and if I want any success in this world it's on my shoulders to earn it.

If everyone had your work ethic then we would be fine. Sadly, that isn't the case. You don't need tv or anything else to realize there is way too many on the government dole that shouldn't be.
You say that is a small number and I have not seen a thing to support that. Welfare roles are the highest they have ever been. EVER. Same thing can be said for disability. Can't tell me that everyone got hurt the last couple years. I can tell you it mirrors numbers from states where a persons unemployment ran out.
 

WanderngFool

Active Expediter
This is one of those things that's best avoided and I know better. <kicks himself in private places> I could get welfare numbers and show you what a small percentage of our economy it is and we could extrapolate a let's say 10% or even a 20% freeloader rate and you know what would happen next? Someone would say "yeah but what about people getting help buying a house, that's a form of welfare", and they'd be right. So around and around and around and around and around we'd go.

Sure there are freeloaders. There will always be freeloaders. From the time we were children, this kind of unfairness gave us a big 'ol rash. It's downright primal. Why does Timmy get a bigger piece of cake? Why do I have to cut the grass for my allowance and Joey doesn't have to do diddly? lol It's in our genes. We get a rash over this kind of thing.

But our economy as a whole just shrugs it off and thrives on us having safety nets.
 
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davekc

Senior Moderator
Staff member
Fleet Owner
Have to show that information since you have a record 47 million on food stamps. No...you can just look at welfare for starters.
And "our economy as a whole just shrugs it off and thrives" Really? What planet are you living on?
We are 17 TRILLION in debt.
But on a upside.
47M Americans hit by food stamp cuts starting today

Maybe some will pick up your work ethic and leave money for the folks that really need it.
 

OntarioVanMan

Retired Expediter
Owner/Operator
Great Potential 47 million low income Americans going hungry.... That maybe 10-20% of them may have the leech virus
 

xiggi

Veteran Expediter
Owner/Operator
This is one of those things that's best avoided and I know better. <kicks himself in private places> I could get welfare numbers and show you what a small percentage of our economy it is and we could extrapolate a let's say 10% or even a 20% freeloader rate and you know what would happen next? Someone would say "yeah but what about people getting help buying a house, that's a form of welfare", and they'd be right. So around and around and around and around and around we'd go.

Sure there are freeloaders. There will always be freeloaders. From the time we were children, this kind of unfairness gave us a big 'ol rash. It's downright primal. Why does Timmy get a bigger piece of cake? Why do I have to cut the grass for my allowance and Joey doesn't have to do diddly? lol It's in our genes. We get a rash over this kind of thing.

But our economy as a whole just shrugs it off and thrives on us having safety nets.

You really believe our economy shrugs it off? We are printing money at an incredible pace. Because of this the value of the dollar continues to shrink. That is not shrugging it off in any way shape or form. We as a country simply can not afford to spend at the rate we do if you have kids or grandkids this all will affect them huge.

Sent from my Fisher Price - ABC 123
 

Mailer

Veteran Expediter
Owner/Operator
I've followed this thread for about a week. Most of the comments were not at all supportive of obamacare. What I read was, that the obamacare was not the good insurance vs the current system.

I see many positives in the obamacare.......looking at the whole, and not from the individual standpoint.

It's here and I think we should give it a chance. It's still in an early stage and I'm pretty sure there will more adjustments coming....just an opinion ok, so don't slam me, lol.
 
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davekc

Senior Moderator
Staff member
Fleet Owner
You really believe our economy shrugs it off? We are printing money at an incredible pace. Because of this the value of the dollar continues to shrink. That is not shrugging it off in any way shape or form. We as a country simply can not afford to spend at the rate we do if you have kids or grandkids this all will affect them huge.

Sent from my Fisher Price - ABC 123

That is the part that many don't understand. As our debt climbs and the dollar loses value, the poor are hurt more than any other group.
As for Obamacare, unless you are recieving free medicare, then not much to get excited about.
Bad news is, well........one will find out soon enough.
If it was a good program, people would be flocking to it. Not really seeing that. The more people realize what it is, the less they like.
 
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davekc

Senior Moderator
Staff member
Fleet Owner
Great Potential 47 million low income Americans going hungry.... That maybe 10-20% of them may have the leech virus

Not likely. I wouldn't worry too much unless they run out of money for rims, gold teeth, xboxes, 200 Micheal Jordon shoes, cable tv, big screens, cell phones and the list goes on. No need for them to go hungry at this point.
 
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