Not that simple.

Deregulating health insurance across state lines so a family can buy a policy will still vary greatly in cost.

One, states have their own regulations to offer guaranteed health insurance and community rate their premiums. That means a company is free to quote you a price but then everyone in the community gets the same price regardless of their health issues. Obvious what happens here. The price for the community starts to go up over time forcing the healthy young to subsidize the older or sicker. The young then go without, take their chances, and so drive up the cost even further for those left.

In states without such restrictions the surviving insurance companies would medically underwrite their policies for a family based on the families health. You have a chronically ill family member and your cost will skyrocket. So if that family had no subsidy then they would go without and the downward spiral starts again.

Second premiums vary across the states because insurance is based on locality pricing. Clearly one can see cost of labor and the way doctors practice varies. So a policy in Boise costs less than in Portland which costs less than in San Francisco. Competition cannot eliminate those differences.

Third, what kind of policy are we talking about. There is annual deductibles, co-pays, co-insurance, medication coverage, upper limits per life of the policy to name a few. People being people always want something better than the other guy. Be it a luxury car or a gold plated policy. Large companies have coverage that can be minimal or spectacular such as Oracle, Google and the like. The person not so lucky is left out in the open exposed and needs to buy. Being a small pool one can already figure out what happens when there is a small pool. The sick can't afford gold plated as they don't work for Google and when they go look at a lower cost high deductible plan the price will surprise them. Why? All the sick are there.

Now back in the 50's and 60's most people didn't have health insurance at the time. Soon companies began giving it to their employees. Yet before then you would pay out of pocket for your doctor's visit. Hate to tell you all buy there is one huge difference between 1966 and 2016. Sure a change in medical technology but not it.

Simply put it is the current condition of Americans versus their condition in 1966. The culprits being obesity, diabetes and hypertension. All three being inter-related. I rarely saw any adult overweight in 1966. Today, I rarely see many adults at their ideal weight kids included now. You pay the price for the choices you make and the diet you choose. My choice was to remain my same weight as in 1974 when 21. By 2020 it is expected that 53% of adult Americans will be diabetic or pre-diabetic. That is an absolutely stunning number and the costs over a lifetime equally stunning. Given that health insurance is only going to go up and up.

 

The only things Trump wants to keep in the affordable care act is:

1. allowing a person 26 or younger to remain on the parents policy which is consistent with a college person's needs

2. continue to mandate that pre-existing conditions are covered.

I agree with these.

 

1. Sure IDK about the term "allowing" it's really up to the insurance companies, government shouldn't have anything to do with that.

2. Not possible without the other aspects of Obummercare. The federal government can't mandate that insurance companies have to cover everyone without charging someone A LOT of money. They either have to charge the insured with the condition A LOT which of course they can't afford and they'd be happy to do law or not. Or they have to charge the healthy A LOT which you aren't going to sign up for without being forced to.


IMO the answer here is to only have ONE regulation, that health care providers MUST charge everyone the same fee. From there let the market take over.

 

That is called community pricing. See above. After the first year, assuming the insurance company didn't go out of business, the second year premiums will be far higher. Company is not going to take a loss again and if they lost the first year they are also going to make that up. It also doesn't take into account regional costs of living.

Problem is that there are far too many variables. In fact each family is a variable unto itself. Price too high to cover your costs and some drop off cause the remaining to pay for the pot. Price too low and the insurer has solvency issues and the increased second year premiums cause people decide not to renew. Health care is not your simple supply and demand and it is very inelastic.

 

No, no it's not, not what I'm talking about anyway. Simply outlaw provider discounts. Outside of that whatever they want to charge is fine, as long as they charge the biggest insurance company, the government, and Joe Blow walking in with cash the same amount.

FWIW this is my major complaint, I'm Joe Blow with cash. I need stitches for example I'm going to get a bill for IDK maybe $2000 bucks. A price I can't shop up front, am not quoted, and have no say in. Worst of all it's not at all close to the actual cost. They have to charge me so much in order to maintain a cost relationship with the insurance companies and government who they have to give discounts to. Now I have to fight with them just to get a reasonable bill.

This is true IF people are still using insurance to pay for routine stuff, Check ups, prescriptions, stuff like that. That's not insurance, it's a very unequitable and inefficient payment plan.

I'm no fan of the insurance industry, most of all for things like this, if that puts that aspect of the industry out of business then good.

It should be, and it can be, the only reason it isn't is government influence.

 

which is exactly why obumpercare failed.

i needed an xray on my knee.
hospital charged me $300 cash(actually paid by credit card) for three pictures, and emergency room visit.
if it was an insurance paid visit, it would have been almost $6500

 

Medical / dental insurance absolutely should pay for preventative medical visits such as routine checks, physicals and the prescription drugs that prevent or deal with things like heart disease, etc. It's far cheaper to deal with preventative measures than the actual outcome for not getting out in front of an issue.

 

If that is the coverage choice YOU make sure. But don't force me to pay a company to run a bureaucracy just so that I can argue with them to pay my bills with my money.

 

Absolutely but the point that I'm making is more about the people who can't come up with the money for a medical / dental exam, prescription meds, etc. There are people who are making hard choices in this world whether or not to buy food or meds or gas or what have you.

The site is loaded with people who can afford $70K trucks, nice homes and such and sometimes people get caught up in their own little worlds and forget that not everyone is as fortunate as many of us here. God has blessed me for sure.

 

Yes and I am one of those people. Don't assume that just cause I'm not looking for a handout that I'm well off.

Things like "medical / dental exam, prescription meds, etc." do not have to be as expensive as they are. It should be quite easy for someone like myself who has a decent job, is relatively healthy, and has a few brain cells to rub together to pay for those things myself and save money doing so. Insurance in all forms is nothing more then a middle man between you and your doctors and pharmacists. Cutting out the middle man SHOULD save money. Sadly due to idiotic regulations, tax laws, and the domination of the insurance industry because of it, it's become VERY hard to do.

A very large portion of the cost of those items is two things caused by regulation. First paying the overhead created by the bureaucracy of regulations and insurance companies. In every dental office, medical office, and pharmacy it's likely that around a third too half of the overhead costs are simply to satisfy government and insurance. Second is provider discounts, neither government nor insurance companies pay what a provider charges. They require a discount or they don't get paid. So the industry for years has been in an internal battle between rates for services and amounts of discounts. This has caused all providers to raise rates so they can afford the discount. BUT if your the poor sucker that doesn't have the insurance company blackmailing the providers for you, you get f'd.

And yes there are poor people making choices between rent, good food, and medical costs. Yet somehow they often can afford cable, a smart phone, pot, and a pack a day habit. But that's life, we can't regulate our way out of the harsh realities of life. We can only regulate our way into forcing others to pay for it which is wrong on every level.

EDIT...
Prescriptions are a particular pet peeve and issue for me. For me the large cost of medications is not so much the medication itself. It's the cost of the doctor to get the damn prescription in the first place and the constant cost of getting it renewed. There are A LOT of medications that one, shouldn't require a prescription or two, should only take a few minutes with a pharmacist to get. This is of course just the tip, a lot of over the counter meds are MUCH worse for you then the prescription version so to speak. And worse of all the one med that should be the hardest to get is one of the easiest, antibiotics. Historians will look back on us with disdain for how we have over used antibiotics.

Ohh and f'n ephedra, there is no f'n reason for it to be as regulated as it is!!

 

While I'm at it, opiate/narcotic regulation is killing thousands. The medical industry gets thousands of people using narcotic pain relievers, this is mostly ok. But then they f'n cut them off, that stuff is wicked addictive and they expect everyone to just go cold turkey with no support. So what do they do, they go to the street for heroine. Street drugs are impossible to dose right, there's no way to measure, no consistency, and boom your now either more hooked or overdosed. The answer to all of this is simple, de-regulate narcotics, almost nobody wants to be hooked on narcotics. All they need is available cost effective drugs with good dosage control.