Well the official title is The Affordable Care Act not "Obama-care", I think that name will go away, the republicans leading up to the elections were using the term "Obama-Care" so they could link the President to the negative emotions Fox news was creating. Although let me tell you the insurance industry is in love with the current law, the only thing they dont like is the elimination of the "per-existing condition" clause but they are writing most of these individual health care plans to just not cover expensive stuff. In Michigan the cheapest 4 plans dont provide coverage for most forms of cancer, or auto immune disorders, they only cover traumatic injury.
But which speaking as someone who lives in a state with mandatory auto insurance and some of the highest auto insurance rates in the country I can tell you that requiring the purchase of a product from a for profit corporation will never reduce the price, it only increases profits and does not help the consumer. We pay $37 less for "partial" coverage/no-fault insurance in Michigan compared to what we paid for Full coverage in Alaska.
I am all for Universal health care, and the reduction of costs that everyone paying for and benefiting from true health care will be. But the current law doesnt do that.
The reason a Tylenol in a US hospital costs $400 isnt because you have to pay for all the uninsured people to get free Tylenol its because to give you that Tylenol, you have to give a kickback to the doctor, a kickback to the pharmacist, a kickback to the retail sales rep, profit to the retail company, a kick back to the wholesale sales rep, profit to the wholesaler, a kickback to the manufacturer sales rep, and a profit to the manufacturer, in addition to part of that pills cost going to pay for the nurse, Nursing Assistant, the janitor, the housekeeper, the gardener...and of course, most hospitals in this country are for profit corporations themselves, and because some people are uninsured.
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to oversimplify a situation that recently happened in Michigan over universal auto insurance.
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Insurance companies were complaining that Michigan has a law of "no cap on medical pay outs" which means that if you are in a car accident, and you require a billion dollars in treatment and care they have to pay that, for life. The insurers wanted it to be set to what some states have which is a million dollar maximum so if you require a billion dollars of care, once you reach that million dollar cap its all on you, so you can either declare bankruptcy or die, your choice. The insurance companies said that these "large pay out cases" were destroying their company and they were finding it very hard to operate in Michigan because of those extreme injury cases. Our state congress said "we will put a one million dollar cap on pay outs, but we will also remove the law that everyone must purchase auto insurance to register a car" and the insurance companies said "no thanks, keep it the way it is we will manage"
Which tells you that even with the prospect of paying millions of dollars because of one accident, it is still more profitable to force everyone to pay.
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[–]Graham_LRR
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