I know that I am possibly opening up a can of ugly worms. I hope that in spite of differing opinions, that this thread can remain friendly and a simple exchange of ideas and opinions.
As a beginning nursing student, I am being told that there is this looming nursing shortage and that there is great job security. A little research on my own shows me that in my particular state, there definitely is a decent population of still practicing nurses who are 60 years and older who will be retiring soon, which would open up the way for us who are just getting started. More and more emphasis is also being put on the new healthcare law and how it will open the doors for more people to access medical care which again will increase the need for staffing.
I grew up in a country with a socialistic government, which also includes healthcare for everyone. I have seen how the hospitals are understaffed, and you are lucky if you get to spend 5 minutes with your physician, and you are not in control over which healthcare facility you can go to. I know that the new bill isn't necessarily socialistic, but there are socialistic principles in it.
As a nursing student, I can't help but wonder how this is going to affect my future as a nurse. I know that nurses talk among themselves and things trickle down from above onto the floors. Nothing is going to keep me from becoming a nurse. I am not in it for the money, but rather I feel somehow "called." However, I believe that it's good to be prepared for times ahead so that I can adjust accordingly.
How do you think that Obamacare is going to affect how care is delivered?
By the way, this is NOT a homework assignment of any kind. I am merely looking for for a friendly exchange of ideas and opinions.
I would think the most obvious reason health insurance costs more than auto and home insurance is that insurance cost is directly related to the costs it is covering. We spend not twice as much, not three times as much fixing people as we do fixing cars, but 23,000 times as much. It makes you wonder why we spend so much on car insurance, not the other way around.
If having a functioning car was comparable to having a functioning body then the dynamics of both types of insurance would be comparable, but it's not. If I show up at a body shop with a mangled car, and cannot present any evidence I will be able to pay the bill, the shop is under absolutely no obligation to fix my car. If I show up at an ER with a mangled body, the ER is legally required to fix me regardless of the cost and regardless of my potential ability to pay the bill.
In order for true market forces to work, a product has to be subject to supply and demand, and preferable should be something we can do without with if the market can't provide it at a fair price. Healthcare doesn't work that way, for our most expensive care, you can't shop around, although we do at least have insurance companies that do that for us. Nobody cares if a teenager gets priced out of driving a ferrari, we hold a different view on someone being priced out of cancer treatment.
Sounds like you are saying that healthcare insurance is nothing like home or car insurance, and that a true healthcare market doesn't really exist.
I agree.
However, if our insurance was ONLY for our most expensive care for which, like you said, we can't really shop around for (although the cancer care example you used I would disagree that we couldn't shop around for that), healthcare insurance and healthcare services would be much more affordable.
This has been the week to kill the Republican myth that Obamacare isn't really getting the uninsured covered, that the law is failing in its primary mission. So much for that.
There was the Urban Institute: "Number of Uninsured Adults Continues to Fall under the ACA: Down by 8.0 Million in June 2014"
The uninsured rate for people ages 19 to 64 declined from 20 percent in the July-to-September 2013 period to 15 percent in the April-to-June 2014 period. An estimated 9.5 million fewer adults were uninsured.
The uninsured rate in the U.S. fell 2.2 percentage points to 13.4% in the second quarter of 2014. This is the lowest quarterly average recorded since Gallup and Healthways began tracking the percentage of uninsured Americans in 2008.
Using a survey fielded by the RAND American Life Panel, we estimate a net gain of 9.3 million in the number of American adults with health insurance coverage from September 2013 to mid-March 2014. […] [T]he survey estimates that the share of uninsured American adults has dropped over the measured period from 20.5 percent to 15.8 percent.
Add to that last month's finding by the Kaiser Family Foundation that 57 percent of the people with Obamacare had previously been uninsured.
Obamacare is fatally flawed by design. It is financially unsupportable, primarily because the "young immortals" who would pay premiums but not financially drain the system, are simply NOT signing up, BECAUSE they believe they are young and immortal, and simply don't need it.
Also, the TRUTH does NOT become "myths and lies" just because you call it that.
Obamacare is fatally flawed by design. It is financially unsupportable, primarily because the "young immortals" who would pay premiums but not financially drain the system, are simply NOT signing up, BECAUSE they believe they are young and immortal, and simply don't need it.
Also, the TRUTH does NOT become "myths and lies" just because you call it that.
I thought the ACA was supposedly unconstitutional because it forced people to buy insurance, how can it both force people to buy insurance and also be fatally flawed because it doesn't?
It DOES "force" people to have insurance, or pay a penalty. Unless you are in one of the many groups which have been granted (temporary) exemptions from the penalty.
But the penalty right now is minimal - so minimal in fact, that it is being ignored, or simply accepted because the penalty costs less than the insurance.
Another flaw is that even if implemented, it would flood the market with tens of millions of new customers, with no corresponding increase in the supplier base. Supply and demand dictates increased waiting times for scarce resources.
It DOES "force" people to have insurance, or pay a penalty. Unless you are in one of the many groups which have been granted (temporary) exemptions from the penalty.
But the penalty right now is minimal - so minimal in fact, that it is being ignored, or simply accepted because the penalty costs less than the insurance.
I'd agree with you that the ACA is "fatally flawed" being that it relies on our already existing system which attempts (poorly) to reverse engineer a system that's designed to exclude people into a system that covers everyone.
But as you correctly point out, the ACA doesn't actually force people to buy health insurance, or at least it doesn't do a very good job of it, and that it would probably work better if it actually did force everyone to take part.
I think maybe you misunderstand how our current system works however. The price insurers charge isn't based on the assumption that everyone will pay into the system, it's based on the assumption that many people, particularly young people, won't actually sign up, so it doesn't make it any less sustainable when they don't. What it does do is make it more expensive for those who do sign up, which is potentially unsustainable but not in the way you imply.
Another flaw is that even if implemented, it would flood the market with tens of millions of new customers, with no corresponding increase in the supplier base. Supply and demand dictates increased waiting times for scarce resources.
Are you under the assumption that those who are now obtaining health insurance, who didn't have it before, never got sick before Obamacare? They've always gotten sick and they've always ended up in our hospitals, they only difference is now they're covered.
Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
Well, since we're being political:
Obamacare is fatally flawed by design. It is financially unsupportable, primarily because the "young immortals" who would pay premiums but not financially drain the system, are simply NOT signing up, BECAUSE they believe they are young and immortal, and simply don't need it.
Also, the TRUTH does NOT become "myths and lies" just because you call it that.
It is important to remember that the concept of the ACA is a conservative approach to the problem. It was born in The Heritage Foundation and trialed by a Republican governor on a state level.
The "liberal" approach would be to consider single payer as a response to the problems in our unsustainable health care system.
"It is important to remember that the concept of the ACA is a conservative approach to the problem. It was born in The Heritage Foundation and trialed by a Republican governor on a state level."
I'm sorry, but none of this is true.
You are repeating a overused talking point that claims that Obamacare is simply a national version of Massachusetts plan developed during the tenure of then-governor Mitt Romney - often referred to as Romneycare.
Obamacare is NOT Romneycare writ large, and it is CERTAINLY not conservative. Although to be fair, it is not as liberal an approach as government single-payer. Those in power realized that the country would balk at government single-payer. So Obamacare's principal value is as a vehicle to single-payer.
Once Obamacare destroys the private insurance sector, and then financially collapses as designed, the public will clamor for government to implement single-payer. IOW, the public will want the government to solve a problem that the government created in the first place.
Single-payer may or may not be a good idea on its own merits. Personally, I think SOME form of it will be someday adopted, since it DOES have some merits, and other countries have implemented forms of it with varying success.
But using Obamacare as a back-door way of getting there is dishonest.
Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
"It is important to remember that the concept of the ACA is a conservative approach to the problem. It was born in The Heritage Foundation and trialed by a Republican governor on a state level."
I'm sorry, but none of this is true.
You are repeating a overused talking point that claims that Obamacare is simply a national version of Massachusetts plan developed during the tenure of then-governor Mitt Romney - often referred to as Romneycare.
Obamacare is NOT Romneycare writ large, and it is CERTAINLY not conservative. Although to be fair, it is not as liberal an approach as government single-payer. Those in power realized that the country would balk at government single-payer. So Obamacare's principal value is as a vehicle to single-payer.
Once Obamacare destroys the private insurance sector, and then financially collapses as designed, the public will clamor for government to implement single-payer. IOW, the public will want the government to solve a problem that the government created in the first place.
Single-payer may or may not be a good idea on its own merits. Personally, I think SOME form of it will be someday adopted, since it DOES have some merits, and other countries have implemented forms of it with varying success.
But using Obamacare as a back-door way of getting there is dishonest.
You are certainly allowed your own opinions about the ACA but not your own facts.
It may be a fear that the ACA is a backdoor attempt to achieve single payer but that is simply a conservative fear with little basis in reality. The ACA was an attempt to actually achieve some measure of reform to a system that was/is not sustainable without reform. The ACA was promoted as a way to discover bipartisan support given the conservative origins of the mandate concept. No one was prepared for the "all in" republican opposition to anything and everything related to the Obama presidency from day one. No liberal or progressive was apparently aware that the republican leadership of the Congress would be willing to harm the country and the citizens in order to damage the legacy of a president that they disapprove of.
SC_RNDude
533 Posts
Sounds like you are saying that healthcare insurance is nothing like home or car insurance, and that a true healthcare market doesn't really exist.
I agree.
However, if our insurance was ONLY for our most expensive care for which, like you said, we can't really shop around for (although the cancer care example you used I would disagree that we couldn't shop around for that), healthcare insurance and healthcare services would be much more affordable.