4 ms·
Why is there an enrollment period at all? Why can't you enroll any time during the year? This limitation makes no sense.
by RandomInteger4 9y ago
Why is there an enrollment period at all? Why can't you enroll any time during the year? This limitation makes no sense.
- arcticfox 9y agoIt prevents people from waiting to enroll until they're sick.
- mikeyouse 9y agoSame reason that they don't want to cover pre-existing conditions. If you're young and healthy, you could forego insurance entirely until you got sick and then sign up. Or you could sign up for the cheapest plan and then flip to the most generous if you found out that you were pregnant.
- mikeash 9y agoIt's one of the things that attempts to ensure that people don't forego insurance while healthy and only buy it once they get sick. You have to prevent that behavior if you want to also allow sick people to sign up without massive expense.
- dawnerd 9y agoOr we just avoid this whole mess and go universal healthcare and stop treating health as a luxury.
- RandVal30142 9y agoBut that would massacre the thousands of middlemen companies making a profit off the inefficiencies of this current govt-subsidizies-private-industry system.
- leifaffles 9y agoOr we just avoid this whole mess and create a free market in health care.
- maxerickson 9y agoI'd like to see people that advocate for this do it in a straightforward way and start by advocating for the repeal of EMTALA. It doesn't make any sense to legally require stabilizing care and then do nothing to get people to participate on the pay side.
- mikeash 9y agoIt really is telling that there is essentially zero advocacy for repealing EMTALA.
- mikeash 9y agoUnfortunately that doesn’t fix the mess of sick people dying of easily treated diseases because they don’t have enough money.
- leifaffles 9y agoDo you have any examples? Which people, which diseases, and who denied them care?
- mikeash 9y agoGoogle “death due to lack of health insurance” for numerous examples. If you want some specific ones here, consider a diabetic who can’t afford insulin, or someone with cancer who can’t pay for treatment. If we’re talking about a true free market where ERs can turn people away, then it could be something simple like having a heart attack while you’re out and forgot your insurance card at home, or being mugged, beaten, and left for dead.
- dawnerd 9y agoExactly. Free market would turn it into care only for the wealthy while the poor die at home.
- RandomInteger4 9y agoSounds more like an argument for why we should move to single payer, because then the idea of random expenses from sick people signing up goes away, as we'll all have health coverage anyways.
- maxerickson 9y agoThere are plenty of eligible people that don't sign up for Medicaid. Single payer won't just hand wave away administrative problems.
- RandomInteger4 9y agoNumerous people eligible for medicaid don't sign up because they try to and get turned away with some bullshit excuse about not filing the paperwork properly or whatever, either due to innocent bureaucratic bullshit or because the state is explicitly hostile towards government assistance. With single payer, people wouldn't have to sign up; they would be signed up and have to opt out of they so chose. That's how it should work and it's not hand-wavy in the least.
- mikeash 9y agoI agree, but with the system as it stands now, that’s why this particular aspect exists.