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>I like obamacare, but something happened as part of obamacare that has CLEARLY driven up costs. Is it the lack of limits (ie, $10M in coverage during last week
by HideousKojima 5y ago
>I like obamacare, but something happened as part of obamacare that has CLEARLY driven up costs. Is it the lack of limits (ie, $10M in coverage during last weeks of life?) Is it some sort of other mandate?
That's an easy one, Obamacare mandated that insurance companies couldn't charge more than X times as much for their most expensive plans vs. their cheapest plans, The people pushing it were either tremendously ignorant or outright lying and claimed that this would make plans cheaper, while critics rightly predicted that instead of making the most expensive plans cheaper they would make their cheapest plans more expensive.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y agoCan't it be both? I'd certainly expect both things to happen, rather than one or the other.
- HideousKojima 5y agoWhen you've just had the government mandate that everyone in the country has to buy at least the lowest tier of your product, why would you take any losses at the top when people are forced to pay just about any price at the bottom?
- pandaman 5y agoThis and the cap on the profit margin[1]. The logic in this case is even more bizarre. A regular company can increase its profit either by raising prices or by reducing costs so it strives to do both. An health insurance firm can only do the former. If an insurance firm were to reduce its costs then it would have been forced to reduce the price to remain within the profit margin. But if it increased them instead then it could raise price and get more money in the same profit margin. [1] https://www.cms.gov/CCIIO/Programs-and-Initiatives/Health-Insurance-Market-Reforms/Medical-Loss-Ratio https://www.cms.gov/CCIIO/Programs-and-Initiatives/Health-In...