General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow many of the 20+ million?
I keep hearing that the 20+ million who will lose coverage will be people who "choose" to not have health insurance. I'm really curious how many of that 20+ million will actually be "choosing" and how many will be "losing". I have no doubt that there will be single digit millions who decide to forgo the insurance because they want to save the money for other things. I'm dubious that anything close to a majority will be as such.
kentuck
(111,110 posts)...that many of the estimated 15 million next year would be those that "choose" to drop out of Obamacare mandate.
Also, many of those "young" people have already chosen to pay the "fine" rather than enroll in Obamacare.
still_one
(92,366 posts)zipplewrath
(16,646 posts)I also don't know how the CBO "counts" who "loses" coverage. Since there are several million people who've already chosen to pay the penalty instead of having insurance, do they get "counted" in the number that will "lose it". Because my perception is more like yours. The 20+ million will be PREDOMINATELY people who are pushed off of medicaid and can't begin to afford an individual plan.
still_one
(92,366 posts)B2G
(9,766 posts)I don't have any idea how they can even guess at the number who would drop coverage though.
"CBO and JCT estimate that, in 2018, 15 million more people would be uninsured under this legislation than under current lawprimarily because the penalty for not having insurance would be eliminated."
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52849
NightWatcher
(39,343 posts)Go to the doctor as much as they'd like.
Take the tests and monthly blood work he'd like.
Take the hundreds of dollars of medicine I've been prescribed.
It's not exactly a choice if you don't have the cash to cover it.
I have a preexisting condition (several actually) and have been off of disability for about two years now. When you lose disability you also lose the Medicare that comes with it.
I guess I'm also "choosing" to not get a job that makes me six figures a year as well. I work when I can and so far it's been about the same as disability provided.
It takes a lot of balls to call what I do choosing.
Like you said, it's not choosing but losing!
Tanuki
(14,920 posts)...."On page 27 of the report, CBO offers an illustrative example. Imagine, they say, a person who makes 75 percent of the poverty line and is currently on Medicaid. The deductible would be more than half their annual income. They would be paying for health insurance that they would destroy them financially if they tried to use it.
So here is what the CBO is saying: The BCRAs subsidies are too small to make the silver plans affordable for low-income people, and the plans it is trying to make affordable the ones that cover 58 percent of expected costs carry such high deductibles that low-income Americans wont buy them because they wont be able to afford to use them.
This, then, is what the BRCA actually does: It makes health insurance unaffordable for poor people in order to finance a massive tax cut for rich people.
........
The increase in uninsurance under the BCRA would be disproportionately larger among older people with lower incomeparticularly people between 50 and 64 years old with income of less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level. A lot of the people in that demographic are Republican voters.
Congressional Republicans are leaning hard on the idea that their plan brings down premiums, but it actually doesnt. Under this legislation, the net premium for a plan with an actuarial value of 58 percent would be smaller for younger people and larger for older people, but the net premium for a plan with an actuarial value of 70 percent would be larger for people of any age, CBO says. In other words, premiums on decent insurance are higher for everyone, and premiums on high-deductible plans are a bit lower for the young at the cost of making them higher for the old."
B2G
(9,766 posts)As posted up thread.
"CBO and JCT estimate that, in 2018, 15 million more people would be uninsured under this legislation than under current lawprimarily because the penalty for not having insurance would be eliminated."
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52849
zipplewrath
(16,646 posts)This suggests they could somehow afford to continue keeping it.
B2G
(9,766 posts)I'm just pointing out they clearly state that the majority of those losing coverage will be to the elimination of the mandate. For whatever reason.