Currently Online 
areason said:
No mate, when people purposely put their health at risk because they are selfish you make them pay the consequences of their actions instead of fucking up everyone else in the country. If you stop forcing insurance companies of providing insurance to people with conditions, then prices across the board will fall. Also it will make people more aware of their health issues and it will make them work hard in order to be healthy (or else their package will be expensive). The result is a huge decrease in prices and healthy people. |
What conditions though? Previously rape, domestic violence, pregnancy, acne, asthma were all conditions that could get you rejected.
Before ACA
These preexisting conditions include:
AIDS/HIV, lupus, alcohol abuse/drug abuse with recent treatment, severe mental disorders such as bipolar disorder or an eating disorder, Alzheimer's/dementia, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia and other inflammatory joint disease, muscular dystrophy, cancer, severe obesity, cerebral palsy, organ transplant, congestive heart failure, paraplegia, coronary artery/heart disease, bypass surgery, paralysis, Crohn's disease/ulcerative colitis, Parkinson's disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease/emphysema, pending surgery or hospitalization, diabetes mellitus, pneumocystis pneumonia, epilepsy, pregnancy or expectant parent, hemophilia, sleep apnea, hepatitis C, stroke, kidney disease, renal failure, transsexualism.
Other conditions that could make it harder to purchase a health insurance plan, according to KFF:
Acne, allergies, anxiety, asthma, basal cell skin cancer (a type of skin cancer that doesn't tend to spread), depression, ear infections, fractures, high cholesterol, hypertension, incontinence, joint injuries, kidney stones, menstrual irregularities, migraine headaches, being overweight, restless leg syndrome, tonsillitis, urinary tract infections, varicose veins, and vertigo.
Some insurance plans before the ACA also counted rape and domestic violence as preexisting conditions.
There's also talk that it could include sports injuries and workplace accidents.
Ofcourse insurance costs go down when you only insure healthy people.
Before ACA
We estimate that 27% of adult Americans under the age of 65 have health conditions that would likely leave them uninsurable if they applied for individual market coverage under pre-ACA underwriting practices that existed in nearly all states.
it's a nice popular belief that's it all those purposefully fat americans and chain smokers driving up the prices.
Btw how much money do you want to spend on, and how intrusive do you want it to be, to check if people lead a healthy lifestyle? Mandatory fitbits that phone your daily activity home?
My car insurance send us a tracking device to analyze our driving behaviour to lower insurance costs. With the idea that it would make people better drivers if they have instant feedback. Actually due to the way it measures it made me a worse driver for the duration (It penalizes braking, better to speed up for a yellow light than stop...) and actually punishes you for preventing accidents. Is that what you want for health insurance?
Or mandatory yearly doctor checkups that add to the strain on the healthcare system? I'm pretty healthy and haven't visited the doctor in 15 years, why burden doctors with checking everyone all the time. (I am visiting a chiropractor weekly for a pre-existing rsi related neck condition which isn't covered here. I can afford it, so no problem, for me...)
It might be a better solution to train more medical professionals. Bigger suply of doctors, salaries can go down. And work on competition in providing medical equipment. Why is that and medicine so expensive?
The free market can do good things. Not for my wife though. She has a rare condition which leaves her with chronic headaches 24/7. It's so rare, there's no money in researching it... (There's one npo working on it, yet they still site a Greek clinical trial from 2007 that needs to be repeated...)
