| will76 |
03-24-2010 05:50 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by kane
(Post 16975608)
I was wondering today about something and was unable to find the answer. In theory this new health care bill, if it eventually is fully enacted, would end a lot of unpaid medical bills at emergency rooms and urgent care centers. As it is now you can walk into an ER or urgent care center and they will treat you whether you have insurance or not. If you don't have insurance they will bill you. If you don't pay they will try to come after you, but eventually they will end up eating the cost and passing that cost onto other paying customers. In many of these situations the hospitals and urgent care centers are public facilities which means they rely heavily on tax money to run.
My question is how much money annually do these ER's and urgent care centers recoup from tax payers on behalf of unpaid medical bills?
In theory a lot of these non-payers will now have insurance so it should cut down on a lot of this. I'm just curious if anyone knows how much this total is.
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Here is what it comes down to. If people without insurance go to the ER and don't pay their bill, it likely ends up on the shoulders of tax payers to pay it. If the person gets insurance and still ends up in the ER for something major, the insurance company pays it. BUt insurance company can't print money, so the more people they allow in with pre existing conditions and that end up in the ER racking up costs, the more they need to charge everyone else who has insurance to make up for it. So, in theory if this causes tax payers to save some, it will likely cause the rest of us to pay more in insurance since the insurance company is paying it. So in that situation we all pay for it with higher insurance costs... The "pool is bigger" argument is retarded, yes it is bigger but if you let in a lot high risk people opposed to healthy people then even with a bigger pool the costs are going to go up.
There is the point that now that more people have insurance they wont go to the ER for a cold, or they will do more preventive check ups since their insurance will now cover it. While that will likely be true in some cases with some people, we will see over time if everyone takes advantage of this and a lot of illness are prevented by the people who now have insurance.
The bill is for 940 Billion. So there is still going to be costs that the people who earn over 200K a year will have to cover for this bill.
Quote:
3. As the new Health Care Reform Bill promises to benefit millions of poor American individuals, the rich and wealthy Americans get affected. Under this newHealth Care Reform Bill, there’s a 0.9% increase in Medicare payroll taxes for Americans who earn more than $200,000 annually individually and $250,000 for couples.
That amount will rise to a 3.8% tax if reconciliation passes. It will also apply to investment income, estates, and trusts.
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http://www.worldcorrespondents.com/n...plained/882049
why increase it 0.9% for just the people who make over 200K, why not increase medicare 0.5% for everyone ? |
