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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (15836)	3/31/2010 6:43:37 PM
From: Alighieri	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Mandates for buying coverage, might decrease costs per person covered, but will likely increase the total cost. Wow...do you realize what an amazing statement you made there? Wow...we are adding 30M people to the insured pool and the total cost will go up. What a reveling conclusion...well, maybe it's because people are being cared for that were not before. BUT, the per capita cost might go down. Maybe it's because some of these people will actually have to pay for some of the care they were previously not paying for? Two good things in one bill. Al

To: TimF who wrote (15836)	3/31/2010 8:06:49 PM
From: RetiredNow	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Sure. However, have you seen companies like AT&T and Boeing and other recently announce one time tax charges due to the health care bill? I'm sure you have. This is part of the government cost savings that come with the bill. Those one time charges they are taking are a result of the loss of a tax deduction for government subsidies of drug plans for their retirees. That is one of the provisions that is paying for the bill. There are other tax increase provisions that pay for the bill as well, including higher taxes on folks making more than $250K and on dividends. So the increased costs that come from subsidies for the uninsured and for banning pre-existing conditions and the rest are paid for through increased taxes on businesses and families. The bending of the cost curve downwards will come through cuts to Medicare payments and other things. But as I said before, it won't reduce premiums. I don't think anyone has a plan out there to reduce premiums. The best we can hope for is to keep cost increases down to the level of inflation. That would be a reasonable goal.