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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (46348)	10/12/2010 6:20:02 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

I didn't say "per capita", I said "the total costs". Real cost per person covered - Could go up or down with the coverage of more people. All else being equal there would be some reason to think they might go down (mainly because less uncovered people would tend to mean less costs from uncovered people being passed on). But all else is not equal here. Requirements about who to cover (pre-existing conditions), what to cover (requirements to cover an expanding list of conditions and situations), and how to cover them (now annual or life time deductible, limits on out of pocket / uncovered costs, etc.) would tend to push up the price. Real cost per capita (considering all Americans, whether or not they are currently covered), would probably go up, because of the reasons mentioned above, and also because more covered people creates more demand for medical services, and more cost insulation for those services. Total (real) costs, would tend to go up because of the reasons laid out for the other two, plus population growth. Total (nominal) costs, would tend to go up for all those reasons plus inflation.