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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (240874)	12/31/2013 1:51:05 PM
From: Bread Upon The Water	Respond to of 541621

The only way these programs actually work is if the vast majority of people participate in them, healthy or not. If given the choice of opting out, many healthy people who that they can just opt in if they get sick or require hospitalization for some reason will opt out until they have the need. Until that need arises, they are paying for someone else's misfortune. Agree. My point being that the affordable care act, at least for the first 3-4 years, offers people the choice to opt out of it by having/keeping the fine low, and IMHO this threatens the workability of the system if enough people choose to do this. This is unlike the mandatory participation required in the Medicare programs. John made a point of trying to say there was broad universal support for Medicare/SSI/Medicaid programs and everyone participated in them and by inference that this was analogous to the AFCA system.. I countered by saying people had to participate in Medicare/medicaid/ and SSI thru the withholding mechanism and had no practical way to opt out of them, and also it's never been put to the test as to what people would do if given the chance to opt out of these programs, and so these programs are not analogous to the AFCA which does give people a chance to opt out--the results of these decisions we will soon see (I'm not saying a majority of people will choose that course of action--mainly the "losers' in the system will consider it.) So citing of participation in Medicare et al is not apples to apples to the AFCA. Agree with your take on our historical development of the present health care system.