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<p>I agree with you here, too, but given the requirements of the ACA, insurance companies will have no choice but to raise rates and hammer everyone to be healthier. It is not a surprise nor should it be to anyone.</p>
<p>This whole discussion is really not about health care costs…IT IS ABOUT HEALTH CARE PROVIDER PROFITS!</p>
<p>I think the affordable care act actually limits the percentage of profits insurers can make? No?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/uploads/careact.pdf[/url]”>http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/uploads/careact.pdf</a></p>
<p>Okay, I see what’s going on here. There is an 80/20 rule. Insurers have to spend 80% of your fees on either health care or improvement to health care. So, these rules are “improvement to your health care” as are their helpers. </p>
<p>I get it.</p>
<p>“Private employment by definition does not offer the “freedoms” we are entitled to from the government.”</p>
<p>We aren’t free. The freedom stuff is a bunch of bs.</p>
<p>A married couple that are great friends of mine are really big supporters of individual rights. “This is the greatest country. Individual freedom is written in the Declaration of Independence. We are free”. </p>
<p>Uhhhhhh…no.
The man wants to retire. He is 65 this year. And his wife had cancer. The treatment was 1 million bucks. (Society paid for most of this by the way). He can’t retire because his wife is not insurable. He is not free to retire. He is a wage slave. Nice wages, but still… He is a wage slave. He needs that insurance. He has to work. People that have to work aren’t free. Sorry.</p>
<p>So hypothetically speaking (humor me here), what would be the next step for the people who either do what is required by the employer and still don’t get to healthy numbers or the people who pay the fee?</p>
<p>I think we kill them . Save us some money and cure the unemployment problem.</p>
<p>I think your friend will be able to retire next year, though. I think nobody will be able to be uninsurable after that.</p>
<p>Destark,
No offense but that was a bizarre post. People who have to work aren’t “free?” So only independently wealthy people are free? I think most human beings actually want to work and be a productive member of society. Here they have the freedom to choose what they do.</p>
<p>Many people will be unable to afford health care next year.</p>
<p>[Unaffordable</a> Cost Seen for Some Under Affordable Care Act - Bloomberg](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>zooser - I think it depends on the employer (at least from what I’ve seen). Some employers will pay for improvement (“Hey, you need to lose 30 pounds but at least you lost five!”) Others just keep increasing the price differential on your insurance premiums if you fail to make the mark.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s scary. But as others have said, that’s what happens when insurance is tied to employment.</p>
<p>Bay, if we are honest, nobody is free. Yes. The independently wealthy are more free unless they are prisoners in their own minds.</p>
<p>Wait. So there will still be people who can’t afford health insurance?</p>
<p>Wow. After all this.</p>
<p>Do most smokers who quit go back to smoking? That’s not true from my personal experience. All the smokers I’ve known have quit cold turkey, always after a health scare, either a cancer scare or a heart attack, and none have gone back. </p>
<p>However, except for a person who had a gastric bypass procedure, weight does come back. </p>
<p>I think it’s much easier to give up one thing, like cigarettes than to lose weight. If we could all lost weight by just giving up one food item, say ice cream, weight loss would be easy.</p>
<p>Sax, I love the link, but it is unclear to me what Megan’s costs are going to be. The rest of the link is good.</p>
<p>Bay,</p>
<p>as much as I disagree with dstark on so many issues, I do get what he is saying. </p>
<p>“There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences”. P.J. O’Rourke.</p>
<p>So in the essence no one can be just free, you also have to be responsible for the choices you make.</p>
<p>Longer lived people don’t necessarily spend more time in a hospital. My dad is Nearly 90 and only been to a hospital once and didn’t even remain overnite. His uncle passed away at 107+ in his own home, so dad has a ways to go. Dad is far healthier than his older sister who has many health conditions and lots of Rx. </p>
<p>Mom was hospitalized only to give birth to each child and once overnite for observation after she was rear ended and fractured her sternum when the airbag deployed. She’s mid-80s. Both my folks only see the doc annually or for a rare cold. This is less often than H and I. They also take few to no meds. </p>
<p>I don’t have any stats showing whether long-lived folks spend less time in hospitals but seeing what nasty infections you can pick up there like MSRA, would suspect it to true. </p>
<p>There was a local news story the other day about homelessness and how it prematurely rapidly ages people. That makes sense to me–food and shelter insecurity, constant stress, very limited access to healthcare.</p>
<p>Regarding privacy concerns, I think that having all medical records online, linked, with your Social Security number on them, will be the death of any sort of medical privacy. Government bureaucrats will monitor, hackers will hack. There will be no way to be off the grid.</p>
<p>I think that the long-term success rates for smoking cessation are on the order of 15-35% - but I don’t recall if that is with or without pharmaceuticals like Chantix. </p>
<p>People who quit smoking after a health scare do have higher success rates, but that’s a different population than the general employee population…</p>
<p>[50-Somethings</a> Have Their Own Health-Care Crisis](<a href=“http://www.cnbc.com/id/100577637?__source=xfinity|mod&par=xfinity]50-Somethings”>http://www.cnbc.com/id/100577637?__source=xfinity|mod&par=xfinity)</p>
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<p>People have their own definitions of what being “free” is. Unless you live alone in a remote cave, you will always have societal obligations in our world. Even that hermit will have to find food so from that perspective he is still not completely “free,” but who really wants that kind of freedom anyway?</p>