Universal Health Care Coverage

Finance Allah shmoop What is Obama care Well the technical

term Yeah it's the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Obama care is well just the affectionate nickname like Bubba

or Sparky or monkey buns Anyway the goal of this

act was to provide all Americans with health care insurance

and the intent a noble one Lots of people don't

have health insurance because they have like literally no money

or nobody will ensure them because they're oh so sick

or because well they're just daredevil arrogant thrill seekers who

never think that gravity will fight them So how did

our then president expect to be able to get this

done well enormous financial expense with an extremely high degree

of difficulty to pull off on a national scale Essentially

the plan was to meaningfully expand Medicaid which is the

insurance for the poor and the disabled Well instead of

covering most people for a relatively modest tax to the

poor it would offer Medicaid which while still not offered

to all people was expanded in many states well paid

for by a variety of taxes including higher taxes for

individuals in some corporations such as medical device manufacturers and

taxes on insurance plans It originally forced everyone to either

buy insurance individually have it provided by an employer or

else pay a penalty Now if you were a normal

hardworking healthy ish taxpayer it meant that your tax bill

instead of being eleven thousand two hundred fourteen dollars would

now be eleven thousand eight hundred fourteen dollars And a

lot of Americans were upset at having to take the

six hundred dollars that they had earmarked toe by Johnny

clothing and a new swing set next year and now

give it to the sick and or disabled masses Well

Obama care essentially change the rules for what is expected

from a health care insurance plan Doctors are not required

to treat you but your insurance was required to provide

a broad basket of benefit like any previous illness you

had or certain procedures you'd had done had to be

included in your health plan People had to purchase plans

that offered this package whether or not they needed the

full amount of insurance Fair not farewell Let's think about

this concept because a lot of people were and continue

to be really angry about Obama care and they're not

all idiots not like these people On the one hand

it makes sense that you should get care if you're

sick right This is in India This is in a

poor African country where the warlords drive Ferraris as their

population starves This isn't even an article where the rulers

barely give a fish to the ruled So the idea

of covering everyone and anyone who is ill is really

not a terrible thought The truth is that the added

cost of covering everyone was managed through subsidies by requiring

everyone have insurance or pay a fee and requiring broader

forms of insurance The generally healthy and young subsidized the

old and sick In addition subsidies for care or offered

for the indigent Obama care also created incentives for people

to just pay the penalty and avoid insurance altogether and

or not really care for themselves or worry about their

own health management because the government now mandated that coverage

regardless of an individual's health or lifestyle So let's have

that fourth Dona Who cares If obese people are ten

times more likely to get very expensive to treat diabetes

The government will cover the cost O And how do

you feel about that at Cole who's always riding his

motorcycle eighty miles an hour between cars on the freeway

with no helmet Yeah he crashes Doesn't die He costs

a million dollars of insurance or government money depending on

the type of coverage as to live in the hospital

for you know five months Taxpayers will have to spend

their money on that guy instead of offering computer science

courses to their entire district under the federal matching funds

for education that we're supposed to be there Well the

truth is our budgets are finite and expanding Medicaid wasn't

free We are a hugely indebted country with most of

our states in analogous ly bad financial shape So money

isn't free And when we pay for things they come

out of other things And Obama care basically made the

decision that the motorcycle guy can get coverage at similar

rates to the rest of us regardless of how much

risk he takes And yes he's the extreme case and

a lot of other less extreme and way more positive

cases were covered as well But if it was your

kid's computer science courses that were canceled to reallocate tax

dollars to that motorcycle ball Well you'd give pause right

Did Obama care really encourage people to care less than

they already did about their health Probably not But it

did create a kind of adverse selection in that the

worst health managers or least healthy people who were likely

the most expensive to treat would be encouraged to opt

in to Obama care and just keep on keeping on

with Joe Camel and the gang and not worry Be

happy As Obama care was rolled out it expanded coverage

dramatically so that it wasn't just for cataclysmic things like

lung cancer and diabetes And under ten broad categories healthcare

costs were codified and reapportioned So you had emergency services

like ambulances And then he had drugs covered basically an

expansion of Part D of Medicare mapped onto Medicaid Add

to this coverage maternity leave Then it also added in

the castle for allowing kids to stay on there parentsplans

until they were age twenty six Then an added premium

costs for old people that were essentially rent control That

is those costs Toe old people could not be more

than three times the cost for the same service to

young people and remember that market forces would dictate that

young people on a relative basis almost never get sick

when compared tto old people So the real market costs

were away more than three times like the rent control

was really inefficient And again these extra costs beyond what

the market would naturally dictate they should be came out

of the pockets of the hardworking money earning taxpayers through

Medicaid expansion or subsidies for providing insurance And plus while

it raised is the cost of insurance for healthy people

who have always had coverage because they had to subsidize

the care of the sick And then there was the

smoker provisioned Yeah remember Obama smoked So uh this lit

a fire under his opponent's part of Obamacare also capped

the cost to smokers who used to pay higher rates

for their insurance It capped cost two smokers such that

they couldn't be charged more than one point five times

the normal rates of non smokers even if they were

ten times more Likely is a group tohave very expensive

to treat health care problems And this whole program was

structured as mandatory meaning that Obama care required that every

single person in the country have health insurance Not a

terrible idea but it required employers toe pay for it

if the company was of a certain size or required

individuals to purchase it If employers didn't pay and individuals

didn't purchase Yes they originally faced that penalty that big

or else thing we were talking about like a motorcycle

guy Yeah he must pay for insurance Well he's too

stupid to wear a helmet than you Khun Fairly ask

Why would he be smart enough to at least Carrie

basic insurance Well the government then has to essentially force

him to brush his teeth while he still has a

few left So Obamacare forced you to carry insurance or

you pay the fine or penalty if you didn't and

Trump's tax reform package promptly removed that penalty putting the

burden back on the individual or set another way If

that person wants to risk life and limb they should

be able to just not on the taxpayers nickel Well

the broader goal financially revolved around the notion that if

you had a large enough pool of money to cover

the sick then the healthy who need little to no

maintenance would essentially foot all the bills So who would

you guess would then not want this coverage and obese

diabetic old flower shop worker or a healthy young person

who could run a sub forty five minutes and K

Yeah the young people just opted out for better or

worse Wiser stupid They just didn't sign up for Obama

care And that was where the beginning of a financial

wakeup call began Governments or simply bad at predicting consumer

behavior And if all of this wasn't controversial enough given

that this country's health issues are regional ahs well a

cz national meaning that a night stay in the car

cost way more in Manhattan than it does in Tuscaloosa

Obama care tried to push down to the state level

is much admin as it could in the process It

created state exchanges And that's about geographic states not states

of consciousness and of course with government workers trying to

build complex websites while the backend technology and the rollout

completely failed embarrassingly And for some this was actually surprising

shocking Even Like when you think of America's best and

brightest technology people you probably don't think of the D

m V or the T s A Or the technologies

that either of those places proffer Anyway the policies gave

states the right to go it alone and try to

manage their own Obama care policies are basically just give

back the money to Medicaid and let the federal government

deal with things the way they had been So that's

obamacare In a nutshell Lots of nuts And plenty more 00:09:02.92 --> [endTime] to be Sheldon They passed the donut Yeah