Who’s paying for the subsidies?

You understand the whole point of what I said is that I have a problem with the whole “depending on level of income” thing, right? You ripping apart my comparison is futile because you’ve disregarded the reason for the analogy.

I’m okay with people having subsidies to support those who cannot afford to purchase it (just as I am with SNAP) privately but Medicare already does that to an extent. The whole point is that I’m not okay with bending people over the barrel for shitty coverage and premiums triple what they cost in the private sector.

If you think what I wrote was hostile, then you should re-read what I wrote.

If I was trying to be hostile I would not have bothered to type more than 2 words.

That would have been entertaining.

Civil discourse is for those who can separate their emotions from their argument. If you can’t do that, don’t bother responding.

FWIW, I read the same thing you quoted in the earlier post and your response is the confusing one. I did not read the quoted post with the same emotional connotation that you seem to have projected on to it.

Civil discourse works best when you don't start trying to insult and exclude the other party.

I attempted to clarify. I had no ill intentions with what I said. I thought the “lol” would have been a pretty clear indication that I was kidding. I’m interested to know what you think the “two words” would have been?

Civil discourse requires civility - it’s in the name. I have no qualms with excluding people incapable having civil conversation - speaking generally. It ceases to be a conversation when one party is angry.

Are you under the assumption that one party was angry? I mean, mav can certainly speak for themself, but my interpretation of the statement was that hostility simply does not require a longer explanation of his position like what he provided. It was explained by mav that your assumption of his tone in the prior post was incorrect and then he described how you can determine whether he was being hostile in the future.

Your next post seemed to be a rather aggressive personal challenge for civil conversation as you put it.

To rewrite what I understood the intent to be:
"I would be entertained to see you be hostile towards me. I don't believe you can separate your emotions from your argument so you have no place here." Or in layman's terms, "Come at me bro or gtfo".

If that is not the case, please clarify your intentions. As I said before, I am confused by your recent posts, so perhaps I am mistaken?

It was definitely defensive over something I did not feel he needed to defend. I even clearly said that I wasn’t challenging his post.

The follow up he posted I felt was passive aggressive towards me. I said that would be entertaining because I assumed the 2 words would have been “f*** you/off” and that would have been humorous to me because I probably would have laughed.

go back and read what I wrote.

Had I been insulted or wanting to insult you, I would not have bothered to type out an explanation for my viewpoint of healthcare (in general).

My first response was written that way because many people that "don't want to pay for other people's healthcare" use their own healthiness as a justification for that. But by that reasoning, a safe driver doesn't have to pay for car insurance.

Unfortunately a la carte insurance does not work, because you'd then have to (and be able to) insure almost any type of thing/action under the sun, and the whole idea of using insurance (as a blanket) to reduce/spread out risk/payout is out the window.

Go back and read what I wrote, perhaps you can ignore my retort about me not using health insurance and you can see the rest of what I wrote lines up with my argument that health insurance (and healthcare in general) is something that everyone uses at some point in their lives, and for a lot of healthy people this usage is when they are born.

... or am I being combative again? I don't know.

I did, a few times to be sure. Do you understand that I wasn’t trying to say you shouldn’t have insurance? I was not challenging your point of view but get your personal experience with ACA.

I get why you say that but your health is none of my business. I merely wanted your experience with coverage regarding ACA.

I agree, I have changed policies many times to get one that actually feel like I’m getting my money’s worth.

I read that, I just think that what I said was probably confusing (as it appears). Again, I wasn’t looking for the reasons why you chose ACA but rather how your experience has been with regard to coverage and accessibility.

lol “If I was trying to be hostile I would. . .” is passive aggressive in my eyes but that’s up for interpretation.

... and I already posted that, but apparently what I posted wasn't what you are asking about.

So I'm not sure what else to add, because you keep asking about my personal experience when I already told you what my experience is (identical before/after ACA) and what is different (subsidies based on income). I never changed healthcare providers, I only changed who I bought insurance from.

Ahh, I was confused as why you were saying Kaiser Bronze and Covered CA. It’s interesting that the price didn’t change. I did some research to find the difference between my current plan and going thru healthcare.gov and it’s a major difference in price. Interestingly healthcare.gov redirects you to Covered CA (for CA residents - my state doesn’t have an exchange like that). And also CAs subsidies have significantly higher income brackets than my state.

My state offers $1300 in subsidies but after that the plan is still $1453/mo. Thats ab $1060 more a month than I pay now.

Which is why I hate the whole discussion of comparing healthcare across state lines, because it's just like car insurance, it varies wildly based on whatever your state does (or did not do).

Most of the US that signed on to ACA is using what the federal government put together. In many states that was reduced to a single healthcare option...

For me in California, what I was offered before and after using Covered CA didn't change anything.

That's fair. There are a lot of variables that have to be considered. I checked on Covered CA's website for the cheapest insurance I could find for my brackets (because I had done this with my states previously) and the cheapest I found was $681 which was only $100 less (still better than my state) than the cheapest I could find in my state. I didn't bother to look for one that closely resembled my current plan because I didn't have time but I imagine the difference would be somewhat consistent.

My biggest argument is that I want the ability to change if I want to. I recently left USAA (which a lot of people think is one of the best insurance companies out there) because they screwed me over on some home owners insurance stuff twice. I want the flexibility to do just that without feeling price pressure. I believe a federal mandate for universal insurance would eliminate that flexibility. On top of that, in order for universal health insurance to be truly successful (financially), everyone must be on it or at least the bulk of the population. And based on my experience with public insurance and the overall cost burden on myself, I'm a hard no to the universal/ACA option.

To me, it seems like Covered CA is onto something good (but less ideal for higher incomes), however, I have not looked at the how the subsidies have impacted state spending so I can't say how effective it is.

https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3927

Middle of this has a summary of the different proposals for subsidies based on income % above FPL and the fiscal impact.

Here's a summary of last year's Covered CA subsidies and what types of families pay what:

https://health-access.org/wp-content...et_6.24.19.pdf

Again, all this is if you get your insurance via Covered CA. If you have something via your employer you won't be offered the Covered CA option, I had to fight them for coverage at the beginning of 2019 when they tried to deny me due to me terminating my previous employment in late 2018.

As for universal healthcare, the first few years will be universal hatred towards it. A good example is Taiwan... they put it together during the a lame duck period in the presidency of the first elected president in 1995, then endured several years where the population hated it. Now it's a system that is not perfect but has given a lot of benefit to the public, and also one of the most effective at combating COVID-19 so far. My mom (70+) can easily walk around any part of Taiwan with zero fear of catching COVID-19, and two weeks ago they had the first local transmission of COVID-19 in 8+ months. Can't say that about the rest of the world, let alone the US...

But as is the case with most public policy implementations, the benefits are not seen for years (or even decades). It's just a matter of whether the public has the patience to see it out, and unfortunately that will never happen in the US.