Mandates delayed until 2014, why do you think this is?

[quinnox]

So if this health bill passes, the mandates, which are sure to be unpopular, are delayed until 2014. I find this interesting. Any ideas why this date is so far into the future?

And does anyone think these mandates will ever actually go into effect? Because I don't. Either the republicans will be in power by then and get rid of it completely which will scrap the entire health care reform, or the Democrats will back down because of fear of the potential disaster in popularity for the party and alter their plans on the health care reform to something more palatable.

I honestly will be very surprised if these mandates ever become reality.

[Teaser]

1. the mandates have to become reality

they are the tax that is making this possible.

[Fumesucker]

4. A tax is something you pay to the government.. The mandate is for private payments..

[Teaser]

23. *shrugs*

The mandates are doing very nearly the same thing that taxes would be doing.

Reps made the calculation that mandates would be less politically unpopular than new taxes.

Perhaps that was in error. It was, however, the calculation that was made.

[Fumesucker]

32. No, taxes would be going to a single payer, goverment run system..

That is definitely not the same thing as private insurance companies..

[ehrnst]

38. Yes - which is why the mandates might be more popular than taxes...

And you can pay a tax instead of buying insurance, if you choose.

It is a play or pay system. Everyone has to participate in order for costs to come down.

[Teaser]

39. I don't care

I told you why this was done. You're debating someone else with your points. They have nothing to do with mine.

[eridani]

40. Except for being fascist bullshit. That's what forcing you to buy defective products

--from people who kill and bankrupt for profit actually is.

[grahamhgreen]

7. Are you crazy - you could repeal the Bush tax cuts instead. Or stop the wars. Or tax

the banks, or make insurance be non-profit.

[Teaser]

20. I am crazy. I am also very, very smart.

Neither of those things is relevant here. Nor are your suggestions.

This bill had to pay for itself. Mandates are what make that possible. They are a way of levying a tax without saying you implemented one.

As for your suggestions, they are well and good. I suggest you will have a fun time finding representatives who will follow them.

[slackmaster]

2. That puts them well beyond the 2012 election

This isn't really very hard to figure out.

[Statistical]

3. 2010, 2012, 2014 are election years?

They can run on the "promise" of HCR and not the cold hard reality that it sucks.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

5. Budgetary scoring, and budgetary scoring only.

The mandates will go into effect, and if we're really doing away with pre-existing conditions, they have to. It IS cost control, contrary to popular belief. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_spiral_(insurance)

[RexS]

6. Well if I were to guess I'd say they know the world is coming to an end in 2012.

So they gave themselves a little wiggle room, just in case it takes a few more years and someones math skills were off by about .33 to .66 of the local space time continuum rate.

[leftstreet]

9. Makes as much sense as anything else

:-)

Welcome to DU!

[glitch]

13. !

:spray: welcome to DU :hi:

[Patsy Stone]

8. Two guesses:

1) If it started immediately, the additional tens of millions of people would overcrowd the (already weakened) system.

2) By 2014 they will have a much better idea of how many people still do not have insurance, and based on that actual number, the mandates/penalties could change.

3) (A fantasy guess) By 2014 there will be something like a Public Option and the mandate won't be so contentious.

[Uben]

10. Uh, I don't think so....

The mandates are put off till 2014 to give the exchanges time to get up and running so people can buy insurance at the more competitive rates. To start the mandate immediately would force folks to buy in at the current outrageous rates! Sounds reasonable to me. You can't politicize evrything just because it sounds like what they are doing.

[4lbs]

14. Stop making sense. This is an anti-Obama rant thread. You must only make posts that are histrionic

and gloom-and-doom in nature.

[Donnachaidh]

17. so demonizing dissent is the norm now?

Wow -- that's so big tent.

Actually, it's quite repuke-like -- congrats!

[northernlights]

36. um, yeah....

:spew:

The more competitive rates, even while the insurance companies accelerate the rate increases! Good one!!!!! :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

The mandates don't take place until 2014 in a pathetic attempt to fool people like me, who doesn't want insurance because in my personal experience it is a total ripoff, into thinking I won't once again be paying thousands of dollars/year to insurance companies who will tell me to go eat shit and die if I actually happen to get sick.

[eridani]

41. The current outrageous rates are only going to go higher.

There are no cost controls whatsoever.

[WinkyDink]

11. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[boston bean]

12. gotta fatten up the wallets of the pariah's first. that is the only reason. It's just to damn

DISRUPTIVE!

[Donnachaidh]

15. they are worried about the 2012 elections

Of COURSE they will become law -- just after the 2012 election, so campaigns can be spun that *no new taxes* were placed on the middle class.

[alc]

16. 10 year CBO report doesn't look good if they pay out for 10 years

Instead, the start collecting many taxes now but many benefits can't start until 2014. You can't mandate insurance until you can pay subsidies, and you can't pay subsidies until 2014 or everyone will laugh (or cry) at the resulting CBO report.

There is the argument that they can't start mandates until the exchange starts, but I don't buy it. They could define some parameters and say as soon as an insurance provider does (or states do) this, mandates start. If this bill is as good as I'm hearing, you'd have some insurance provider trying to be the first and grab all that mandated money. And if Obama/Pelosi/Reid really thought we need reform, they'd have set it up so we have reform now. Instead, mandates and the reforms that come with them don't take affect until the 10 year CBO report looks good.

[BurtWorm]

18. The mandates are supposed to solve the main problem causing health care cost inflation.

The promise of private, for-profit insurance once upon a time was that spreading costs over a group with varying degrees of health care needs lowered the costs of care for everyone using the system. Over time, it became easier for employers not to offer insurance to workers, which reduced the size of the covered pool, increasing the size within that pool of people who have greater health care needs. Now we have a situation in which health care consumers' and their providers are both being controlled by companies that do nothing but manage the money that passes between consumer and provider. The idea behind the mandate, then, is to spread the costs of care wider, which in theory, will lower the cost.

Of course, what the mandates will also clearly do is anger those people who have no insurance and less need for health care, who are precisely those the system needs enrolled in it to spread the costs more equitably for all users. And as you say, this will spell trouble unless someone can figure out how to make this mandate relatively painless. I really don't see how that will be possible.

Now this could be really bad for Democrats...perhaps. Or it could be really, really bad for private insurance in the long run. I'm not suggesting this is a wise strategy at all. I think the wisest strategy is having the government take over the private insurance companies and become a single payer system NOW. But it seems to me that if the Republicans and middle-core Dems as well as the industry resist nationalizing the health care finance system, the contradictions inherent in this lame-brained system will necessarily be heightened by the amount of pain the mandates cause. And they will cause pain. I don't see anyway around it.

In the short-term, then, (after 2014), I think the reform package might be bad for Democrats. But in the long run, i think the pain it causes will be good for single payer. Meanwhile, the insanity of this fucked up financing system can't be glossed over. Americans need to have it carefully explained to them why they're idiots if they allow this to go on, sucking the blood out of them and engorging people we pay to pay for our health care who don't want to pay a dime for it.

[quinnox]

31. very thoughtful post

I agree with you completely. The system we have now is fatally flawed, and a single payer system would fix a lot of the problems. And you are maybe right that the mandates are really a stepping stone to the single payer system.

You echo what I was thinking in all your points almost in full. Great minds think alike, lol!

[Kablooie]

19. One realistic reason for a delay is to set up the mechanisms to implement the system.

But 4 years seems strangely excessive.

The fact it won't take effect until after the next election is suspicious.

A positive thought:
Maybe the delay was included by representatives who have plans to push a public option before this takes effect!

And the tooth fairy will bring me a million dollars tonight! Yipeee!

[formercia]

22. Medicare is already set up and in place

the infrastructure only needs some expansion to handle the additional work load. No need to create another bureaucracy.

[formercia]

21. It gives Insurance Corps. 4 Years to clear their rolls of dead wood

or soon to be dead wood and make as much profit as they can in the mean time.

[Schema Thing]

24. The carrot goes in front.

[Newest Reality]

25. Regardless of the reason ....

We need relief NOW! This is not a new problem at all and we are at the brink collectively.

Four more years of health insurance-induced bankruptcies, death and complications from lack of proper care, etc.? That's a Rush-sized load of collateral damage in the interim. It's not like this is a true and sweeping reform of the monolithic health care profit machine that grinds most into hamburger and then devours us and craps us out onto the brown backyard of the other America as statistical fertilizer.

[Stinky The Clown]

26. Bend over and spread 'em .......

[Ozymanithrax]

27. Mandates solve certain problems...if you don't intend to use single payer.

The bill was designed to use free market concepts to bring down prices. It is established that low risk is much easier and cheaper to insure than high risk. By bringing in large numbers of healthy low risk individuals it changes the business plan of insurance companies. They have a more stable base for profit and allows them to bring down prices for everyone, even those high risk individuals. It encourages them to maintain and increase profits by insuring more people rather than by controlling costs and insuring fewer people. A mandate, whether you use non-profit health insurance companies or for-profit health insurance companies requires a big base. It works if everybody plays.

Second, by mandating insurance for all they initiate the concept of universal health care within our culture. Once everybody is covered, by Medicare, Medicaid, for profit insurance, or non-profit insurance, or local health clinics, we have reached a paradigm shift in the way Americans look at Health Care. Even if they must purchase it, we begin building the belief that Health Care is a Right not the privilege of a few. Personally, I think health care is a right that should be guaranteed by the government. But, most Americans don't. Once people have it and rely on it, they will incorporate the concept of a right into their way of thinking.

Social Security was unpopular in its origins. The people it would help the most did not have the cash to take out of their wages and give the government to hold for them. It is now the most successful progressive reform in American history. It changed the way people look at the government. Every attempt to kill Social Security by Republicans has failed because people now view it as a fundamental right. This bill can do that.

[Romulox]

29. Forcing people to buy a product invalidates any appeal to the "free market".

By definition a compelled purchased isn't "free". :hi:

[Ozymanithrax]

33. Absolute free markets will never bring universal health care.

Mandates change the nature of the market. Everybody plays.

[Romulox]

34. So it's bizarre to insist that "free market" actors must be allowed to profit before the people

may move on to ameliorating all the "evil" practices that are the sine qua non of the insurance industry.

[quinnox]

35. yes, as burtworm also said

Burtworm made the same point about introducing this so called 'radical' idea of a single payer system through the mandates. I tend to agree with this position.

[northernlights]

37. I now view health care reform as my fundamental right

to be forced to fork over thousands of dollars/year to insurance companies who have in the past and likely will in the future tell me to go eat shit and die should I get sick. Yippee. I feel so privileged to be forced to participate in this "free enterprise" system.

[Taverner]

28. I dunno why, but this is an opportunity

If you don't like the mandates, fight them.

Pass the bill, let everything pass - and we (who are against the mandate) and work to kill it before 2014

[bain_sidhe]

30. Because that's when the Exchanges will be available.

They're not instituting the mandates until the exchanges are up and running.

Also note, the bill requires at least one national non-profit insurance plan to be available in every exchange.