Another Obamacare aim is to control healthcare costs by expanding the pool of those insured. If you are self-employed and have to buy insurance on the open market for you and your family, the cost is insane. If you work for a company that has 1000 employees, and you buy insurance through as a group, the rates go down. The more in the pool, the cheaper the rates. Obamacare aimes to put millions into the pool to dramatically lower costs. As far as the blatant insurance company greed that is partially responsible for out of control healthcare costs; my point of view is that Obamacare doesn't go far enough. I'd like to see the Insurance companies cut out of the system altogether. Americans should have the right to healthcare and the fact that this is all being used as a political football does not say anything good about this country.
First, increased demand drives costs up, not down. You're equating the "demand for care" with the "demand for insurance" and those aren't the same thing. The "pool" theory works under the old system because it was a spontaneous creation of the free market. Now that the "pools" are legal mandates, the "pool" of 1,000 becomes the "new self-employed person." As much as you're helping the self-employed, you're hurting everyone else. Under the old system, the insurance company would say "I can get 1,000 people to sign up if I give them a break on the rates. Neat." Under the current system, the insurance company says "these 1,000 people HAVE TO sign up for insurance, so why the hell should I give them a break on the rates? I'm guaranteed their business."
Second, you're missing the point about the ability to negotiate. If you HAVE TO buy something, then the person providing you that thing can charge whatever they want. Let's say we eliminate health insurance companies and the government pays for everyone's healthcare. I assume you'd want them to make those costs reasonable so that the taxpayer can bear the burden? I'm sure you would also say that people shouldn't profit from someone's sickness / disease / injury. Poof! Profit eliminated from healthcare. Everyone will have healthcare and everyone's healthcare will suck.
Personally, I want doctors and big pharma to get filthy rich off of healthcare profits. Why? Because profit is the single greatest motivator of human behavior (outside of sex and torture). I want the best and the brightest administering my care and doing the cancer research. If you take profit out of healthcare, you take incentive out of the healthcare profession. If you take incentive out of the healthcare profession, you get lower caliber physicians. The best and the brightest either skip medicine all together, or become mercenaries for the very wealthy.
