Then our system is without a doubt broken. Ever been to a mechanic lately? All they want is their money and get the job half assed done and get you out of their hair. How about dry cleaners? Ever find one that actually gets your clothes clean.
Every service I try to get performed, it's wham bam and I'm outta here. Who gives a if I do a ty job.
That has become the norm in our society.
I'm not asking you to agree with me.
There's nothing authoritarian in expressing my opinion.
Eventually, it's not me who outlaws or not, but our democratically elected representatives.
And you wouldn't know what Marxism or Fascism are even if they poked you with a stick and called you Marta, so please, spare me.
See, this is the right question. Thanks DarrinS.
There's plenty of reasons why:
- HSA's go straight against the social redistributive spirit of insurance. Insurance is a big pool of money, that includes people with more risk and people with less risk. The people with more risk use more of the insurance and the people with less risk help cover some of those costs. At some point, the people with less risk will gradually become the people with more risk, and will use the assistance of a new generation of low risk people. Rinse and repeat. Now, HSA's are obviously most attractive to young, healthy people. The low-risk people. If you take them out of the equation, you end up with a much more expensive insurance for everyone else.
- HSA's tax benefits are basically negligible to the poor, which also turn out to be most likely the uninsured persons. They just don't make enough to benefit from the tax breaks.
- HSA's are no different than other investment and are subject to market risk. Market crash? There goes your healthcare savings, just when you needed them to help you pay for that hearth attack.
- HSA's don't really control costs. They just shift the cost from the insurer to the patient.
- HSA's do absolutely zero to increase access or reduce the number of uninsured.
- HSA's actually induce people to delay or avoid getting needed care, or to skip medications, because of the cost.
Yep, you are an Authoritarian Socialist/Marxist. You believe those who can spend more than their requirement should pay for those who cannot pay for themselves.
Another way for-profit health insurance companies make health insurance more expensive is by raising the prices, pricing people out of the market, thereby reducing their insurer's pool, spreading the (even stable) health costs over smaller number of clients. This exactly why so many insurer's are raising their rates now 20% - 40% in one year.
Since people pay for health insurance so they don't have to pay (all of) health care costs (cost sharing among the client pool), for-profit insurance companies raise the cost of health care.
A huge advantage of the public option is pool of 100M clients sharing costs and overheads, then no $25M salaries, no stock options, no profits, no dividends, thereby reducing insurance costs.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 03-04-2010 at 03:17 PM.
Or, perhaps "for-profit" insurance companies have to raise their rates when a large number of people leave the pool?
It would make no sense the way you've described it. Why would they want to price people out of their own market???
You forget. Lib s have no concept of economics.
"Why would they want to price people out of their own market?"
These price increases are mainly for individual plans, which are already 18% on avg above the same coverage for a group plan member.
Why? each individual must be given a separate contract, and must be paid for/collected from individually, so the transaction costs for individual plans is much higher than when a single group plan contract signs up 1K or 10K clients in a single group plan, and the company skims the group members' salaries on behalf of the insurance company.
So pricing these "high transaction cost" individual buyers out of the market is very much in the insurer's interests. Basic economics, you make more margin by selling big ticket products than low ticket products, esp when the products are complex (not bubble gum or golf balls).
The reason Repugs and assholes here want insurance sold across state lines is so that for-profit insurers could cherry pick the state, eg South Dakota, with the most lax, least demanding insurance regs, and all setup business there, undercutting other states regulations. iow, Repugs love national/centralized operations (ie, no states rights) when it's business friendly and anti-consumer.
This is exactly why cc companies have setup in SD, in a deal with the SD legislature, and charge usurious rates because they are legal in SD (but not in other states).
WC, for the 1000th time, GFY. You must be pretty good at it by now.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 03-04-2010 at 05:14 PM.
- Do you know how insurance companies work?
- Are they authoritarian socialist and marxists corporations?
- Why do you hate the insurance industry?
Depends who leaves the pool. If they're low risk people, absolutely agree.
If it's high risk people leaving (like when seniors move to Medicare) then it's actually a big advantage to the insurance co.
Well, if it's high risk people coming in, then I can see why they would want to do that. Eventually, an insurance company wants to have as low a risk as possible when it comes to it's customers.
Then every state in the union is a facist marxist state. Property and casualty insurance has had these types of restrictions for a century.
"Depends who leaves the pool. If they're low risk people, absolutely agree."
"Studies have shown" that poorer people (those who get priced out of the insurance pool) are sicker and die younger. Of course, the other way to get them out is for the insurance company to cancel them because of their diseases.
So on average, the people who can afford to get screwed by higher rates are also less diseased/costly to treat.
Great game, huh? So go ahead and raise your rates, purging the poor sickos, while retaining/raping the healthy ones.
Don't worry. The United States government is here to help!
For a small fee of course..............
The fact that the insurance industry and big pharma are just cozy with the legislation being proposed is really alarming.
Not only we're keeping the status quo, we're ensuring it's survival.
It's terrible.
Exactly. We'll be ing enabling the very practice we wish to discourage. But we must pass something! Now! Change!
And BTW, back to the thread topic, premiums are just part of the equation. I don't think anybody here denies that's there's an administrative overhead to run a for-profit enterprise.
I actually don't have a problem with the concept of insurance, and I also don't find a problem with protecting the money pool. However, when you insert the for-profit part and that becomes just as much as a priority or more than protecting the money pool, it really becomes a conflict of interests.
That's why I thought the Republican (I think it was a GOP idea) proposal that included non-profit Cooperatives was very interesting.
It's very terrible. IMHO it's also a perfect illustration as to why no matter how bad the current system is, we're still better off with it than with anything the government is going to come up with.
That's because there is no public or govt option in the current legislation..they get to keep their health-care monopolies and reap millions in 'profit' thanks to the GOP...
....that's what you get when you let business lobbyist write their own regulations....it's not govt. in itself which is incompetent, it's the lobbyists money which has such a stranglehold on govt. that it keeps it incompetent..
Whatever the Dems are passing is without GOP support or votes... so if they wanted a public option, they could easily have one there... this one is on them and nobody else...
There is a group of Dems refusing to sign onto the bill if no public option.
I'm torn. Poor people need health care, which this dog's lunch of bill provides without a public option, but getting it to them via a Medicare-for-all public option would be much better, and cheaper.
Magic Negro campaigned on a public option, and 10s of Ms, over 100M IIRC, polled as supporting it. Then MN drops it, while forcing people into for-profit insurers. him.
... if it wasn't for the filibuster rules and the GOP, we would have a public option...
Thank God for the filibuster rules and the GOP, then.
...that's not to say that Democrats aren't completely free of blame...but there are basically a handful of blue-dog democrats keeping us away from any real reform on anything, as opposed to the GOP which is completely corrupt...
Thank God for those Blue Dogs, too!
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