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Politics : View from the Center and Left
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To: quehubo who wrote (118750)8/19/2009 1:10:41 PM
From: cnyndwllr  Read Replies (1) of 542588
 
Q, re:"If the push was to make minimum coverage requirements uniform across the whole nation, along with protections for pre existing coverage, all the other things wrong with present private insurance, etc, perhaps the public would have responded better.

If the insurance companies were told this is the playing field and here are the rules they would figure out how to do it better than the government could.

In this case the health insurers would need to adapt and the insured would be the winners."

What you suggest would be great IF the insurance market was truly competitive and insurance companies were competing on price and quality of service for insureds.

That "competitive market" is the assumption that most "free market will fix it" adherents make. The facts, however, are that most of the health insurance markets are NOT competitive and in those markets the insurance companies are neither efficient nor competing on price and quality; they're expensive, inefficient and the quality of their service is dismal.

So given that reality you're right that the insurance companies would "adapt" but you're wrong if you think the "insured would be the winners."

The only way to create a winning situation for insureds would be to break up the oligopolistic power of the companies or to regulate them to the point where the government was controlling the market. Given the fact that about one fifth of the dollars spent in this country end up in the pockets of insurance companies, if real health care reform is not enacted what do you think the odds are that either of those would come to pass?

That's why the public option or some kind of effective competition though co-ops is critical. And that's why your friends in the Republican party and a lot of Democratic legislators who are "friends of the insurance industry" are standing in opposition. Ed
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