I do have a good deal of trust in doctors and patients and I think the only reasonable restrictions that the folks running an insurance company should have are things that aren't covered by a policy including treatments that aren't known to be effective or that are clearly inappropriate (like taxol for a cold to use your example).
You use the term "common funds" inappropriately imo. An insurance company's funds aren't "common funds" owned by society or even by the policy holders. They're the insurance company's funds. The company is obligated to pay as called for by its policies in force.
Any scarce resource held in common requires rationing or it will be depleted.
You're implicitly accepting a defacto socialist outlook imo. What resources are held in common in regard to an insurance policy?
Parks have someone rationing softball diamonds and picnic tables.
Parks are the property of a city or other government entity. As such its appropriate for the government to manage its parks. Access to health treatment isn't something held in common or held by government. Like I said, you're implicitly accepting a socialist outlook on health care - health care, you're saying is like a fishery, its just out there for the taking and we have to limit it to keep it from getting used up. Of course its not. Health care is more like a manufactured product or service, created to meet demand and provided by contract (which is what an insurance policy is).
Health care isn't a "scarce resource" and isn't finite in nature like a fishery or a city's parks either. We can train more health care workers, build more facilities, make more drugs, medical equipment. Practically speaking, our supply is virtually unlimited. Not free though.
The only way to keep bioethicists and economics out of it is for each of us to pay his own medical bills.
And we do unless we're getting government financed care*. We don't have to pay them out of our pocket to be paying for our own medical bills. We can pay insurance premiums that bring a right to future treatment. And we're still paying for them if most of the insurance premiums are paid by an employer as part of our compensation. Just because we have insurance or employer provided insurance doesn't mean we're being provided something that is commonly owned.
If you really, really want your pooled resource manager to pay all claims, then you have to accept that if some idiot prescribes Taxol for a cold you will pay it. If you balk at paying it then you're tacitly accepting rationing.
No, you're not. An insurance policy almost certainly isn't written to accept "anything" its almost certainly written to cover normal, effective and reasonable treatments. There may be disagreements about what is normal, effective and reasonable but thats something that can be worked out either via negotiation, arbitration, or litigation.
We have had many discussions on this very thread about tests and treatments that are/were not covered. If you insist that everything is now covered, we have no basis for discussion.
Everything that's covered by a policy is covered. Its shouldn't be an issue for "society" ie government to decide.
Health care isn't commonly owned property like a city park.
*Even some government financed care can be viewed as paid for by Medicare payroll taxes. |
