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To: Road Walker who wrote (129211)	3/5/2001 8:53:25 PM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Re: Why is health insurance a "free benefit"? Unless it's a "free benefit" gresham's law applies, and there is no insurance, only fee for service. No one wants to pay for full health insurance unless they know or suspect that they are sick - and once you know you are sick, you aren't buying insurance any more, you're just attempting to get a bunch of strangers who aren't sick to share the cost of your medical treatment. The only way to get the vast majority of well people to buy insurance is to force them into it, by having their employer give it to them for "free", or by having the government make everybody join (through mandatory insurance or just having the government pay for the care directly). Perhaps you'd sign up for a first class health insurance plan even though you were convinced you were healthy, but most people don't, and if you want to be one of the few who pays in but doesn't get a pay out from a completely voluntary program, feel free to join. Most people will see no point in paying premiums until they suspect they have some serious illness, at which point paying insurance premiums for a few weeks prior to undergoing tens of thousands of dollars worth of treatment will be a great deal. Free market "insurance", isn't going to be an easy thing to make work. For it to be insurance, all the low risk people have to join and pay pretty big premiums, since the sick people require "jackpot" payouts. Most low risk people know they are low risk people, and elect to not pay big insurance premiums if given the choice. If illness came as a total surprise to all applicants, it might be possible to make it work, but, in general, the applicants know more about themselves than the insurance companies, and will bankrupt any "fair" system. It's Gresham's law at work - unhealthy applicants drive out healthy applicants by raising the premiums above the level that offers a reasonable return to healthy applicants who join. Since all the remaining applicants are already sick, it becomes a fee for service program rather than "insurance". Regards, Dan

To: Road Walker who wrote (129211)	3/5/2001 9:09:06 PM
From: AK2004	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

John re:Why is medical insurance our worst consumer product? Why? That is a 5 trillion dollar question :-)). I am no expert on health products and you might want to chat with folks at soafor.syn.net about it. They would give actual details of cost increase within group policies let alone individual once. Insurance companies do not control the cost of medical service but rather average it over a group of people. Government (state and federal) interventions, rising costs, demand for lower premiums, etc creates less than desirable industry environment. In many cases doctors are no longer concern with providing care but rather collecting as much money as they could with very limited competition from within their own community. That forces insurers to manage the cost any way they could or exit the business ... Etc, Etc, Etc Regards -Albert