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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Amy J who wrote (53724)	10/20/2004 9:42:16 AM
From: jttmab	Respond to of 81568

I did. And I think it should be illegal to decline people. It's discrimination. Not necessarily illegal discrimation. It is a business. It would be illegal if they refused to insure you because your black or a women. But it's not illegal to refuse to insure you if you have AIDS. They could, theoretically, require a company to insure an AIDS infected person, but at what rate? It would be at a rate that was for all practical purposes a refusal. I agree the free market approach needs to be highly regulated. Look no further than flu vaccine to see how horrible the free market is, without Congressional intervention. The pharm market is highly regulated. But if the companies don't make money in a particular market, do you require them to lose money? The pharms have generally opted out of the flu vaccine market because it's a losing proposition. They can make 50 million doses, but if only 20 million get ordered they eat the rest. There's a similar problem going on with anti-biotics. Bacterial infections are getting increasingly getting anti-biotic resistant, yet there is only one company [world-wide] that has a new anti-biotic in the pipeline. Anti-biotics are not as profitable as Zoloff, Lipitor or Viagra. They want to produce drugs that a person takes every day for the rest of their lives. I think the pharms are being socially irresponsible, but it's a free market. A teacher in Palo Alto, CA was placed in a local nursing home after a catastrophic illness. His family also lives in the Bay Area. But later they shipped this teacher to a nursing home that was 100+ miles away from his family, just because the GOVERNMENT"S insurance didn't want to pay for a nursing home in the Bay Area, where he lived and where his family all lives ! I don't think you're really talking about Government insurance. What you're talking about is a private health insurance company offered by an employer, in this case, the county of San Mateo or Santa Clara. I know that some companies are self-insured but I've never heard of a county or State being self-insured. And the Federal Government is not self-insured for it's employees. jttmab