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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (8158)	8/11/2009 4:48:03 PM
From: Lane3	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Their rising premiums. So now the fact that they have raised premiums is evidence that their profit is based on a percentage of their payouts? Did it ever occur to you that premiums are going up because they're having to pay out more because costs are going up more than the insurance companies can possibly put pressure to contain them? Because more stuff is being included in policies that wasn't previously covered either because states have mandated it or because customers demand it? That insured people are demanding more health care services for a variety of reasons including getting older and fatter and crazier? That insured people with fee for service won't give it up? That technology has advanced and new equipment is expensive? Etc? If health care cost had been within the range of inflation these past 20 years we wouldn't be talking about national health care. Indeed. What, pray tell, could the insurance companies have done to stop that? Unless you have some evidence that insurance companies profit proportional to their payouts, I'm not buying that. It just doesn't seem to me that it would work that way. They would probably take a small profit off the top from each policy they carry but most of their profit would come from negotiating the best deals with employers, snagging the lowest-usage customers, productivity improvements, denying treatments not explicitly covered, and paying providers as little as they can get away with. It seems to me that it's in their interests to reduce their payouts because that means they can offer lower premiums so as to get more customers. And that's what it seems to me that they do. Of course, they raise premiums because of the natural pressure on payouts for the reasons mentioned above and more. Maybe they pocket some or all of the increase in premiums but more likely not. Their profit could as easily go down with rising premiums as go up depending on what the marketplace will bear. Once again, if you have some ideas on how insurance companies could "police" rising prices more than they do, please share.

To: Road Walker who wrote (8158)	8/18/2009 5:28:24 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 42652

If health care cost had been within the range of inflation these past 20 years we wouldn't be talking about national health care. That's probably true, but it doesn't really say anything about health care insurance companies ability or desire to control costs. There has been a real increase in health care costs, but that would be expected. 1 - Its happening in other countries as well. 2 - With technological advancement we can do more, doing more, and doing it better can cost more. Looking at prices today and prices in the past doesn't give you a straight apples to apples comparison. 3 - We have an aging population. 4 - We've gotten heavier. 5 - A lot of health care costs involved skilled labor in such a way that productivity isn't likely to increase as fast as manufacturing, or data and communications services. So medical care lags in productivity improvement, and you get en.wikipedia.org