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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (131525)	2/26/2010 1:43:39 AM
From: Paul Smith	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541326

I am asking these question more to get a better understanding than to debate. "...if you permit health insurance companies to sell across state lines, there will be no effective protection for consumers, no regulation. The states with the fewest regulations will garner the most insurance companies (as is the case in other industries), effectively creating a race to the bottom in that respect. Then company A from North Dakota will race to NY with very low rates and insure only the healthy." One response to my note was that it was already in the bill while yours says something different. I'm not sure I understand your response - almost all products are sold across state lines (automobiles, food, drugs, software, etc.) and many products are regulated. "...keep rates low for everyone is to spread risk across wide spectrums. And the only way to do that is to insist that insurance companies must take all applicants." I assume this is the pre-existing condition stuff. So why would people buy insurance until they need it? Seems like a person should wait until they get sick, saves years of premiums, and then when sick start to buy insurance. While I know mandating all to buy insurance has been talked about, it is not clear that the federal government has the power to mandate that a citizen buy anything (could be thrown out by the courts). State governments have different powers than the Federal government and it is the state government than mandates auto insurance ownership, but only for people that choose to be drivers. There is no federal auto insurance.

To: JohnM who wrote (131525)	2/26/2010 1:43:17 PM
From: Mary Cluney	Respond to of 541326

<<<As I understand the arguments from today, if you permit health insurance companies to sell across state lines, there will be no effective protection for consumers, no regulation.>>> This is all political nonsense promoted by people whose only objective is to obstruct efforts to reform a broken system. There are plenty of things that can be done to improve the system and even to fix the whole thing. The problem is not technical. It is entirely a political problem and by extention a moral issue but we can forget about that part of it. The sad part of all this is that there are well meaning people that are duped into thinking that the problem can not be fixed. Take a look at the system. There is not a single person that can not see all the waste and inefficiency. You can see it in all the money that is wasted on spending that has nothing to do with health care. You can see unnecessary care (procedures)etc. Bottom line, for some bizarre reason, they want you to think that there is no way to improve things.