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

To: Lane3 who wrote (131757)	2/28/2010 11:15:18 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541370

Now you can disagree with me on where Medicare or the exchange would sit on that continuum between private insurance industry and the NHS, just how close it is to NHS. But I don't see any way you can reasonably claim that the companies that will be players in the exchange are performing as a "private insurance industry." Banking regulations were much tighter than they are now. It was a reasonably private industry then. The food industry is reasonably private but it's regulated, thank heavens. The drug industry, ditto. Regulation hardly converts private to public.

To: Lane3 who wrote (131757)	2/28/2010 11:23:23 AM
From: Bread Upon The Water	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541370

"Your "private insurance companies" won't be performing the most fundamental functions of private insurance companies like underwriting, designing products, and setting premiums. What they will be doing is registering clients indiscriminately for a federally established plan, collecting federally established fees from clients, and processing claims according to the benefits set by the feds, a purely administrative function. You don't need an insurance company to do that. You need a bunch of clerks and a computer. Sure, insurance companies will bid for that business but so might any data processing company or bank or property management company, any company that is set up to handle financial transactions--collecting fees and making payments. That's not the insurance business. All the insurance business functionality will reside in the federal legislature and bureaucracy. If there's any regulation at all it will be simply to assure fiduciary accountability. More likely, the "regulation" will look more like contract performance standards than like industry regulation." This part strikes me as very "utility" like model, no?