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

To: Cogito who wrote (134866)	3/25/2010 6:49:52 PM
From: Katelew	Respond to of 543041

As I said previously, they find other pretexts to drop people. And I've never heard of a single case of their dropping someone on one of those pretexts BEFORE that person became ill. I'm not sure what your point is here. It makes sense that they wouldn't drop someone before they became ill. I find it plausible, though, that any insurer....auto, prop and casualty, life....will make sure they have cause to pay a claim. They aren't in the charity business. They have set their rates based on actuarial studies of how much they're likely to have to pay out. They can't exceed that and stay in business. It's no different than owning a retail shop and figuring out what you will need to price your merchandise at. To me, it's just a business model. I don't attach any notions of morality to it. Do we need them, though? Not really. I see the health insurers as an extra layer of cost to the consumer that really isn't necessary. The govt. can become the insurer, put everyone in the pool thus spreading the risk. The govt. has the deep pockets to pay the claims. I put the health insurers in the same extra layer of cost category that the bank student loan lenders are in. Getting rid of both of them makes sense to me, and I'm glad to see that the private student loan apparatus is apparently going to be dismantled.

To: Cogito who wrote (134866)	3/25/2010 7:23:39 PM
From: Steve Lokness	Respond to of 543041

Which is one good reason why you and I agree (I believe) that it is folly to rely solely on private insurers and the "free market" to manage the provision of healthcare. What is this "not for profit" insurance companies I have read about today? There isn't or shouldn't be such a thing. I'm not afraid of the free market; we do it with auto companies and it works great. I just think it would work even better turning the whole thing off to the government as payer. Capitalism can still deliver the goods. Since they are sticking with insurance companies, I believe a positive step is to put into law that if a legitimate claim is not paid - insurance companies get charged triple. steve