I presume most insurers don’t begin paying out claims on the very first day they’re in business.
(Emphasis added)
So, they aren’t true? Such would be your suggestion, it would seem. I doubt you want to go there, just a throw-away aside to muddy up the waters a bit, one that you hadn’t the slightest intention of corroborating. Of course, if you can, that would be very interesting indeed, we might all like to know who is conspiring to besmirch our insurance industries sterling reputation.
For instance, Mr. Wendell Potter. previously VP for communications for Cigna, in testimony to the House…
His story of the death of Nataline Sarkysian is heart-rending, but then, I’m quite an emotional fellow, perhaps you can read about it and not suffer from my “self-righteous” over-reaction. Perhaps.
He’s lying, is he? Or is he just another fuzzy-thinking liberal, who’s emotions have overcome his solid, hard-headed good sense? I think not, but your opinion is solicited.
Yes they do!
Man, this thing just keeps going, doesn’t it. I have to admit I just skimmed the several pages of updates from the weekend.
Yeah, it’s only a couple 100 posts away from becoming the new “Most replied topic” in the pit.
The other one (entitled “People who hate Children”) had curlcoat the troll against everyone, too.
She had 343 posts in it. 120+ more posts than the person who had the second most replies in it.
In this one she has 175 posts (so far) and, again, is the top poster in here.
I think it’s safe to say that any topic that braindead curlcoat takes an interest in to spew her ignorant posts around in is always going to be in the running for “longest pit thread”.
Not sure why you infer I think anyone is lying. I’ve acknowledged in this thread that there are abuses in the industry, and I think they should be dealt with harshly. I just do not concede that it’s the norm in the industry, nor do I think that the existence of instances of abuse mean that the government should take over wholesale (or close to it). Potter’s new watchdog role notwithstanding, he offers nothing to substantiate widespread abuses. And, again, if the health insurance industry is mistreating the public to gain profits, they’re doing a piss-poor job of it, in that their profit margins are modest indeed. Sorry, them’s the facts.
Again, though, if there are companies who are not conducting business in good faith, I suggest the appropriate regulatory bodies do their jobs and whack said firms damn hard.
You are serious then? It is efficient only to the extent that its imminent and predictable collapse has not yet occurred. It is efficient in the way all government programs that have at their disposal the ability to magically create new cash are. It is a study in poor business modeling. Those entering the payout stage have not paid in sufficiently to support their payments, nor is there any expectation that this model will change–so, yes, in that sense it’s a tremendous value right up until the point that it collapses of its own weight. The only thing that changes is the forecast for when this house of cards will tumble into an irreversible heap of valueless crap, a warning that has been sounded by both parties BTW. SS as an example of a solid government program? It is to laugh.
No, because they maintain reserves based on sound actuarial assumptions that ensure they’ll be able to pay out claims as they are made. The premiums paid support the future payment streams, as well as expenses and profits. That’s how they set their prices.
Social Security can make no such claim–quite the contrary. Those in the payout stage, as previously mentioned and widely known, have NOT paid in sufficiently to support their own payment streams. The gap is made up by those currently paying into the program, with the mathematically undeniable result that this program will someday collapse. It simply can’t go on forever. We can debate when, but the end will someday come.
It won’t collapse, it’s on sound financial footing. It’s a study in getting it right, as you’ll see over the next decade.
Why not, assuming mild population growth and minor adjustments to the cap and the retirement age. The latter makes sense as we have longer lives and are in better shape at 65.
If all of a sudden everyone under 40 died, we’d be in trouble, for sure. (But I think SS would be the least of our worries.)
I’m not an insurance expert, but I suspect the reserves are to support payments that can be expected in near worst case scenarios above regular income. Any company writing hurricane insurance is likely to need bigger reserves than one writing car insurance, where the payout is going to be fairly limited though more regular. As an extreme example, try to buy earthquake insurance. It costs a fortune and has a very high deductible, and very few of us who live within a few miles of the Hayward fault have it.
Sorry, saying it doesn’t make it so. Anyone not in denial understands that people receiving payments did not pay in enough to sustain their payment streams, and this is not an aberration, it’s by design. There’s no way to “get that right.” It’s a Ponzi scheme.
Amazingly SS has actuaries too! And they do the same job that private pension actuaries do too! I don’t think you want to get into an argument over the soundness of SS versus any of America’s public or corporate pension schemes. If SS is bankrupt then every major pension fund in America is more bankrupt still. But SS will never go bankrupt. At the worst there’ll need to be about a $20 a month increase in payments in about 2040 to keep the system exactly as is, but everybody will be earning hundreds of dollars a month extra then than they are now so no big deal.
When you look at the state of America’s public/private pension funds and the various scandals to come from them over the next decade it’s clear SS is going to become even more relevant and much more popular than it already is.
SS currently raises more money than it spends. It won’t need any extra money until about 2040 and a modest increase then ( possibly not any increase) will see SS continue as it is now. In what way does it differ from any other wage or standard of living insurance scheme, are they all Ponzi schemes too?
But as I pointed out in post #2082, there is no means to deal out harsh penalties. The worst that can happen is they will be required to pay benefits that they should have paid in the first place. There is no deterrent to denying benefits.
Your “cites” are crap, and render the rest of your posts on this subject meaningless. HCAN? Are you shitting us?
For anyone who is still reading, this is HCAN:
Your source appears to be highly biased, and it doesn’t seem to have any cites for the claims they make, tho I admit I didn’t take the time to read thru the whole thing.
No, but a single person system run by the government will rack up unearned profits by many of it’s employees, particularly the higher paid ones. And there will be no oversight as there is now.
Either you are joking or you are completely clueless. Social Security has been in the red almost from the beginning, and my retirement dollars went to someone else a long time ago. If the government hadn’t forced me to give them money for decades, I could have put that money by myself and earned interest on it.
I’ll never get past the fact that the government is full of waste. It would be nice if they could actually do something efficiently, but they haven’t yet.
Which is only because the government can print their own money and run as deep a deficit as they feel like. The fact that SS continues to pay is not an indication that it is well run, other than the part to makes the payments.
So, you have completely missed the news stories about Social Security being reformated, or just eliminated? Last I paid attention was a couple of years ago - perhaps now that we have a Democratic President, the subject as been dropped? Which of course had nothing to do with “Social Security money gets put into a piggy bank where it can get looted” but I will point out that there is a piggy bank of sorts, called the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance Trust Funds. The problem is, the government uses most of the money that comes in to pay out to SS beneficiaries, and then uses the rest of it for whatever else it needs to spend money on. So, instead of handling SS like a private pension plan would be, the government hasn’t been investing any of the money that comes in, nor do they even hold it in trust. In this page, it states that in 2017 SS will start paying out more than it takes in and unless something is done at that time, they will eventually have to cash out securities they hold. Of course this projection was supplied by the Social Security Administration themselves, which may have a reason to blow a little sunshine into the stats.
Perhaps you should look at things before you call someone else stupid.
I haven’t either but they’re using data from the AMA so they can’t be too far out of whack.
You mean they’ll earn a salary for doing a job. Probably a little less than they’d get for the same private sector job, though a little bit more secure, safer pension etc. So basically a fair wage.
I’m not joking and I’ve forgotten far more than most people know about pensions, insurance and the financial industry in general. SS has always been well-funded and has actually outperformed the S&P 500 over the last 15 years. Has your private arrangement done that?
SS beats any comparable private fund by a country mile. Medicare has far less overhead than private insurance, costs go up less under it and people are happier with it than private insurance.
Uh, you used something for a cite without reading it all the way thru?
Civil jobs are much more secure than private sector jobs, which tends to show in the quality of their work.
SS may be well funded, but it isn’t well run. Do private pensions pay out to current retirees using the money incoming from current employees?
The last I have not found to be true. Costs are determined by the government - they don’t go up when needed, they go up with whoever is in charge decides to do so. As for less overhead - you are going to have to cite that one.
I am offended by this statement. My dad worked for the government for 220 years (not counting 20+ years in the military), and rarely have I known anyone who took more pride in his work.
I read the salient points but I didn’t read the whole thing, no. I’m sure they manages to accurately convey the findings of the report in the bullet points.
I would define “quality” here as doing a competent job for excellent value to the taxpayer/consumer. And in the case of SS and Medicare the public sector kicks the arse of the private sector. Far better value, QED.
So now you agree it’s well-funded, excellent! It’s very well run, a 1% overhead compared to up to a third for some mutual funds. And it outperformed almost all of those funds and the S&P 500 over the last 15 years.
SS isn’t a pension scheme, it’s an insurance scheme, and that’s how all insurance schemes work. They take in premiums and pay out claims and take a profit while maintaining a fractional reserve*. That’s what SS does except it only takes 1% in fees – versus as much as a third taken by private firms – and then doesn’t take any profit. And it operates at much higher levels of regulation and solvency with infinitely lower risk as events at public and private pension funds over the next decade or so will show.
*Or at least they’re supposed to. Massive use of derivative contracts in recent years allowed them to hedge their risk to the extent that they could keep lower levels of capital in reserve, only events of the past two years show us that those derivative contracts don’t actually hedge or spread risk but can actually magnify it.
*By comparison, Medicare’s strengths leap off. A comprehensive set of predicable benefits; universal access for those who qualify by age or disability, regardless of pre-existing conditions; free choice of physician, other providers, and hospitals anywhere in the country; simplified administration costing only about 3 percent in overhead compared to overhead five to nine times higher for private insurers; and a binding social contract that people can count on.
Medicare’s record is one that private insurers can only envy – as numerous studies attest, including recent ones from the Commonwealth Fund, printed in the prestigious journal Health Affairs, and from the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Commonwealth Fund/Health Affairs study compared the experiences of elderly Medicare beneficiaries with those of people under age 65 with employer-based, private health insurance from 2001 to 2007.
Even though Medicare beneficiaries were older and sicker, their experiences were better across the board, with better access, higher-rated quality of care, fewer problems with medical bills, and higher satisfaction with coverage at lower cost.
The HHS commissioned survey in June also cited substantially higher satisfaction among Medicare patients than among those with private insurance – 56 percent of enrollees in traditional Medicare give Medicare a rating of 9 or 10 on a 0-10 scale, compared to only 40 percent of Americans in private plans.*
If you don’t like that link google medicare 3% overhead and you’ll find one you like.