# Assurant Health's "Reprehensible Conduct" **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 18, 2010, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assurant-healths-reprehensible-conduct/532849 "2010-03-18T04:03:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2010, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assurant-healths-reprehensible-conduct/532849/41 "2010-03-18T17:30:01Z")
It’s also a step towards a single payer system, which _would_ actually do some good. For that reason alone I support this bill. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2010, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assurant-healths-reprehensible-conduct/532849/42 "2010-03-18T17:37:28Z")
> [@Teufelblitz](#): > > If that’s the case, that’s what our tax-paid justice system is for. Suppose you don’t put much stock in that, though. The current system allows them to do it. The HCR on the table makes changes that make these things illegal. Please, you should really inform yourself before taking a stance. > [@](#): > > In fact I think there are many opt-in charities for just such cases. I believe that if all the people who feel that giving to the folks in need did so, we could do some serious good. I just want to maintain that choice for each individual to give where they feel their money would be spent best. Charities can’t make a dent in the tens of millions of people who cannot get insurance. They also can’t make a dent in the millions of people who lose their health insurance every year. This option is a bizarre fantasy of yours, not a sensible policy. > [@](#): > > I personally give to leukemia, breast cancer, and AIDS research every year, and don’t plan on stopping unless something else sops up my expendable income. Your donations are commendable. And utterly useless in the face of the wall of uninsured. > [@](#): > > Yes, and grown-ups also have the right to complain about where exactly their tax dollars are spent. It’s called a Democratic Republic. Debate is welcome here. Then complain like a grown up. Face the issue with facts and intelligence. Argue the issue, not phantoms. > [@](#): > > Public roads and civic improvement are precisely what I feel my tax dollars should be spent on. I have already mentioned that the police and fire services protect my physical property in a previous post. Those count as relevant services to maintain peace in society, and I do not argue that they are essential. I also believe that the military is a necessary expenditure, but will willingly gripe about the inefficiency of accounting and spending there. > > Health care for all is not even in the same park as the above. Yes it is. A man kicks open your door and is about to stab you. He is shot by a police officer. The government just saved you from a sudden, unexpected death. What if instead of man at your door, it’s a clot in your heart? It’s the same thing. Public safety and welfare is at issue either way. > [@](#): > > Again, to clarify, I am not even opposed to an opt-in version that covers those who take part. I just don’t want to take part myself. You don’t understand the bill. The HCR on the table will still have private insurers. What do you mean “you don’t want to take part”? That’s gibberish, you will have whatever insurance you have now. If you don’t have insurance and don’t want it you will be taxed a penalty. This is to cover when you fall down the stairs and need pins in your femurs and can’t pay for it. ---
**Author:** ![Teufelblitz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@Teufelblitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Teufelblitz)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2010, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assurant-healths-reprehensible-conduct/532849/43 "2010-03-18T17:40:52Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Yeah, except that you won’t. Even if a few principled refuseniks like yourself really did reject all health coverage except what you could pay for on your own, and valiantly opted to kick the bucket once your savings ran out and you couldn’t afford any more chemotherapy, the vast majority of non-participants wouldn’t do that. > > They’d just be thoughtlessly (or desperately) trying to save a buck in the short term by not paying for health insurance. And then when they got sick and needed health coverage, they’d holler for help. And we as a society would not agree to just deny them help and let them die. > > Even principled refuseniks like yourself wouldn’t necessarily be able to avoid accepting help all the time. Suppose you’re limping down the street one day after your coverage has been dropped and you’ve spent all your money on the chemotherapy, and you have a seizure and collapse? The ambulance is gonna come and haul your unconscious and uninsured self off to the emergency room, and you won’t be in a condition to refuse treatment. When they’ve spent seventeen thousand dollars that you don’t have on fixing you up, how are you going to pay that back? > > In short, an “opt-in” system would just mean we’d still be spending buttloads of money on universal socialized medicine anyway: the most expensive and inefficient kind, the kind that’s practiced and administered primarily in emergency rooms. It’ll be cheaper and more efficient just to put everybody into the same mandatory risk pool from the get-go. If some of them insist on kicking and screaming all the way, that’s their choice. The ones who opt out only to save money are precisely the ones who should be refused coverage if something befalls them. This includes me. The debt becomes the responsibility of the person who did not pay into the system. Better or worse, rich or poor, that’s their debt and their legacy. If I die in debt, the amount comes out of my assets, as it should. If they are insufficient, then debtors have recourse to pursue their funds. If I was too poor to pay any of it? No tangible assets at all? Well, I guess that’s a point for you. Medicare does reimburse some bad debt to hospitals. So do some insurance companies. This gets absorbed into cost and passed on to the consumer. It’s already in place and already happening. It’s part of the gamble previously mentioned. EDIT: You are also assuming that a large portion of us refuseniks will die penniless from some incurable disease. Not really a practical scenario. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2010, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assurant-healths-reprehensible-conduct/532849/44 "2010-03-18T17:46:57Z")
> [@Teufelblitz](#): > > They’re just going to replaced by a government mandated set that we can no longer boycott. I am fortunate in that I have access to health insurance through my employer. Even so, I have a choice of one insurer. A “boycott” would mean going uninsured. I am hardly unique. The “boycott” concept is meaningless under the current system. If you boycott Hostess cupcakes, you can still enjoy Little Debbie’s. Boycott your insurance and you can end up broke or dead. Or both. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2010, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assurant-healths-reprehensible-conduct/532849/45 "2010-03-18T18:18:56Z")
> [@Teufelblitz](#): > > The ones who opt out only to save money are precisely the ones who should be refused coverage if something befalls them. This includes me. The debt becomes the responsibility of the person who did not pay into the system. Better or worse, rich or poor, that’s their debt and their legacy. And right here is where your line of argument stops having any practical relevance to real-world scenarios for healthcare. Like it or not, our society is just not going to accept a strict no-pay-no-care system, where those who don’t have adequate insurance or assets are simply refused any needed care and left to die on the sidewalk if that’s how the chips fall. No, we’re going to go on providing emergency and other treatments to people who need them whether they can pay or not, and hospitals and Medicare and insurers will (as you noted) go on eating the bad debt and passing its costs on to the paying customers. And since that’s the way it is and will be, I see no practical reason to refrain from putting **everybody** into the same paying-customer risk pool right from the start. Sure, we’ll be spending some of the paying customers’ money on members of the risk pool who can’t pay, but we already do that anyway, and we’re not going to stop doing it. We’ve put up with this unnecessarily expensive and inconvenient and inadequate system long enough, out of deference to the refuseniks’ short-sighted and unrealistic objections to a universal risk pool. Time to exercise a little pragmatism and stop catering to the refuseniks’ libertarian pipe dreams of every-man-for-himself health coverage. > [@Teufelblitz](#): > > You are also assuming that a large portion of us refuseniks will die penniless from some incurable disease. No, I’m not. An opt-in system will spend buttloads of money caring for non-participants in a wide variety of circumstances. It won’t be limited to the rare instances when a principled refusenik happens to be simultaneously in dire need of care, unable to afford said care, and temporarily incapable of refusing said care. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2010, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assurant-healths-reprehensible-conduct/532849/46 "2010-03-18T18:41:46Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > This is my favorite part: “in accordance with instructions from general counsel not even a record of who was present” > > That doesn’t mean they failed to keep records. That means _their lawyers told them not to make a record_. > > If I ran the court system, any acknowledgment that someone’s counsel had specifically directed that records be destroyed (or not made in the first place) would be _a priori_ evidence of wrongdoing. I think the penalty should be contempt of court – simply hold them in custody until said records are produced. > > Note that, in cases like this where the records were never generated, such records will never be produced. Fortunately a judge can hold someone in contempt _indefinitely._ :rolleyes: I guess if you ran the court system, the Sixth and Eighth Amendments would be used to paper your parakeet’s page? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2010, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assurant-healths-reprehensible-conduct/532849/47 "2010-03-18T18:45:17Z")
No, they’re there to keep the fifth, seventh and ninth amendments separate, silly. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2010, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assurant-healths-reprehensible-conduct/532849/48 "2010-03-18T19:37:56Z")
> [@Teufelblitz](#): > > …EDIT: You are also assuming that a large portion of us refuseniks will die penniless from some incurable disease. Not really a practical scenario. Most likely not. Unless the wheel of fortune turns against you, and you must kneel before the Stalinist idol to protect your children’s health. Then you will kiss Obama’s Socialist ring in about two nanoseconds. And if you won’t, then you’re not worth the fat it would take to fry you. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2010, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assurant-healths-reprehensible-conduct/532849/49 "2010-03-18T23:16:20Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > :rolleyes: > > I guess if you ran the court system, the Sixth and Eighth Amendments would be used to paper your parakeet’s page? The sixth amendment gives the right to counsel – does it give the right to lie to the court? To hide records and misrepresent? Cool! The eight amendment forbids cruel and unusual punishment. In a country that waterboards people, and has indefinitely imprisoned people it _knows to be innocent_, my proposal violates that…how? ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assurant-healths-reprehensible-conduct/532849/50 "2010-03-19T02:51:45Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > This is my favorite part: “in accordance with instructions from general counsel not even a record of who was present” > > That doesn’t mean they failed to keep records. That means _their lawyers told them not to make a record_. > > If I ran the court system, any acknowledgment that someone’s counsel had specifically directed that records be destroyed (or not made in the first place) would be _a priori_ evidence of wrongdoing. I think the penalty should be contempt of court – simply hold them in custody until said records are produced. > > Note that, in cases like this where the records were never generated, such records will never be produced. Fortunately a judge can hold someone in contempt _indefinitely._ It sounds like a great plan to me. Let them rot in jail. Like one poster said, death panels?? We already have them. ---
**Author:** ![sleeping](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/839c29/32.png) [@sleeping](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleeping)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assurant-healths-reprehensible-conduct/532849/51 "2010-03-19T04:05:56Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Not really. From the OP’s article: > > So, they didn’t find a way out of it, because what they did was illegal. I’m assuming it would be fraud. Just like in any business, if you sell someone something, you are obligated to give them that something. Except, in the meantime, those people won’t receive care and may very well die. Most people don’t want to die, even if their families were promised $15M in exchange for their life. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assurant-healths-reprehensible-conduct/532849/52 "2010-03-19T04:29:34Z")
Lets not be too hasty. Is it the families who decide? Does that “m” mean million? How about a nasty old man who thinks its funny to feed your dog Ex-Lax? ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2010, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assurant-healths-reprehensible-conduct/532849/53 "2010-03-19T04:30:10Z")
> [@Teufelblitz](#): > > Public roads and civic improvement are precisely what I feel my tax dollars should be spent on. I have already mentioned that the police and fire services protect my physical property in a previous post. Those count as relevant services to maintain peace in society, and I do not argue that they are essential. I also believe that the military is a necessary expenditure, … [Edit, mine] > > Health care for all is not even in the same park as the above. What a coincidence. The system that you just happened to grow up in turns out to be the kind of system that exactly matches your ideals!! You know, it’s amazing how often that happens - people ‘just happening’ to have exactly the same guiding principles of the country they grew up in, regardless of whether those principles have any logical consistency - gaddamit, they’re right! And it’s even more common amongst those having a poor education, a low intelligence, and yup, nationalistic nutjobs. Congratulations, you’re everything we expected you to be. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assurant-healths-reprehensible-conduct/532849.md?page=2)