If they were diagnosed while they have a portable policy, they’re golden. That’s what I’d like to see. If they currently have diabetes and no coverage, we need to figure out what to do about that as a society. But it isn’t insurance. This guy who needs treatment for his diabetes doesn’t need insurance (for that, at least). He needs someone to pay his medical bills. Why not make Microsoft pay for it? They have as much of an obligation as CIGNA.
ETA: That is, assuming he is currently uninsured.
I actually changed this, thinking I corrected it. :mad:
Less restrictions tends to mean lower expenses. There.
Seems to me it’s pretty easy to avoid the problem of interstate insurance being debated here. States can set their own level of regulation for insurers to operate within their state, and if El Cheap-o Insurance Broker operating out of Mississippi doesn’t meet California’s stricter standards, they can’t sell insurance in CA.
Am I missing something?
That’s basically what happens now. You want to sell insurance in Idaho, you need to file your products and forms there, have a license to sell there, and agree to be governed by their regulations. And the people of Idaho can only buy within that framework. They can’t drive across state lines and purchase from a different carrier, subject to those state laws. If you live in Idaho, you’re buying Idaho-flavored products, period (which I think taste like potatoes).
Do mortgage payments increase with the age of the homeowner?
Why do you think there is an imbalance of information for insurance? Which side do you think has less information than they need?
They would, if the risk of mortgage default increased with age. And any bank that didn’t, would go out of business. Simple math.
If no one state is inadequate, then every state is adequate, right? Which I guess means some can be better than others, but none are truly bad. But as Brickbacon’s truly excellent post above shows, since some states have different requirements as to what to cover, wouldn’t all the companies go to the states with the fewest requirements? If so it makes insurance worse for the people of the states with more requirements.
Wait, if it won’t drive prices down, why allow it?
I’ll try to be easier to follow in the future. Companies today cut people from the rolls because they are expensive. Giving them more latitude to do this in the future (by allowing them to pick which state to set up in) isn’t going to reduce the number of people plucked from the rolls.
I’m sorry if you find that incoherent, that might be the cognitive dissonance you’re hearing. 
I never said that evil equals most profits. And weren’t you just high-and-mighty about being mischaracterized?
An insurance company isn’t a company that makes widgets. It takes in premiums and spends them on overhead and treatment. It can’t increase profit unless it increases premiums, lowers overhead or spends less on treatment. Spending less on treatment is the obvious way to go, and allowing the purchase across state lines is what will facilitate that.
Blue Cross/Blue Shield disagrees with you:
And once you can cross state lines, every single insurance company will flock to the state with the least costly set of regulations and inflict those state’s regulation on the whole country. Which has happened with credit cards.
People in Idaho get Idaho flavor now, but after the change you want, everyone in the country will be eating whatever flavor makes the most money for the insurance companies.
The most important thing about this, is whatever socialism-fearing state in the south decides that the free market (peace be upon it) should have ultimate control and deregulates entirely will get a huge rush of insurance business. And then everyone in the country will be forced to live by their set of rules.
The very idea of selling across states lines is asinine. As far as I can tell it accomplishes two things. 1. Makes insurance companies more profitable. 2. Fulfills an ideological desire.
Really? Can you point out the part where they say portability is not a viable business model? Because it reads as if they’re discussing Obamacare.
The insurer. I know if I am going to have a baby or two or three, if I am going to watch my weight, if I am the sort to comply with doctor’s orders, if I share needles or have unprotected sex or skydive.
Insurance is a bet. If one bettor has a lot more information about the odds than the other, then the one with more information is always going to come out ahead in the long run. You can’t profitably sell insurance if you only sell it to people who think its a good bet to buy it. That’s why we have group insurance–every member of the group is required to have it (or demonstrate they are covered somewhere else)
I quoted you the part where BC/BS thinks it will be hard to get young healthy people to voluntarily buy health insurance without a mandate. Withiout a mandate, portability is dead. You want portability without a mandate. Your idea is dead. You have failed to show any data that proves otherwise.
No, it’s not. You’re confused. No denying covering for pre-existing conditions is dead without the mandate, something acknowledged by all involved, including the Obama administration. Portability does not depend upon a mandate. Life insurance, for example, is portable and manages to exist without a mandate.
You’re conflating the issues. Portability depends only upon large enough risk pools to be viable, something that would be a virtual certainty in a scenario where anyone could avail themselves of that option and no longer be handcuffed to their employer. Adverse selection would be a factor, but the larger the risk pools, the less so. What is it, 60 or 70% of health insurance is group plans associated with employers? Take that pool of people and insure whomever is still inclined. Are you really suggesting most people would take a pass, even if they are currently healthy? I disagree–an enormous pool of insureds would still exist. Unless, of course, a pre-existing condition rule is passed alone, in which case, I don’t know why anyone would sign up for insurance until they needed it.
BC/BS disagrees with you. I am more inclined to think they know what they are talking about.
They don’t disagree! Your cite has nothing to do with portability.
But it has everything to do with your silly notion that portable insurance won’t be done in by adverse selection.
Right, in the same way that the life insurance industry was destroyed by it. Keep trying.
I would generally agree with the above. The problem is that choices would not be available, people don’t understand what they are getting, they will not be priced appropriately for a great number of people, and people don’t know what they want or need.
For example, how much does the standard treatment for stage 2 prostate cancer cost? What is your likelihood of getting that cancer? Does your insurance cover drugs like Provenge and Avastin? What is your lifetime cap, and how likely are you to reach that? How satisfied are members who have your insurance? What percentage of claims do they reject? How big is their network relative to other insurers? How much experience do the doctors in their network have on average? How often are they sued? When the average person can answer all those questions, then you might have a functional market.
Why not? These are not altruistic entities, they are rational actors out to make money. The lowest standard of care means they pay out less, which mean they make more money. Pretty simple really. It may not result in horrible coverage for everyone, but coverage for anyone who is sick will be far more expensive. Besides, if a less restrictive environment wouldn’t lead to worse coverage, then why don’t all these companies cover things like autism intervention and diabetes treatment in every states? If we assume that those things work, and that people in those positions need them, then why doesn’t a company cover it everywhere they treat people?
Why not?
Of course they still need insurance. I am not really sure why you think they wouldn’t. To your first point, people are generally not desirous to pay for it. That why they have to be indirectly compelled to via legislation. Carriers wouldn’t provide it because the vast majority of people are not going to affected by something like that. So if health insurance company A decides to cover it, only people who need, or might need that coverage will sign up there. Why would a single guy who doesn’t want kids, or a couple with non-autistic kids sign up for a plan knowing that they are subsidizing a bunch of people who are affected by something they aren’t affected by? This is just common sense.
I have presented plenty of evidence for that. I would think Alabama’s framework is inadequate if you have a kid with autism. More importantly, the current framework would be gutted by legislators in order to attract jobs. Did you read the link about SD and credit card companies? There is no reason why a state like Wyoming or Alaska wouldn’t cave to insurance companies in exchange for a few jobs and some campaign donations. Again, when the governor of SD says that he allowed a bank to actually draft the legislation, I have to wonder why you have such faith that couldn’t happen again:
Please explain why that happened?
Maybe in a business 101 class, but not in the real world. Do you actually pay attention to the the things companies and people do? Very few have any interest in being fair unless there is some economic benefit to them. There usually isn’t, so they aren’t fair. I assume you are under the impression that a company with a bad product with eventually get its comeuppance once the consumers find out. That does happen every now and then. The problem with applying that logic to healthcare is that you only find out your coverage is bad when you try to use it. And once you use it for anything expensive, you are basically radioactive. So there is no reason any other company would want to have you are a customer either. So there is no pressure to improve services because the people are ignorant or not worth having as customers.
No they’re not. As soon as it comes time to re-up, their rates will be jacked sky high. Again, there is zero upside for insurance companies to cover sick people. Once you give any indication you might cost them more money, they are going to charge you for it.
Of course he needs insurance. If you are proposing that insurance should only cover catastrophic temporal illnesses and unforeseen accidents, then what do you suppose people with chronic illnesses should do? What do you expect cancer patients, diabetics, and people with a host of other illnesses and diseases to do?
Fewer restrictions means lower expenses because they cover fewer things. If they cover fewer things, that is worse for their customers who need those things covered. That’s why it’s a race to the bottom.
Yes, I do. As a matter of fact, I work for a company in the financial services industry that makes it a priority to treat customers fairly, disclose contract features, and to generally err to the customer’s side. I know plenty of other companies who operate the same way. Companies that have tremendous repeat customer rates enjoy that because they believe there are no conflicting objectives between customers’ satisfaction and being profitable. In fact, they are essentially linked.
Now, I realize the bread and butter of this board are notions like the ones advanced here–that short-term profits drive all corporate decisions, the customers’ needs or feedback are dismissed summarily, etc., etc. I reject that “given” from experience, limited though that is. We really have nothing left to debate. It’s axiomatic to some that corporations’ and customers’ objectives are, in a very important sense, diametrically opposed, and “successful” companies will naturally sacrifice their customers’ well-being in order to achieve short-term profits. That is a shitty, failing business model. “The lowest standard of care” will lose you customers to someone who can do better, just as it does in any other industry.
Seriously, we’re not getting anywhere, and no one is going to convince the other, it is clear.