Inb4 the dred s word!
I assume “insurgence” means “insurance.”
But everyone is not required to get the same plans. Are you concerned at all about people with expensive pre-existing conditions joining high benefit plans? How do we deal with this problem? Should people without pre-existing conditions have to subsidize the people who do have pre-existing conditions? How is that insurance? Insurance is about risk spreading, not cost spreading.
Should we let people who have been in a car accident get car insurance after the accident and have other customers cover the losses?
No, we should cancel their insurance after we fixed the fender and then let them find another insurer to cover the quarter panel.
The question I’m concerned with is what’s the option for people with expensive conditions they can’t afford, crawl off and die?
I don’t believe in leaving the unfortunate to their misery. So until we have single payer, or some safety net that catches everybody, then yes I’m not concerned.
No, you can survive without a car. If your body breaks down how do you survive? By definition, you don’t.
Not only is forcing insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions at the same premium level as people without pre-existing conditions not the only option, it is a bad option.
People with pre-existing conditions will select plans with high benefits. Other people who would have chosen these these plan will balk at the high premiums. They will select other plans, which will drive up high benefit plan premiums even higher. At some point, the people with pre-existing conditions will not be able to pay the premiums. These plans will eventually die off.
You also take away a real option for people without pre-existing conditions to select high benefit plans. Due to having to increase premiums across the entire risk pool to cover people with pre-existing conditions, the high benefit plans will not longer make economic sense for many people, which will lead to the people without pre-existing conditions getting lower quality health care.
I would also like to see people with pre-existing conditions be able to get affordable coverage, but forcing insurance companies to cover them at the same premium level will wreck havoc with risk pools. A better solution would to be require the insurance company to provide coverage but at a higher premium level that corresponds to the known increased costs. The government could then subsidize a large portion of the increased premium.
Just answer my question instead of trying to dodging it with uncited scare stories you probably pulled out of your ass.
What happens to someone who can’t afford treatment? Are they expected to crawl off and die?
Answer the bloody question. I answered yours.
I didn’t realize that was serious question. Seeing as how people are not crawling off and dying now, they won’t be crawling off and dying if we remove this provision.
And you didn’t answer my question. You just said it was not the question you were concerned with.
I’ll ask again. How do you deal the adverse selection problem?
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE58G6W520090917
Looks to me like they are.
Implement single payer health care and let private be a secondary. In the meantime mandate coverage for everyone with help for those who can’t afford it.
I already said this up thread. Further I haven’t yet seen a shred of evidence that people are buying the most expensive packages. Most people would just get what they need. Those who don’t get insurance get a nicely sized tax so freeloaders are heavily discouraged. It’s the best option with as long we’re still enamored with the crapball system we’ve inherited.
Isn’t that I proposed we do, instead by messing up the risk pools.
Adverse selection is a well-documented phenomenon. People select the coverage that makes the most economic sense for them. For people with expensive pre-existing conditions, high benefit plans make sense if they don’t have to pay increased premium. The freeloaders who don’t get select any plan are not the problem. Even if everyone gets insurance, as long as there are different plans with different benefit levels, there will be adverse selection problems if everyone pays the same premium for any particular plan that he selects.
Yeah, that is a problem. It is why the private insurance market is supposedly in a death spiral. Premiums go up 20-40% a year so only those who are sick or worried about being sick stay insured, others drop coverage. So you have fewer healthy people covering the premiums of the sick, which means another round of 20-40% rate hikes, followed by more healthy people abandoning coverage.
When I was in college I had high deductible insurance I never used, they raised the rates 40% in one year so I dropped the plan. Had I had a severe, expensive illness I would’ve kept the plan.
Supposedly the private insurance system was set to collapse within 10 years due to this death spiral, and Obama’s health reform saved them (part of the reason why AHIP didn’t fight as hard as they did against Clinton’s reforms).
So you have to combine a mandate with covering pre-existing conditions. That or just do the efficient thing, fund health care through taxes and cover everyone, then let administration be run by medical professionals.
Another flaw with the system of pre-existing conditions is it costs money to run it. I think Bill Clinton said it cost $50 billion a year in administration costs for health insurance companies to winnow out these pre-existing condition clauses, or resist paying for procedures due to it. So that is $50 billion more or less wasted.
The OP is absolutely right. Once someone is ill, they no longer are looking for insurance. They’re looking for someone to pay their medical bills. Why should health insurers bear that cost? You might just as well say that Microsoft has to foot the bill. They have just as much of an obligation, and they are a “big, evil” corporation, too, with deep pockets. If that seems ridiculous to you, and making health insurers do so does not, then you completely misunderstand what insurance is. CIGNA and Microsoft each have exactly the same obligation to pay my medical bills if I’m uninsured–none.
I agree we should fix the system. Why isn’t health insurance portable, unlinked to your employer (like car insurance)? And if someone is left without insurance for reasons beyond their control, I agree that society ought to care for them somehow. All of us. But that doesn’t cover someone who chooses not to buy insurance who suddenly discovers he wishes he had. That’s the definition of adverse selection. It undermines the very concept of insurance.
“But people are dying,” doesn’t answer the question, “Why should the cost of a known illness be assigned to an insurer, an entity who was never in the business of covering anything other than the risk of an illness?” That’s what insurance is, the OP is dead right.
Did Microsoft strongly lobby against health care reform? If Microsoft did then sure they should foot the bill for misery they bring.
However say a bill for single payer healthcare was on the table tomorrow, based on previous lobbying patterns, which side would health insurance companies lobby for? Why is the needed healthcare reform so politically unpalatable in this country?
edit: here’s a hint:
http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/08/news/economy/health_care_lobbying/index.htm
Microsoft never had the need to, since no one proposed that they foot the bill for something they previously had no obligation to, unlike health insurers. I think you’re missing the point.
Say a bill for single payer healthcare was on the table tomorrow that obligated Microsoft to cover only the pre-existing conditions, which side would Microsoft lobby for, do you suppose? Would you blame them? Why do you blame health insurers then?
Hell yes I’d blame them. A lot of that lobbying was against the public option. Greed is not an excuse to make the world a worse place.
Why was the public option so bad? Why shouldn’t people in trouble have had a safety net? Oh yeah less profits.
If we’d have had a public option then requiring coverage for pre-existing conditions wouldn’t be necessary, would it? Fuck the greedy assholes, they made this bed, now let them sleep in it.
::shrug:: Not sure how to react to this except to say I strongly disagree. If you would find it contemptible for Microsoft taking exception to someone suggesting they ought to pay for everyone’s pre-existing conditions, well–again, not sure what else to say.
Are you pissed they haven’t stepped up to the plate in the few minutes since I suggested it, the greedy bastards? 
Along with everyone who has insurance.
Health care companies dabble in rescission. They dig up reasons to deny coverage. In front of Stupaks questioning they admitted, refusing to cover a nurse who had severe breast cancer because she did not tell them she saw a dermatologist for acne treatment.
Another was a man who died of lymphoma. He did not tell them he had a possible aneurysm or gallstones. the doctor who found them did not discuss it with the patient. Yet he was booted for not revealing what he did not know he had.
All the companies said they would continue rescission.
Microsoft isn’t part of a wasteful industry that needs reform but fights it tooth and nail. You seem to be stuck on this point. If you lobby for that which results in death, the resulting blood of it is on your hands.
[QUOTE=Pierrot Le Fou]
Along with everyone who has insurance.
[/quote]
Well they can blame the insurance companies who selfishly, lobbied to detriment of their country, and it’s people to satiate their vast greed.
Had we a public option this wouldn’t be needed, but we don’t thanks to insurance company lobbying, so it is needed.
Wasn’t that nice of insurance companies to do for you?
Since you seem to be missing my point regarding Microsoft, I’ll repeat it (with emphasis added): “You might just as well say that Microsoft has to foot the bill. They have just as much of an obligation, and they are a ‘big, evil’ corporation, too, with deep pockets. If that seems ridiculous to you, and making health insurers do so does not, then you completely misunderstand what insurance is. CIGNA and Microsoft each have exactly the same obligation to pay my medical bills if I’m uninsured–none.”
This thread was about pre-existing conditions, right? Just wanted to check…