Anyone who does not have health insurance is facing the threat of financial ruin, or death if they develop a significant health problem.
They buy insurance to protect themselves from that threat, not because they dig insurance companies. They don’t actually “want” insurance they need insurance to protect themselves from a threat.
The insurance companies did not engineer the threat, our entire system of health care engineers the threat. This threat does not exist in many other countries, because they have a system that does not expose people to these risks.
For an interesting read on the history of attempts to make the US a single-payer system, see this article. Article is from 1999, prior to subsequent developments.
The key take-away is that the AMA (among others) has opposed single-payer from the get-go (serious attempts during the FDR and Truman years), necessitating the need for employers to fill the need (during WWII), which enabled the development of the health insurance industry and the three-legged stool I mentioned above (Doctor/Hospital, Patient/Employer, Insurance Plan).
If you don’t like insurance companies playing the middle-man in today’s model in the US, you can thank the AMA.
Can you quote the text of your cite about that last part? I skimmed it and did a search for “employer”, but didn’t find anything that supported your statement. But I could have missed it.
Yah, it does not exactly say “employer”, but does hint at it in the Truman’s Support section:
Truman’s plan died in a congressional committee. Compromises were proposed but none were successful. Instead of a single health insurance system for the entire population, America would have a system of private insurance for those who could afford it and public welfare services for the poor.*
and
After WWII, other private insurance systems expanded and provided enough protection for groups that held influence in American to prevent any great agitation for national health insurance in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. Union-negotiated health care benefits also served to cushion workers from the impact of health care costs and undermined the movement for a government program.
I’m not following the logic here. Are you saying that any system that does not provide some kind of affordable low or no cost insurance is coercive? If that is the case, what is the system coercing the individual to do exactly?
That does not support the statement you made earlier. It just says "this happened’, not “this happened because…”. It also ignores the fact that employers can deduct the cost of HCI, making it more attractive to seek HC from your employer than just buying it yourself.
You have suggested that people choose insurance, as though it’s comparable to choosing Chinese instead of Mexican for dinner. Going without insurance is a huge risk, the vast majority of people who “choose” to go without insurance simply cannot afford insurance. The vast majority of people who can afford insurance, buy insurance.
This is because, the way our system is setup, going without is unbearably risky. It is not risky because it is inherently risky, it is risky because our government has chosen a manner of dealing with health care that causes the risk to exist.
I agree with this (except for the part about coercion and Chinese or Mexican for dinner). Our current health care system in the US is pretty shit, IMO.
Yes and no. The main issue with air transport is that the vast majority of airports are locked into specific providers and opening another route involves a LOT of negotiating and permissions. Now, my buddy Christian was trained as a [military] helicopter pilot, so in the theoretical sense he could buy a retired military helicopter, set it up for passenger service and get the business licensing to start an air taxi service and not have issues flying into new and interesting airports, but fixed wing aircraft do not have that option. [Financing is an entirely different can of worms.]
However, you theoretically can lease a private plane to haul you to somewhere if you don’t like any of the other airlines, if you have something like $80 000 starting cash for the one way trip. Prices go up from there.
My reading comprehension is good enough to inform me that it was the only option you ever suggested, to wit, and I quote: “If you want to have a relationship with your doctor without the hassle of going through the insurance company, don’t engage the insurance company to do so. Feel free to pay the doctor directly out of pocket.”
Your only suggestion, and one which has been pointed out to you at least three times is a ludicrous one, a statement of ideology and not of practicality.
No, I’m sorry, but when it’s self-evident that claims adjudication is the essence of how commercial insurance works, when leading health care economists point to this clinical meddling as a major intrinsic weakness of private health insurance, then you most definitely do have to provide insight into your musings. Otherwise we are forced to conclude that you have no point to make and that my statements were correct.
Or you can do what I did and get a pilot’s license so you can your own flying - about $10k these days. Then there’s the cost of either purchasing or renting an airplane, which isn’t exactly cheap.
Fact is, I found it easier and cheaper to get a pilot’s license and rent airplanes than purchasing private individual insurance in this country. But I digress…
Assume: For problem X there exists a solution set that includes A, B, or C.
Statement 1 - Me: if you want to solve X, then you can do A.
Statement 2 - You: You said A is the only option!
Statement 3 - Me: No that’s false, I said if you want to solve x, then you can do A.
Statement 4 - You: A is rediculous! What else can be done?
Statement 5 - Me: I don’t give a shit, what you said [statement 2] is false.
Statement 6 - You: If you don’t tell me what B and C are, then that means you only believe A.
Do you see where you went wrong? This is a status check on the level of logic being employed.
How about you drop the ridiculous strawman argument.
I initially referred to your “suggestion” quite correctly as “an utterly bizarre ideological rationalization that makes no real-world sense”. You have repeatedly taken the position that the patient simply has the option of paying out of pocket for medical costs. Repeatedly. In posts #17, #138, and #147. When it was pointed out to you how ridiculous this is, you started asserting in #149 that you never claimed that this was the “only” solution. I never said you did – I said it was the only one you ever suggested. Which is true.
If there are other solutions to avoid private insurance meddling at the clinical level, you are strangely coy about telling us what they are. Health care economists have been very clear about the fact that the degree of clinical intervention by insurance bureaucrats is inextricably tied to the payment system, so either tell us why they’re wrong or please cut the bullshit. Of course there are other solutions – just not solutions within the context of the system you are defending. If you’re an advocate of de facto single-payer, just come out and say so and we can agree on that, instead of ridiculous pontificating about the diametric opposite – patients paying all their own health care out of pocket.