Really there are only 6 states with a higher per-capita income? I’ll assume you’ve just inverted the second statistic. But in any case, depending on what statistics you look at SC is currentlythe 4th poorest state. Maybe the state motto can be “Thank God For Mississippi”.
No thanks, I will not do your homework for you and rank states by liberalism. But according to my cite here are the top 5 in per-capita income: Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, and Maryland. The bottom 5 are: Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Kentucky. All 5 at the top went for Obama in 2008, all 5 at the bottom went for McCain.
And looking at thissite you can see that all 5 of the bottom states received more in Federal spending that they paid in taxes and 4 of the top 5 paid more in Federal taxes than they received back in spending.
You mean like insurance companies accepting people with pre-existing conditions? Or insurance companies lowering their premiums? Or cell phone companies selling monthly services instead of discounted phones+2yr contracts? Or record companies offering cheap (sub $10) CDs? In reality over the long-term you see companies emulate what’s profitable in each other and they move toward parity. You need to take a step out of theoretical land and move towards the real world.
This illustrates a profound lack of understanding of how insurance works. If anyone else thinks that insurance works this way please raise your hand, leave the room and get around to educating yourself.
It’s difficult to know where to start addressing your assumptions, but let’s start with “if they are hit hard by an increase in claims…” You say, if that happens then their profits go down. I say maybe, but so what? They still make a profit, everyone gets paid. Maybe you mean to refer to a situation where they get hit so hard that they make a loss? In that case, it was extremely poor planning on their part (if you know how insurance works in the real world) and everyone wants them to fail. But even if they make a loss, they can still stay in business, and everyone still gets paid.
You were right in one thing when you said this is just the cost of doing business. But can you imagine if payment for healthcare was not run as a business?
It has a deleterious effect in every way. It was a horrible business model from the start. Companies fold the cost into their products making them less competitive. The employees are estranged from the cost and have little reason not to abuse it. Insurance companies are only involved in profit. They don’t want to provide good coverage if it inhibits more profit. By every measure it should be blown up and redone.It bis an adversarial system . The players are not working together to provide a good cheap system. There is no incentive for insurance companies to cover more people or to make it better. They just deny coverage to make more money. It is a mess.