Thread: Healthcare Insurance Reform

Government run healthcare would be a disaster.

There are several problems with our current healthcare insurance system. Not every one can get health insurance. The insurance companies cherry pick. They are in it to make a profit. They exclude high-risk individuals. This maximizes their profit. The whole point of insurance is to spread the risk around. If you are born with diabetes, the insurance companies must be required to accept you at the same rate as another person your age. If you smoke cigarettes, they should be able to charge more money.

They exclude the poor. The poor get the government to pay for their health care. The poor only seek health care long past the cost effective point. We need cost effective health insurance for all Americans.

There should be at least four different plans.

A.
B.
C. Cost Effective Catastrophic
D.

The Cost Effective insurance should cover things like immunizations, prenatal care, cancer and accidents like falling off a ladder. It should not cover lung cancer for smokers. It should not cover pre-mortem surgery. It should cover angioplasty. It should not cover quadruple coronary bypass. Bypass surgery has the same 5-year survival rate as patients who receive neither bypass nor angioplasty. It does make the pain of angina go away for 3-4 years, until the new veins clog. It leaves 1/3 of the patients crippled. The “unneeded” veins in the legs turn out to be needed. There are medicines, which treat angina much cheaper than bypass surgery. A medical board needs to define the coverage. I am not qualified to decide. My present insurance company will not tell me what is covered and what is not under their various plans. Each plan varies from company to company. At least this way it will be published.

Everyone must have “C”.

It should have a high deductible like 2,000 $. The cost of submitting forms is outrageous. There will be no preexisting condition exclusion. You must have this coverage. The employer should not pay for it. Don’t ask me how to enforce it.

A.
B.
C. Cost Effective Catastrophic
D. Deductible

It is obvious that people who make the minimum wage can’t pay a 2,000 $ deductible. The insurance companies may offer Deductible insurance. Many HMOs will offer a plan with “C” and “D” combined. I had Kaiser Permanente HMO in California. It was a good cost effective plan. It was almost ½ the price of the PPO I am now in.

The government is picking up the cost of health care for the poor now. The county hospitals are a fiscal disaster. The government should pay for private health insurance for the poor. The government is already paying. The government run county hospital system is a disaster. Get the government out of the health care delivery system. Let the poor choose which insurance company they want.



A. Augmented.
B.
C. Cost Effective Catastrophic
D. Deductible

Any insurance company may offer Augmented insurance. This is above and beyond the Cost Effective Catastrophic insurance everyone has. People who smoke may elect this. A separate premium will be charged. People, who still think coronary bypass surgery is good, may elect this. They may cover premortem surgery. (My grandmother had premortem surgery. She died from colon cancer a few days later. Medicare paid the surgeons and hospital a handsome fee.) This will be a completely free market with no government involvement. There may be preexisting condition waiting periods. They must publish exactly what is covered. You may want it. I do not want to pay for it.

A. Augmented.
B. Boondoggle
C. Cost Effective Catastrophic
D. Deductible

Any insurance company may offer Boondoggle coverage for acupuncture, herbalists, chiropractors, and podiatrist etcetera. Some insurance companies may offer chiropractor coverage in the Augmented plan. It is a completely free market. Let the buyer beware. You may want it. I do not want to pay for it.

Rationing Healthcare


The key to controlling healthcare costs is rationing. Not every new experimental procedure will be covered in the Cost Effective Catastrophic plan. Educated medical professionals will define what is cost effective-not some person in personnel. This is what they do at Kaiser Permanente. Not every new drug will be offered under the cost effective plan. Only when a drug has been shown to blow the generic drugs away should it be added to Plan “C”, or if the generic drugs are not tolerated for a particular individual. Any insurance company may pay for any new drugs under the Augmented plan, for an additional premium.

Binding arbitration must be required. The lieyers have driven up the cost of healthcare. They take more than 1/3 of any settlement. This drives up the cost of malpractice insurance. Physicians now perform unneeded procedures to cover their ass. Only 3-4% of cesarean sections are medically needed. Why are 25% of babies born by cesarean section? Lieyers. Also insurance companies pay more for cesarean sections. Some doctors deliver 50% of their babies by cesarean section. Some deliver only 3%. Juries can not tell the difference between an undesired outcome and malpractice.

Tort reform is needed. Lieyers should be held liable for twice the legal fees for all torts they initiate which they loose. See how they like it when their insurance skyrockets.

Get Medicare out of it.


The government should only be involved in setting the rules for the cost effective catastrophic insurance regulations. The Sherman antitrust act curtailed most of the excesses of unbridled capitalism. The public utilities commissions regulate the monopolies of utilities.


We need slight government regulation of basic health insurance. This will keep basic health insurance available to all at a reasonable price. More advanced healthcare will be available to those who choose to pay for it.

Insurance companies SHOULD make money, otherwise they would not exist and then nobody would have insurance and we would be forced to have government insurance only.......Insurers made .6% of total healthcare expenditures last year. Insignificant.

Originally Posted by JBH100

Insurance companies SHOULD make money, otherwise they would not exist and then nobody would have insurance and we would be forced to have government insurance only.......Insurers made .6% of total healthcare expenditures last year. Insignificant.

Health insurance companies are the cause of the problem with healthcare costs. They have gotten themselves in to the pockets of our pols. And they don't represent the puchaser. They protect the stock price. It is a system incapable of self regulation.

Originally Posted by mikeyy

Health insurance companies are the cause of the problem with healthcare costs. They have gotten themselves in to the pockets of our pols. And they don't represent the puchaser. They protect the stock price. It is a system incapable of self regulation.

Once again you couldn't be more wrong. The entire insurance industry is just a reaction to the rising costs CAUSED by government involvement in healthcare. No one even needed insurance before the government became involved in heavily regulating the industry (in the 1950's). Healthcare is practically the only technology that has GONE UP IN PRICE! Let's see, now the U.S. government pays for over 50% of healthcare costs in the United Stats and the prices are astronomical.

But what is your answer? MORE GOVERNMENT!!! This has been your answer in every thread I can remember you posting in. You want MORE of what created the problem in the first place.

This complete lack of economic understanding is what has allowed the government to take the power to regulate (a power not authorized in the Constitution, but one people like you seem only too glad to give up) and basically create the insurance industry you now so despise. Worse, you don't even recognize the true enemy.

This is how governments use people's lack of sound economic reasoning against them every day to support all manner of ridiculous regulation and programs that don't work all the while burying the taxpayer under a mountain of debt they may never recover from.

Here, start your economic education at the premier U.S. economic thinktank so you won't continue to post up the same type of reasoning that allows people to believe in Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.

Ludwig von Mises Institute Home

Originally Posted by JBH100

Insurance companies SHOULD make money, otherwise they would not exist and then nobody would have insurance and we would be forced to have government insurance only.......Insurers made .6% of total healthcare expenditures last year. Insignificant.

Insurance shouldn't be in the healthcare game at all. Healthcare is the only life-saving/preserving service that is privatized, and it's a failure. Police departments, fire departments, etc are non profit, gov't (local) agencies that serve the community very well. There's no reason that we can't include locally run healthcare agencies to provide healthcare for EVERYONE in America. (citizens and guestworkers alike) If your police dept or fire dept was suddenly privatized and allowed a profit motive, the situation would deteriorate to match the mess that INS run healthcare is in. IMHO

Originally Posted by namvet69

Insurance shouldn't be in the healthcare game at all. Healthcare is the only life-saving/preserving service that is privatized, and it's a failure. Police departments, fire departments, etc are non profit, gov't (local) agencies that serve the community very well. There's no reason that we can't include locally run healthcare agencies to provide healthcare for EVERYONE in America. (citizens and guestworkers alike) If your police dept or fire dept was suddenly privatized and allowed a profit motive, the situation would deteriorate to match the mess that INS run healthcare is in. IMHO

So let the government take it all over. Poor idea and you know it, you see it everyday. Then it would work as well as the DMV, the IRS, the INS who sends visas to the 911 hijackers months later, SS(bankrupt), Medicare/Medicaid(Bankrupt,fraud), agencies which take 20+ years to do a job that takes 1 year, and on and on and on. The gov is horrible at running things so why let them run more and more. It is a poorly thought through idea. Cost are high because there is no connection between the consumer and the true costs, its all free right?

Originally Posted by namvet69

Insurance shouldn't be in the healthcare game at all. Healthcare is the only life-saving/preserving service that is privatized, and it's a failure. Police departments, fire departments, etc are non profit, gov't (local) agencies that serve the community very well. There's no reason that we can't include locally run healthcare agencies to provide healthcare for EVERYONE in America. (citizens and guestworkers alike) If your police dept or fire dept was suddenly privatized and allowed a profit motive, the situation would deteriorate to match the mess that INS run healthcare is in. IMHO

Good luck getting people to go to school for 8 years to earn a government wage. You want Walter Reed healthcare for the entire nation?

What you are also failing to realize is that our current system IS NOT PRIVATIZED. The government already foots the bill for 50% of healthcare in this country hence the astronomical costs. Just like it costs twice as much to send a child through public school vs private school. We have 10K baby boomers a week entering medicare and set to completely overwhelm and bankrupt the ENTIRE COUNTRY according to the Comptroller General of the United States. The government is the problem and they have tricked you into believing more government is the answer!

I know you are well meaning, but more harm has been done to this country by the "well meaning" than those with bad intentions from the get go and again I attribute it to the lack of a basic economic education. Until you are ready to really put in the effort to learn economics you will keep believing profit is evil and continue to want to grow the very cancer that is causing the problem.

Ludwig von Mises Institute Home

Originally Posted by JBH100

So let the government take it all over. Poor idea and you know it, you see it everyday. Then it would work as well as the DMV, the IRS, the INS who sends visas to the 911 hijackers months later, SS(bankrupt), Medicare/Medicaid(Bankrupt,fraud), agencies which take 20+ years to do a job that takes 1 year, and on and on and on. The gov is horrible at running things so why let them run more and more. It is a poorly thought through idea. Cost are high because there is no connection between the consumer and the true costs, its all free right?

Don't tell me what I know. Notice you didn't bother to cite fire and police as badly run local gov't agencies. Depends on who administers it. Free? Hell no. Tax dollars pay for fire and police don't they? Do people complain about paying tax dollars for those life saving services? What I DO know is that as long as the fox (big ins) is in charge of the henhouse, it will only get worse. Fewer services for more money and poor decision making that could and does cost lives.
When tax dollars go for essential services at least those sevices are monitored and an accounting has to be made to the taxpayer. Right now, folks don't even have the ability or the info to shop for services. We just pay any damn thing we're are told it costs, no matter how outrageous. Keeping things on the current course is the poorly thought out idea.

Originally Posted by namvet69

Don't tell me what I know. Notice you didn't bother to cite fire and police as badly run local gov't agencies.

Again this is a job where you have a high school education and then go through an academy for just a few months. It's apples to oranges.

Depends on who administers it. Free? Hell no. Tax dollars pay for fire and police don't they?

A private system would more than likely do a better job.

Do people complain about paying tax dollars for those life saving services?

They don't know any better.

What I DO know is that as long as the fox (big ins) is in charge of the henhouse, it will only get worse.

You don't know who the real fox is unfortunately. You are actually inviting the real fox in.

Fewer services for more money and poor decision making that could and does cost lives.

Walter Reed Hospital ring a bell to you?

When tax dollars go for essential services at least those sevices are monitored and an accounting has to be made to the taxpayer. Right now, folks don't even have the ability or the info to shop for services. We just pay any damn thing we're are told it costs, no matter how outrageous. Keeping things on the current course is the poorly thought out idea.

You have a very naive and childlike view of the way government works.

I'm sitting here at my desk ironically enough at the offices of one of the few NOT FOR PROFIT Medical insurance companies in the US.

I'm hearing total BS, and I'm hearing stuff that sounds like it's on the way to being rational. NOT FOR PROFIT Medical insurance companies are the way the patient paying end should work in healthcare

I have tons of real life knowlege and if anyone is curious about how the employer/patient/insurance end of the industry works let me know, I'll answer objectively.

Also.......if you let the goverment run healthcare going to the Dr will be like going to the IRS or the DMV. It'll be run by attitudinal uncaring unionized "I'm on my break you can't fire me" employees