It is my object here to write a short post. Here goes:
The private American health care system is dysfunctional because:
1) Insurance companies avoid people who might actually get sick. This would be the old and those with existing conditions.
2) Insurance companies avoid people who cannot pay premiums. This would be children and the poor and working poor.
3) Insurance companies are incentivized to deny claims. From their point of view, every claim paid dents the bottom line.
Doesn’t work. Can’t work.
Piece of Mindful 
I’m all for commercial insurers abandoning the first $2 mil for each and every citizen from date of citizenship and let the govt take over. People could then buy whatever catastrophic coverage they deem appropriate. With this change there would need to be a provider and facilities assessment and attention to the deficiencies. Healthcare providers should never have to collect below their true costs of service.
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Splendidly off-point!
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Perhaps it’s time to seize the opportunity to transcend demonization. The downside is that it destroys rants. 😉
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My point is exactly this: The reason why we have so many uninsured, so many free riders, and why the government had to take over health care for seniors, children and poor people is not because there are bad people in the private sector. It’s because the system is dysfunctional. It cannot work. It has too many design flaws.
No rant intended.
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Mark, if the system is dysfunctional, then remove the constrictions as per my suggestion for govt to take over the working layer of $2 mil.
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You’re dodging! Why can’t the private insurers operate without government having to take away the risky parts?
Deal with the question at hand – is the model at fault?
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Mark, you wrote: ” It cannot work. It has too many design flaws.”
If it can’t work, I don’t understand your further question as to why private isurers can’t operate in this area of risk.
You are not making any sense.
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You’re looking for a Blackwater/Halliburton deal for them – guaranteed market, guaranteed profit. I want them to just go away. They are not doing anyone any good. They’ve never provided so much as a Band Aid to anyone, in exchange for billions in overhead.
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Perhaps we are in violent agreement. If govt takes over the working layer and commercial insurance writes only catastrophic, aren’t we there yet????
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Are we in the same conversatoin?
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I was wondering the same thing.
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Mark, above I point to infrastructure deficiencies. Today, I read where Obama is concerned as well: http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.ssf/2009/04/obama_administration_concerned.html
It is a matter of priorities.
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I agree there are infrastructure deficiencies. Your point?
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Prioritize. Otherwise it’s just rearranging the chairs on the Titanic.
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One, we get insurance companies out of the picture, and free up $400 billion in overhead. Top priority. Second, we extend coverage to everyone.
Shortage of GP’s? Incentivize.
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In my opinion, you have your priorities upside down.
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Priority two is impossible without one.
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Unless a person believes in a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, then serious attention must be focused on adequate number of healthcare professionals, equipment, and facilities. Otherwise get ready for even more stressed professionals leaving their calling and the resultant triage and rationing to follow. Those people are just not going to work 24/7. A myopic focus on insurance misses this major point. See again the news article that I linked.
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See below
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Saw this from a blogger, Directorblue.
While our health care system is certainly imperfect — because all humans are imperfect, including doctors, nurses, hospitals and insurance companies — they are more perfect, more competent, more informed, more capable than all of the bureaucrats to whom they’ll be forced to report: a bureaucracy that will make all decisions about your health care.
This is not a debate about quality of care, it’s about control of care.
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The rest of the industrialized world offers ample evidence that you are wrong.
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Craig – you guys are myopic in your focus away from insurance. I don’t blame you. It’s a failed model, doesn’t work, can’t work. But your baseline philosophy is that markets always work. When faced with evidence like this that you are fundamentally wrong, you dissemble.
I don’t blame you. This comment thread is littered with statements from you that address everything but the insurance problem. So tell me, how do we make insurance work? Subsidize it? That seems to be your answer. Halliburtonize it.
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Mark, I have no idea who “you guys” are. We seem to be back at the beginning. Now, when Obama nationalizes health insurance providers like he is doing with autos and financial markets, you will have your dream come true. Then when you wake up, you will experience ther growing real problem.
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Obama appears to want to subsidize the insurers, as does Baucus. The “nationalizations” you speak of are temporary affairs – as soon as they are profitable, they’ll be turned back over to the private sector. It’s called “corporate socialism”. We’ve always been that way. Obama is nothing new.
I don’t claim that health care has easy solutions. A government system would be hard to manage, not not so messy as having thousands of private profit centers trying to dump their costs on one antoher, on providers, and on the government.
I only ask that you just once look at the success other countries have had, and also to dwell, if even for a moment, on why the structure of private health insurance makes it unworkable. You are yet to address that matter. You dissemble.
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Huh???? Look at my first comment. Let govt take over the working $2 mil layer for every citizen which would capture over 90% of all claims. The cat coverage over that amount would be cheap.
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