We are off to “climb” a fourteener today. At our age, that means walk up the trail ever so slowly and tortuously. The walking and uphill does not bother me, but the lack of air does. It’s like wind sprints.
Anyway, at one of those Democratic web sites someone made the inevitable comparison between casualty and health insurance. Yours truly cannot let such intellectual blunders go. No sir.
Your argument fails … in equating health care and casualty insurance. It would be possible to segregate insurance for catastrophic health events for young people. Then comparison might be valid.
But the need for basic health care is pretty much a certainty, so that the insurers need to move out of the way. In that area, they are mere brokers who impose huge overhead on everyone. To save money they deny basic care, impose co-pays and deductibles and out-of-pocket and even refuse to pay many claims. They do this knowing full well that once saddled with large insurance premiums people are reluctant to take on additional costs, and so avoid basic care. So health insurance becomes a roadblock to public health. Indeed, since ACA I’ve seen insurers back away from paying physician office visits in total, not even counting them towards deductibles or out-of-pocket limits.
Also note that most health care costs are for the aged, and that we all travel that road, so that Medicare is not so much insurance as an intergenerational transfer. But also note that before we had Medicare health insurers, knowing the high certainty of claims, refused to cover most seniors. Again the insurance model fails.
Casualty insurance and health care coverage are, in my view, two separate functions that are not comparable.
Entering the mind territory of another, especially a Democrat convinced that wisdom is expressed in doctrine of a bought party, is pointless, but the point needs to be made anyway. Health insurance companies are mere rent seekers who have roped off our health care system for private exploitation at the expense of our greater good.
Piece of Mindful 
There’s about 150 prop/casualty insurance companies vs. 18 HC companies.
Maybe someone should explore the differences between the two numbers?
Could it be crony capitalism? State/Federal controlling the marketplace?
Seems to me you’d want to increase the numbers of providers.
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Odd, as when companies buy up one another to eliminate competition, as has happened in health insurance, free market ideology says that we should not interfere. What do you propose?
Anyway, Swede, if there were any hope for the private insurance model, some country would have tried it. I don’t think even your vaunted Hong Kong uses it. It doesn’t work for a simple reason: perverse incentives.
Switzerland uses private health insurance with caveats: They are not allowed to profit on basic care, they are not allowed to turn away applicants. On the other hand, all Swiss citizens are required to carry insurance. those who cannot affordit are subsidized. That, to me, seems a workable plan.
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You’re right, other countries do function better in relation with Insurance companies.
Of course Sweden has less than 10M people, the Swiss number about the same. It’s been said that there could be as many as 20M border jumping freeloaders sending $10B south into Mexico annually in small bills.
But hey we educate them, feed them, stitch up their gunshots and imprison them. The Swiss and Swedes have better control of their borders.
Of course if you really want a free market we should be allowed to purchase insurance from the Swedes, Swiss, or even Hong Kong without any governmental interference/restrictions.
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I’ll assume you are still impentrable regarding the effects of NAFTA. I’ll assume that you have some evidence to support your contention that the efficiency of a health care system is dependent on population size, and that you’re not just grab assing. I’ll also assume, since you didn’t take trouble to respond to it, that you did
tonot read the article above. It’s about why private health insurance doesn’t work, anywhere. You might try addressing that point, or is your ass tired?LikeLike
Nothing private about private health insurance.
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Long form explanation, govts effects costs and care.
Paul Ryan’s site Quote: “Rising health care spending also is the major contributor to the unsustainable projected increases in the Federal Government’s two major health programs, Medicare and Medicaid, which are the main contributors to projected chronic Federal budget deficits. The effect of this spending growth is even greater than that of lengthening life-spans and the forthcoming retirement of the baby boomers. “Long-term deficits are driven not only by the aging of the population,” says Dr. Isabel V. Sawhill, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “[T]hey are much more driven by increasing health care costs per capita . . . The demographics play a role. But if you look at the numbers carefully you will see that the problem has been health care spending per capita that has been growing 2 to 3 percent faster than per-capita incomes or per-capita GDP.” During the period 1999 through 2008, the monthly premium for seniors who participate in Medicare has risen at nearly the same rate as those in private insurance, from $45.50 to $96.40.
Furthermore, the government health programs rely on the infrastructure of private health care. As noted by the Congressional Budget Office [CBO]: “[M]ost [public] services are furnished by private providers. For example, Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries receive most of their care from physicians, hospitals, and other providers that deliver services to the general population.” Therefore, inadequacies or inefficiencies in private health care services affect Medicare and Medicaid as well. It is another reason why correcting problems in the government health entitlements also requires addressing inefficiencies in the market.
But if rising private health costs drive the growth of Medicare and Medicaid spending, the converse also is true: Medicare and Medicaid themselves contribute in their own way to medical inflation. These two programs account for roughly 37 percent of all health care spending nationally (including the State share of Medicaid), according to the most recent figures from CBO. Another 10 percent comes from other public programs, including those of State and local health departments, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and workers’ compensation. Such large infusions of government funds inevitably stoke rising medical costs.”
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Thank you. I am always Interested in what the icons of the right wing think about things, and I appreciate your bringing their thoughts to us. Of course, they are essentially one-sided. That is all that is required if them. They address their comments to people who are predisposed to agree with them, and so exclude all arguments from other perspectives. Ergo, it sounds reasonable and convincing to you, since you were already convinced. You are merely looking for material to buttress “your” arguments as you travel the blogs.
Ergo, you bring us the most hollow of materials provided not by advocates of good public policy. Instead you offer sophistry of the agents of wealth, good enough for you, but having
nowno power over non-aligned people. You probably don’t get how, when shown such convincing rhetoric, that we don’t buy in. Mysterious!Each and every point above can easily be refuted in total or placed in a larger context that renders it moot. But it’s not worth doing, as experience has shown that your intellect is not resilient, and so you are unable to fathom thinking beyond black/white. Debate is pointless.
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Parting shot before I go.
“When fully retired, 78 million baby boomers will collect, on average, more than 85 percent of per-capita gross domestic product ($40,000 in today’s dollars) in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. Each passing year brings these outlays one year closer, which raises their present value.”
Bitching about public vs. private health Insurance is akin to re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
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You should try that same faulty logic on military spending. Same result. Everything is unsustainable when placed on an exponential curve.
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