Why Have Medical Insurance?

Insurance is the process of spreading the cost across the whole group. A huge cost to an individual is merely a blip on the total. Everybody pays and everybody wins. Never making a claim could be viewed as a waste of insurance cost. But it's the best possible outcome for you.

The total insurance payout is equal to the total premiums paid. Well, they factor in the cost of the huge infrastructure required to make this happen and the payments on the CEOs' yachts and the drug company profits.

If it were not for preexisting conditions clause, nobody would buy car insurance until after they had an accident. Ditto for health care.

Insurance is a very good thing that we all should have. What we need to do is cut the out waste and corruption out of the system and quit paying for the CEOs' yachts.

Some people can't afford health insurance and that's a sad thing... but it's the way the world works. Survival of the fittest.

Do you work for nothing?

Yet somehow the CEO is subhuman?

If they can't afford healthcare, f*ck 'em.

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Rick C

If they can't afford healthcare, give 'em Obamacare. That'll surely sink 'em (and everyone else with them).

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f you had a pre existing condition you could be charged more for one year a nd after a year of being covered your payments would be lowered as if you h ad no pre existing condition.

In the short term. In the long term everything gets paid for by taxes - eve ry now and then the government makes a productive investment, but the right always privatises such assets when they get into power, selling them off t o their friends for a lot less than they are really worth.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

Krw gets something right for once. In fact compulsory health insurance is charged as a constant fee (independent of income) everywhere I've paid it, so it doesn't work as a progressive tax.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

The FEDS is us! Mikek

It's not the way the whole world works - most advanced industrial countries have universal health care. The US is unique in not having a mechanism tha t can deliver that.

Survival of the fittest doesn't come into it. Infectious diseases can kill the fittest, if they are allowed to become epidemic, and universal health c are is the best protection against epidemics.

The US had a scare a few years ago, with drug-resistant tuberculosis. The u nder-insured would get treated for tuberculosis, but would stop paying for treatment when they felt better, before the infection had been completely c leared, which set up an ideal environment for breeding drug-resistant strai ns of tuberculosis.

For seriously drug resistant tuberculosis, you have to go to third world co untries, but for a while the US was third world enough to have it's own str ain.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

The US pays the top 1% of it's income distribution 17% of the total income paid out. This is about twice as much as anywhere else.

The people getting that kind of money seem to be preforming worse than the international competition, rather than twice as well.

The CEO's yacht is actually being paid for with money that could be better spent elsewhere in the CEO's organisation.

One the contrary, US CEO's exhibit super-human rapacity, without exhibiting the kind of competence that might justify an extravagant salary.

CEO's are well paid because they are good at gaming the system to their adv antage. That kind of skill doesn't seem generalise to making the companies they work for all the efficient or effective - people only seem to be getti ng promoted on the basis that they won't upset the gravy train that is payi ng all the other executives remarkably generously.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

This is what happens in every other advanced industrial country, and it does work out cheaper - two thirds of the price or less - for essentially the same quality of service for everybody that only the fully insured get in the US.

Sort of. In the UK top level employees get BUPA on top of their national health cover, which pays for things like private rooms and fancy food when you do have to go into hospital.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

Actually, they should emulate the rest of the advanced industrial world, an d get in a whole lot deeper. What works in Europe works better than what yo u've got in the USA and costs about two thirds of the price per head (or le ss - but the UK National Health Service is a bit spartan, if very cost-effe ctive).

That takes government decree. It's the way it works in the Netherlands. Sma ll hospitals aren't allowed to tout for work by offering low prices on oper ations they don't do often - the insurers have noticed that if you don't do at least ten operations of a particular sort a year, the outcomes are noti ceably worse.

Medical markets don't. Your money or your life is a remarkably effective sa les tactic, and medical establishments are remarkably enthusiastic about mi lking that kind of advantage for all that it is worth.

The entire US medical profession practices "professional birth control" by making it remarkably time-consuming and expensive to qualify as a medical p ractitioner, keeping the supply constrained, and the demand (and prices) hi gh.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

50% of the population pay 97.3% of the federal taxes. The other 50% of the population pays 2.7% of the federal taxes. Now, which half do you want to pay as much tax as you do? Mikek

It also pays for fast access to fancy scanners for

maybe, for faster surgery [1].

It does /not/ pay for better medical care, and if something goes wrong during an operation at a private hospital, you are put into an ambulance and taken to a state hospital!

[1] Often surgery waiting times are limited by access to /experienced/ surgeons (e.g. kidney and spinal ops) where you don't want someone operating with a "Haynes service and repair manual" in one hand!

Silly question. When Mitt Romney said much the same thing, I went to the tr ouble of working out who wasn't paying taxes. It turned out to be primarily age-related - children don't start paying taxes until they get a job, the retired don't pay much tax on their pensions, and mothers with kids tend no t to be in paid work.

Why not find a useful statistic with which to preface your totally pointles s question?

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

l health cover, which pays for things like private rooms and fancy food whe n you do have to go into hospital.

In the Netherlands smaller hospitals are not allowed to carry out the less frequent operations - it was noticed that when a team does less than ten op erations of a particular sort per year, the outcomes weren't as good.

On the other hand the Dutch do reduce any queues that may build up by shipp ing the patients across to Germany (mostly) where they buy the operations f rom German hospitals. Officially sanctioned - and inspired - medical touris m.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

Just so.

In the UK there are moves towards concentrating expertise in "centres of excellence", but it is easy (and profitable) for the media to dream up headlines resisting that.

That can happen in the UK, but it is unusual.

Companies are free to add supplementary insurance as they see fit to cover things that are not otherwise covered (dental, glasses, travel insurance, upgrades to private room, that sort of thing).

I'm not sure you can raise enough money directly from a payroll tax without negatively impacting employment, especially at the low end of the scale. John's probably right- the least worse alternative is a consumption tax.

--sp

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Best regards,  
Spehro Pefhany

Well, if those statistics are accurate (I do not have your reference handy) it might have to do with the fact that the latter 50% doesn't really have any money with which to pay it.

The difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals don't necessarily believe that the latter half are all intrinsically scumbags for being unable to pay their fair share, and we don't necessarily believe that the former deserve a humanitarian award medal simply by virtue of the fact they are well-to-do.

Unfortunately this is sort of at cross-purposes to what the Evangelicals on the Right believe, which is in essence predestination, and have a very simple answer to the deep question "Why do bad things happen to good people" which is: they don't.

Similarly, fund the roadways entirely from taxes on the sale of tires?

And, fund police departments from taxes/fees imposed on people who are crime victims?

And, fire departments from fees on folks who've lost their homes to fire?

*Weigh* each home's trash containers and bill them, proportionately, for the cost of disposing of that trash?

While I have no real bias towards whether or not YOU choose to drive, walk or sit at home -- the latter two options exercised to AVOID paying for the roads through "tire purchases" -- I *do* have an interest in whether you AVOID paying to keep yourself healthy because you feel you can "tough it out" to save those costs. Because in your "compromised" condition, you can put me, and others, at risk -- without our willingly accepting that risk ENTIRELY FOR *YOUR* BENEFIT (it's not saving *me* any money for YOU to avoid treatment; indeed, it can cost me as my more responsible use of those services now bears a higher proportion of their costs leading to higher "taxes" on my use of them).

Likewise, I *want* you to call the fire department when your home is ablaze -- instead of trying to put it out yourself. I'm not keen on *my* home being put at risk by your fire-fighting incompetence.

Or, letting criminals feel it's "safe" to victimize THIS neighborhood because its residence don't call the police -- to AVOID paying those taxes.

Or, pile up trash on their premises to avoid the trash collection fees (taxes).

If we each lived on little ISOLATED islands, I wouldn't care if you let your house (hut?) burn to the ground, if you let gangs victimize *your* island (i.e., *you*), if you opted to avoid treatment for some disease or illness, let the trash pile up and attrack flies/vermin, etc. *You* would be the only one trading YOUR dollars (fees/taxes) for your inconvenience/risk/safety/etc.

But, when we share a community, *I* (and LOTS of others) end up subsidizing your "savings", and without my consent (lest it impact your FREEDOM).