Comments on: Health Care

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 04:29:01 +0000

If the terms of the auto bailout are actually enforced, whoever has the contract for the auto makers’ health insurance will go belly up, as they only way to meet the terms is by eliminating the health insurance for the workers.

The numbers for the uninsured will just continue to grow, and the insurance companies will disappear because they have priced themselves out of the market.

These MBAs that are in charge of all of these corporations don’t seem to have much of a grasp of the fundamentals of being in business.

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 03:10:59 +0000

The way things are going anyway, they (the health insurance companies) are going to take a huge hit anyway. Who can afford insurance? Especially with unemployment increasing.

Susie Madrak @ C&L had a post about that a couple days ago:

States Making Deeper Cuts in Medicaid”

Of course, if the Gov would just pull the troops out of Iraq/Afghanistan and stop throwing bales of money down those black holes, they would have more money for important things. 🙂 But that’s just me. 😉 LOL

It actually amazes me that Americans are so stupid they are not all in the streets screaming for the Gov to do that. Seems like a simple equation that even most Americans should understand. Guess not. And yeah, I know… most don’t actually have a clue what’s going on. *shrug* Well, ignorance is NOT bliss, as they will soon discover. 🙂

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 00:02:33 +0000

There are assigned risk pools for car insurance, homeowners insurance, the entire flood insurance program is a government assigned risk pool. Insurance companies don’t want to risk anything; they want a guarantee of maximum profits. That isn’t what capitalism or insurance is all about.

Good liberals want single-payer; real fiscal conservatives want single-payer; business owners want single-payer; the uninsured want single-payer; the states need single-payer.

I am still waiting to hear a valid argument for not going to single-payer. I want to hear why we should continue to support a failed model. “We’ve always done it this way” is not a valid response.

By: hipparchia

hipparchia — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 23:26:15 +0000

yeah let's experiment on old people [medicare advantage and part d] and poor people. you'd think that good liberals would rise up in outrage, but noooooo, now they want to experiment on sick people [the uninsured].

By: hipparchia

hipparchia — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 23:20:50 +0000

you’re almost correct. the insurance companies want to be in the business of taking money from healthy people and refusing to pay for sick people. it’s a sweet gig, can’t let the guvmint, and certainly not the little people, muscle in on that.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 22:28:41 +0000

And the way the “Village” people are talking the one thing they don’t want to happen is to stop the looting, because it generates large campaign contributions.

I experienced an excellent system in Monroe Country, New York that was operated by Blue Cross/Blue Shield. If you were between jobs, all you had to do was to take two courses at the local community college, and health insurance was included, that’s how cheap it was.

I paid for a quarter when I left and moved to SoCal and it cost me under $250, and that was a premium package that covered everything with no deductibles.

BC/BS has gone the “for profit” route and that package is no longer available at any price. The whole system has broken down, going from almost everyone covered, to only about half of the people covered because the cost has skyrocketed.

The insurance companies don’t want to be in the business, but they don’t want anyone else to be in it either.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 22:10:46 +0000

To quote a bad movie: “Follow the money.”

Those three magic words describe it all. The current U.S. “health care” system is a barely-organized system for looting that only coincidentally happens to provide any health care. And the looters are in charge.

– Badtux the Cynical Penguin