On Oct 19, 5:26*pm, Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article ,
*"Robert Green" wrote:

Having the goverment operate as one of the insurers in a pool of many has
the potential to keep costs in line far better than anything short of going
back to having no insurance at all. *It would provide a baseline for
comparison and I believe would keep costs better in line. *I think that's
true primarily because of how the insurers squawked at the "public option."
On one hand, they say the Federal government is incompetent in everything it
does, then, on the other hand they claim they would be seriously undercut by
the government's massive negotiating power. *Which is it, health insurers?

* That isn't how it worked here. Indeed, with MCare paying about 60
cents for every dollar the Mean Old Insurance companies pay for similar
diagnosis (and MCaid less 50 cents) I would submit that government is
actually ADDING to costs by cost shifting.



Perhaps insurance should be limited to true, bankrupting disasters and not
for routine office visits.

* *I would submit (I've doing that a lot lately) that is exactly why
what we have now can't be called insurance. Insurance is generally
defined as taking a rare but costly risk and spreading it out among a
bunch of people. Health insurance as currently structured takes a minor
risk (going to a doctor, etc). Can you imagine the cost of your
homeowners if it included routine maintenance as payout?

--
People thought cybersex was a safe alternative,
until patients started presenting with sexually
acquired carpal tunnel syndrome.-Howard Berkowitz


Or grocery insurance. We should have insurance policies that will
allow us to get our groceries for free, that would be cool. And to
make it even better grocery stores should not have to put prices on
groceries, dont need public pricing because the insurance just pays
for it.

Insurance is a financial instrument to protect yourself from
devistating events. Health insurance should not be used for a flu
shot or stitches and other minor things. It sould protect you from a
cost that you would not normally have that is over the amount you
chose to protect yourself at, as paid for on your policy. If its
gonna be the payment vehicle for everything from a sneeze to someone
who wants to talk to a counselor because her husband bowls too much,
then it is not insurance anymore, its an expensive middle-man that
obfuscates the true cost of everything and manipulates the market to
determine who gets what. It can do this primarily because it has full
control over secret pricing. It does not matter if this so-called
insurance is govt or privately managed.