It being a dull day, I decide to respond to what jim rozen
foisted 16 Aug 2004 17:19:47 -0700 on
rec.crafts.metalworking , viz:
In article , pyotr filipivich
says...

.most will not take the well insured while living in a refrigerator
box route.

Not an option. Insurance is a gamble (_Life_ is a gamble!), so t\you
pays your money and you takes your chances. Or not.

But the point Gunner and I were making was, the insurance companies
are making it harder and harder to avoid that gamble.

The insurance companies are merely responding to the costs they have to
reimburse. Those costs can be traced to two major developments in the last
several decades: increased medical technology, and trial lawyers.
The Increase in medical technology are all the neat drugs, therapies,
and gadgets which make diagnosing and treating more aliments possible.
We're diagnosing aliments which ten years ago we could neither diagnose or
treat. We're also treating conditions which ten years ago were "terminal"
Take a look at what the Trauma Centers are doing in lifesaving. People who
would have died are now surviving. Of course these treatments cost money,
but "As long as you have your health..."
Which leads us to the other factor: trial lawyers suing for
"malpractice", and the juries which agree with them. Again, we've gotten a
notion that medicine is infallible, effective and never fails. When people
die, or do not make a 100% recovery, there is a lawyer there to counsel a
law suit for "damages". [It is an old saying: "Two lawyers can make a
living in a town to small to support one."] Not a problem in theory, but
we don't live in Theory. And when juries decide that a doctor did bad, and
stick him with a large penalty (knowing that the insurance company will be
paying it anyway), what is the Insurance Company going to do to handle the
increased cost of doing business? Quit?
So, these two factors cross in the hospital, as the physician orders
more tests to document they didn't ignore anything which a lawyer might use
as evidence of "malpractice". And some of the charges are increased to
cover the overhead, including their own malpractice premium.

Oh yeah, and then there is the "free medical" benefits, where all
visits to the hospital are covered. More cost to The Plan.

Sure you can say, 'can't live without it.' But at some point
as the cost escallates, you have to make hard choices. And
many are choosing to simply opt out of the system. And many
of those are the demographic that the insurance companies
should be actively courting, to keep them *in* the system
paying premiums.

Happened here in Washington state. The State came up with a plan to
cover all residents, open enrollment and no existing condition
restrictions. naturally enough, a lot of people delayed getting insurance
until they were going to need it. Oh yeah, did I mention the insurance
companies decided to write no more medical policies in this state?


tschus
pyotr

--
pyotr filipivich.
as an explaination for the decline in the US's tech edge, James
Niccol wrote "It used to be that the USA was pretty good at
producing stuff teenaged boys could lose a finger or two playing with."