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Senate Finance Committee HealthCare Bill Released
Message
From
23/09/2009 10:27:48
 
 
To
22/09/2009 17:55:35
John Ryan
Captain-Cooker Appreciation Society
Taumata Whakatangi ..., New Zealand
General information
Forum:
Politics
Category:
Other
Miscellaneous
Thread ID:
01424750
Message ID:
01425741
Views:
47
>The only way to hold down costs is to include as many healthy people as you can in the insurance pool so you can use the surpluses from healthy members to help pay the costs of others. Medicare effectively does this by sharing its costs across most of the community. The insurers don't do this- they risk-shunt, trying to gather healthy customers to themselves and pushing sick or risky people elsewhere. That's the main form of "competition" between insurers, because it allows them to extract surpluses as profit rather than to cover care for people as they age or get sick and need care. So you'd need to legislate to prevent this sort of discrimination and as soon as you do that, you need individual mandate as well so people don't check in and out of insurance to cover healthcare needs as they occur.

There is never an "only" way unless you narrow your focus too much. Loosen the insurance regulations, reform the legal climate, incentivize new technology investment, and let the market go to work. None of the current schemes being debated addresses limiting the 3rd party payor. The concept of insurance has been corrupted in the health industry to be an umbrella solution instead of a risk management tool. As a result, a fundamental flaw emerges in nearly every cited system. The actual costs are hidden from the consumer. Once consumers regain access to pricing information and a direct involvement in the payment process prices will come down.

As to the Medicare line above...what part of broke isn't clear?
Wine is sunlight, held together by water - Galileo Galilei
Un jour sans vin est comme un jour sans soleil - Louis Pasteur
Water separates the people of the world; wine unites them - anonymous
Wine is the most civilized thing in the world - Ernest Hemingway
Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance - Benjamin Franklin
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