If a person already has a disease, you're no longer buying an insurance policy, you're buying care. An insurance company should not be required to offer a policy without excluding coverage for that disease (that statute already exists, but I'm just stating that I believe it's the right way). It would be the equivalent of insuring a totalled car and purchasing collision coverage so that you could get it fixed.

If a company wants to offer coverage, at the premium they believe is a fair risk, great. However, they should not be required to. Something that this country has gotten away from, which is part of the reason for the ever escalating costs, is the notion that you pay for your regular health care, but have insurance in case an illness or injury happens in the future. With the advent of HMOs, people began to believe that for a monthly premium, you should never have to pay for anything. This lead to people complaining about co-pays being unreasonable because they were already paying their monthly premium. The next logical step to these people is that the plan should be a right that everyone has. The whole idea of catastrophic health insurance is foreign to most people at this point.

So Jason, to answer your point directly, yes, I believe it's OK to turn down a person for coverage because of an existing condition. No company should ever be forced to pay out money that is, in all likelihood, going to exceed any amount they are receiving for the policy premium. It might sound harsh, but when you look at it, these kind of things would end up running insurance companies out of business, so we would be no better off.


There are a bunch of things that I believe, very strongly, would bring down health care costs severely:

1) Tort reform. As I've stated before, this is the single most important factor. Ever-increasing malpractice insurance premiums constitute the single largest cost in the industry. Caps on damage awards, and loser pays all court costs. This would mean less frivolous suits, because no one would want to risk paying through the teeth for a lost suit, and it would mean that any time the doctor or hospital was found not at fault, they wouldn't be paying all the costs for no reason.

2) For any care that is not a life-threatening emergency, you must be able to prove citizenship, or pay up front (with cash). If you can prove citizenship, but you are not paying up front, you must sign a legally binding payment agreement, which is just as strong as any other credit agreement. I don't see any problem with costly care offering long-term financing, but there must be legal ramifications of failing to pay.

3) Get rid of HMOs. Return to people paying for regular care, and insurance being simply for emergencies. Premiums will come down in a huge way, and the costs of regular care will come down because of competition, as well due to the lack of bureaucracy required to get the payments from the HMO. Something that could replace the HMO would be privately organized buying groups for medications and/or regular care. Think about it this way: if a group of people got together and organized, they could collective bargain with any company, doctor, or health care facility, to negotiate a price for a large group of clients. The only risk here is that they do not turn into that the unions did, which is a pocket-lining power trip for the leadership.

4) reform the FDA. I have read countless examples of the FDA squashing alternative medicine because of corruption involving the pharmaceutical companies. The FDA is, like all other government agencies, supposed to be an impartial, independent firm to oversee factual studies to assure the safety of products to hit the market. But as with any government agency, they have been corrupted immensely, and have too much power.

All these things aside, non-profit organizations would still be around to raise money for people with severe illnesses who can not afford the care. These would probably flourish more once health care reforms stated above were in place, because costs would be lower, and people in general would probably have more money to donate.

There is absolutely no need for the government to "offer competition" to the health care market. There are already 1300 health insurance companies out there. Plenty of competition if the playing field is cleared up a bit. The government offering going to be fair competition, because they will be subsidised, just like every other thing they run.

Also consider that part of the plan is to simply cap costs by writ. They will effectively cap salaries for health care professionals, making it less attractive to get into the industry. We already have a supply problem. Without government intervention, the health care industry has still seen an increase in employment, even while unemployment in general continues to rise. If the draw to get into the field is diminished, we'll be seeing an even lower supply/demand ratio, causing the need for rationing. It will also increase waiting periods for care.






Edited 2 time(s). Last edited Friday, July 03, 2009 9:30 AM

"So Jason, to answer your point directly, yes, I believe it's OK to turn down a person for coverage because of an existing condition. No company should ever be forced to pay out money that is, in all likelihood, going to exceed any amount they are receiving for the policy premium. It might sound harsh, but when you look at it, these kind of things would end up running insurance companies out of business, so we would be no better off."


see i have to completly disagree with this, say i work for company x. i have chrones disease, i have full coverage. oh, company x goes out of business now out of no fault of my own i lose my insurance because my company goes under. now i wont have any insurance for what i need it for most. and do to the fact that insurance companies dont have to cover me im prety much black balled from insurance. could you imagine the millions of people out there that would get absolutly no covergage, because now insurance companies dont have to cover them at all. so my only real option is to just not get a job, go on welfare and let the goverment (you taxpayers) pay for my medical expenses. now because someone with an ilness knows they will never get coverage again they are not pretty much at the mercy of their employer because they cannot aford to be fired, they cant take the risk.



no matter wether you have a preexisting condition or not. you are buying care, eventually you will need care. health insurance is a little diffrent then car insurance, car insurance you may never need. health insurance you will always need and always use. not to mention there are those disesse and such out there that can be in remishon for years or near the end of someones life before the crop back up. you can't point out who is goign to get a disease so its no diffrent then pulling names out of a hat and go sorry number 311 but you will never have health insurance, your screwed. sorry your going to die.


insurance companies dont make their money on what they take in from users versus what they pay out for medical expenses. insurance companies make their money by taking what they bring in and investing that money to make them money. you can take in a case that will cost you money and still not have it hurt the bottom line. if soeone has a condition where they may not need medical help until say 10 years down the line, the money made on investing their monthy payments could pay for that operation even though 10 years from now it cost more then what the person origonally paid in.




it doesnt seem like healthcare to me to exclude healthcare and let die the people who need it most. thats basically just like saying were giving this to those that dont need it, and those that dont need it your screwed.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/sndsgood/ https://www.facebook.com/#!/Square1Photography

The problem with what you're saying though is that someone should get charged more for what they have. What if you don't have a pre-existing condition?

The biggest problem with what you're saying is that auto insurance is not for the person, it is for the person YOU hurt. That's why many states require a minimum of liability, for the other person, not YOU. If you get extras (collision, comprehensive, personal injury etc etc) for yourself, then yes YOU are paying more for YOURSELF.

Health insurance is for the person insured, not the other. This is why it's discrimination. The simple fact is, if you don't want it or need it, then don't get it. No one is forcing to do anything for yourself when it comes to buying health insurance.

You claim that you're healthy? Then ask your company to drop you off their plan and save yourself the money.

I'm healthy myself. Until I got food poisoning one night at Cheesecake Factory (a decent restaurant) and had to go to the hospital. I didn't ask for it. I don't have any existing conditions. And I'm not fat.



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Viper98912 wrote:

You claim that you're healthy? Then ask your company to drop you off their plan and save yourself the money.

wow... that's like saying if you claim you're a safe driver then as Safe Auto to drop your coverage and save yourself the money because you're a safe driver.
Then someone hits your car

Same case, you can be healthy but you can get a virus real bad and then you're screwed.

I claim I'm healthy but the only reason why I have medical insurance is in case I have to go to the ER and that's the first thing they ask and they treat you better PLUS I can't imaging the medical bill I will have after is done
that's why is called Insurance because you never know when you needed. I can at least have that peace of mind.


"is not that I don't care, it is not my responsibility"

Need IT


"is not that I don't care, it is not my responsibility"

So what about the people that genuinely have jobs that can't afford it, because it's not offered by their job? Screw them?

My dad once told me this analogy. Imagine all the people in this nation's heartland that don't know how to use a computer. Isn't that incredible in today's modern society?!

What about those people who have known nothing but farming because they were raised in a tight family that the only way they could survive was to strap on the boots and hit the farm at age 5. If not, everyone would starve to death or die of poverty. Because as important as our farmers are, they are sometimes some of the most poor, even though they probably work harder than many people.

I have an engineering degree with a decent paying job with good benefits. Sometimes you want to say "well, why didn't you go to college to better yourself?". But as time has gone on, not everyone goes to college, for many reasons. Family reasons, financial reasons, intelligence reasons, personal reasons, etc etc etc. You realize that there's a "job" out there for everyone, based on your beliefs, intellectual level, etc, and there's NOTHING wrong with being a CEO or being a janitor, as long as you do your job well and take pride in it.

What if that janitor can't afford health insurance? Is he any better than the CEO? Should he be left out of the health insurance pot? There's a lot of hard working americans in this country that can't genuinely afford it, but that doesn't mean they haven't tried or are less of a person than anyone else. These are the people we need to help. And yes unfortunately, there's many out there who are too lazy to do it, but it's just an assumption that has to be absorbed.



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There's a lot of good people out there, and you can't leave them behind. Because everyone at some point in their life needs a hand.



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Viper, although your arguments sound impassioned, the big problem, as I see it, is that they are based on emotions. ----not fair, mean, what about poor-dumb-farmers?--- There are always Dr.Phillish said stories, but they are far and away from the norm. btw, most farmers in the midwest are rather well-off. The concept of Farmer Brown plowing the back 40 with his trusty mule.... aint happening anymore.

"What if that janitor can't afford health insurance? Is he any better than the CEO? Should he be left out of the health insurance pot?" once again, yes. If its that important to him, he should cancel cable tv, cell-phone, never eat out, go on vacation, drive only used cars + move his family into a one bedroom shack. Health insurance isn't a right. Its a service you purchase. If you can't afford it, then you can't have it....unless you force someone else to pay for it for him. Would you let the janitor drive to work w/0 car insurance, just because he can't afford it? I mean, if he got into an accident, the other policy holders would eat the cost. Its all good.


Sndsgood, "you can take in a case that will cost you money and still not have it hurt the bottom line." I'm sorry, but that doesn't make any sense. Anytime something costs me money, it is affecting my bottom line. Perhaps what you meant to say was : -you could take on a cast that costs you money and still have a lot of money left over.-

As far as the Chrones disease: check out this site...it could be a big help to your "friend" www.drmirkin.com

Also, if your company goes belly up, I think you can purchase COBRA. .....i think.

.



“Poor Al Gore. Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented. Oh, oh, the irony!” -Jon Stewart

ScottaWhite wrote:If its that important to him, he should cancel cable tv, cell-phone, never eat out, go on vacation, drive only used cars + move his family into a one bedroom shack.

I find this to be an extremely ignorant statement. While there are some who do this and it's dispicable (sp?), there are those that don't.



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While you do try to make some ground and sense with some of your posts, I hope you realize that many of them contain generalizations. Unfortunately there is no "one size fits all". Generalizations are what have partially kept this country back for 200+ years.

Do you agree with Bush that we needed to spread democracy to the middle east? Because all 7 billion people on this earth all want the same thing, to live in a democratic republic? Operation Iraqi "freedom" and our mission to spread democracy to the world? Do you really think that a people who are highly based on their religion and their culture and their history want a capitalistic society such as ours?

Do you really think that the health insurance "problem" is because of a bunch of lazy, fat, inconsiderate @!#$? All one group, because they are at fault, and it is their fault?

(Not directed at anyone -> Everyone has an opinion. And it's "their" fault because "they're" wrong. And "they're" ideas don't work. Yet "you" don't have an answer or solution. Or at least, a well thought out one at that. Because if "you" did, we wouldn't be having this discussion.



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