Little-Acorn
Well-Known Member
A headline I saw today, said that Obama officials are warning of "devastating consequences" if the District Court ruling striking down the mandate in Obamacare, is upheld by the Supreme Court. And one of the "devastating consequences" is, that insurance companies will have great difficulty obeying another part of Obamacare: the govt command that they must take applicants who have pre-existing conditions.
A guy has cancer, say, but has no insurance. Maybe he lost his job, or failed to make payments on his old policy and they cancelled him for that reason, or whatever. He applies to a new company, who looks at his medical records and says, "Sorry, but you've got cancer already, and we can't cover something you already have."
It's the thorniest problem people with such conditions face. He can go bankrupt trying to pay for enormously expensive cancer treatments (if he hasn't already), and he might be denied some treatments (but don't all American hospitals have a policy of treating ALL who need treatment whether they can pay or not?). But most people would rather make adequate arrangements to pay for their treatments, whether by insurance or by other means, if they can.
But what is the insurance company for? What was their purpose in starting the company?
Insurance is a gambling game, pure and simple. If you grab 10,000 people off the street (pretty big street), you know that some of them will get sick or injured in the future, and some won't. Some will get severe conditions, others will have relatively mild problems, and a few will even die from their condition. Those events are absolutely certain - they will happen, and everyone knows it.
And the insurance company knows that the costs for the entire group will be relatively constant. They will have to pay for about this many chemotherapy courses, about that many appendectomies, that many casts on broken arms, this many stitches, a few heart transplants, and this many funerals. The more people in the group, the more certain the company can be, about the total amount they will eventually pay out. They take the total, add some for profit/operations/etc., divide it by the number of people, and come out with the amount they will charge everybody to pay for it all. And the individual amount comes out fairly reasonably - an amount people would like to pay, for the security of knowing that if bad things happen they will be taken care of without going bankrupt. (Simplified version, but you get the idea)
Those people know that many of them will get only minor illnesses or no illnesses at all. Yet they are still happy to pay, because each one of them knows he cannot predict whether HE will be among the lucky ones. He's not paying for treatment, he's paying for the security of knowing treatment will be there IF he needs it.
The guy with cancer, is in a completely different situation. He's not seeking security "in case" something happens. He's seeking three million dollars, period. Or whatever the costs of his cancer treatments are. And when he goes to an insurance company and they decline, they are essentially telling him, "Sorry, but we're not selling treatment. We're selling security, nothing else. It's the only thing we've ever sold, and we've never intended to sell anything else. But security isn't what you're trying to buy here. Sorry, we can't help you - we're not selling anything you want, and we've never sold it, ever."
The guy with cancer can keep banging on their door and demanding they give him something that will cover his condition, but that won't change the facts. The insurance company is a gambling company betting on future events, not a we-will-pay-for-your-present-problems company, and that's all they have ever been or intended to be.
And government can pass a law forcing them to pay for the guy's present cancer treatments... but that's just forcing them to do something they never intended to do or claimed they would do. Why not pass a law forcing Michael Moore to pay for the guy's treatments instead? Or Bill Gates, or Oprah, or the guy who won last week's Super Lotto? There is no more reason to force those multimillionaires to pay for the guy, than to force an insurance company to do it. Or a car company. Or Apple Computer, or Archer Daniels Midland. Or any other company. Just because insurance companies sell something that looks superficially similar, doesn't mean they should now be coerced into paying for something they never said they would, never contracted with anybody to pay for... any more than Apple or ADM ever did.
Insurance companies do NOT sell medical treatments, or payments for medical treatments. They sell the security of knowing your treatments will be covered... whether you ever wind up needing them or not.
Becausew they sell that security, is NOT a reason to suddenly force them to pay for something completely different. The government might just as well force IBM or Caterpillar Tractor or the Catholic Church to pay for that guy's cancer treatments - it would be EXACTLY the same as forcing the insurance company to do it.
The guy with cancer has a dreadful problem, and one that he never asked for or did anything to deserve. Yet it will make his remaining life miserable, and may well kill him.
But randomly picking some company or isolated group of companies, and forcing them to pay for it, is just as unfair to those companies as the guy's cancer is unfair to him.
Is there a solution to this problem? Not only the life-threatening problem the cancer guy has, but the general problem of people with pre-existing conditions, severe or otherwise.
Assuming there is a solution, is a noble thing, and provides good motivation to people to work hard to find it. But that assumption doesn't mean the solution is easily found... and doesn't even mean there is any solution at all. In the final analysis, there may be NO WAY to solve the problem.
But randomly picking the wrong "solution" - doing something just as unfair to other people who never asked for it or deserved it - is not the way to find the right solution. In fact, it probably makes things even worse. It might even take people off the quest to find the right solution, and so harm far more people with pre-existing conditions.
So what should we do?
(I mean "we" in the general sense - all the people on this planet, acting independently and cooperatively. Unlike liberals, when I say "we", I don't mean government forcing the rest of us against our wills.)
What should WE do?
For the reasons I have pointed out, forcing insurance companies to accept people with pre-existing condition, isn't the solution. What IS the solution? Is there one at all?
A guy has cancer, say, but has no insurance. Maybe he lost his job, or failed to make payments on his old policy and they cancelled him for that reason, or whatever. He applies to a new company, who looks at his medical records and says, "Sorry, but you've got cancer already, and we can't cover something you already have."
It's the thorniest problem people with such conditions face. He can go bankrupt trying to pay for enormously expensive cancer treatments (if he hasn't already), and he might be denied some treatments (but don't all American hospitals have a policy of treating ALL who need treatment whether they can pay or not?). But most people would rather make adequate arrangements to pay for their treatments, whether by insurance or by other means, if they can.
But what is the insurance company for? What was their purpose in starting the company?
Insurance is a gambling game, pure and simple. If you grab 10,000 people off the street (pretty big street), you know that some of them will get sick or injured in the future, and some won't. Some will get severe conditions, others will have relatively mild problems, and a few will even die from their condition. Those events are absolutely certain - they will happen, and everyone knows it.
And the insurance company knows that the costs for the entire group will be relatively constant. They will have to pay for about this many chemotherapy courses, about that many appendectomies, that many casts on broken arms, this many stitches, a few heart transplants, and this many funerals. The more people in the group, the more certain the company can be, about the total amount they will eventually pay out. They take the total, add some for profit/operations/etc., divide it by the number of people, and come out with the amount they will charge everybody to pay for it all. And the individual amount comes out fairly reasonably - an amount people would like to pay, for the security of knowing that if bad things happen they will be taken care of without going bankrupt. (Simplified version, but you get the idea)
Those people know that many of them will get only minor illnesses or no illnesses at all. Yet they are still happy to pay, because each one of them knows he cannot predict whether HE will be among the lucky ones. He's not paying for treatment, he's paying for the security of knowing treatment will be there IF he needs it.
The guy with cancer, is in a completely different situation. He's not seeking security "in case" something happens. He's seeking three million dollars, period. Or whatever the costs of his cancer treatments are. And when he goes to an insurance company and they decline, they are essentially telling him, "Sorry, but we're not selling treatment. We're selling security, nothing else. It's the only thing we've ever sold, and we've never intended to sell anything else. But security isn't what you're trying to buy here. Sorry, we can't help you - we're not selling anything you want, and we've never sold it, ever."
The guy with cancer can keep banging on their door and demanding they give him something that will cover his condition, but that won't change the facts. The insurance company is a gambling company betting on future events, not a we-will-pay-for-your-present-problems company, and that's all they have ever been or intended to be.
And government can pass a law forcing them to pay for the guy's present cancer treatments... but that's just forcing them to do something they never intended to do or claimed they would do. Why not pass a law forcing Michael Moore to pay for the guy's treatments instead? Or Bill Gates, or Oprah, or the guy who won last week's Super Lotto? There is no more reason to force those multimillionaires to pay for the guy, than to force an insurance company to do it. Or a car company. Or Apple Computer, or Archer Daniels Midland. Or any other company. Just because insurance companies sell something that looks superficially similar, doesn't mean they should now be coerced into paying for something they never said they would, never contracted with anybody to pay for... any more than Apple or ADM ever did.
Insurance companies do NOT sell medical treatments, or payments for medical treatments. They sell the security of knowing your treatments will be covered... whether you ever wind up needing them or not.
Becausew they sell that security, is NOT a reason to suddenly force them to pay for something completely different. The government might just as well force IBM or Caterpillar Tractor or the Catholic Church to pay for that guy's cancer treatments - it would be EXACTLY the same as forcing the insurance company to do it.
The guy with cancer has a dreadful problem, and one that he never asked for or did anything to deserve. Yet it will make his remaining life miserable, and may well kill him.
But randomly picking some company or isolated group of companies, and forcing them to pay for it, is just as unfair to those companies as the guy's cancer is unfair to him.
Is there a solution to this problem? Not only the life-threatening problem the cancer guy has, but the general problem of people with pre-existing conditions, severe or otherwise.
Assuming there is a solution, is a noble thing, and provides good motivation to people to work hard to find it. But that assumption doesn't mean the solution is easily found... and doesn't even mean there is any solution at all. In the final analysis, there may be NO WAY to solve the problem.
But randomly picking the wrong "solution" - doing something just as unfair to other people who never asked for it or deserved it - is not the way to find the right solution. In fact, it probably makes things even worse. It might even take people off the quest to find the right solution, and so harm far more people with pre-existing conditions.
So what should we do?
(I mean "we" in the general sense - all the people on this planet, acting independently and cooperatively. Unlike liberals, when I say "we", I don't mean government forcing the rest of us against our wills.)
What should WE do?
For the reasons I have pointed out, forcing insurance companies to accept people with pre-existing condition, isn't the solution. What IS the solution? Is there one at all?
