GOP offers alternate Health Care Reform..but are any Dems listening?

[seasoned]

This is partly true, I believe. One thing that really drives up the cost of insurance are health care mandates by the state, ie. you must have X level of coverage and it must include these features. The insurance companies can't even control their own product. No, not health care, but the coverage provided by the insurance plan. That is dictated to them. So it doesn't matter whether person A in California can buy insurance from company XYZ in New York, if company XYZ must provide the exact same plan as every other company in California.

At this level, and all things being equal, it deals with the profit each insurance company needs/wants to make. If an insurance company is running lean and mean, then, they can provide the same coverage at a reduced cost. If this is not the case, it is a waste of time crossing state lines looking for a better price for ins.

 

[chaos1551]

Why Health Insurers Make Lousy Villains

I like how one of the comments at the end of the article rounds it out:

Reality Check!
Consider that 30% of all insurance premiums are paid back out in commissions. In other countries a 15hr admin person signs people up. A 20% savings.
Another 20% is spent in efforts to NOT pay claims.
That is admin costs in the US average 25% of all premiums and world average is 6%. They have teams of analysts and lawyers hand processing all claims to find a way out. In other countries they are just processed by administrative personnel and a lot of it totally electronic (never viewed by human eyes). One dollar in every five we/our employers pay is waisted trying not to pay our claims.
The industries 3% profit is also after they pay executive compensation of 3%-5% of premiums to the top 10 executives. CEO of Atena last year made 25 million. That’s over 400K a week. Prior to exec comp they earned 6% last year. A year they lost more subscribers than in any year in history and the execs took half it (3%).
Also during good economic times more healthy people carry insurance. During bad times...like these, the less healthy tend not to drop coverage and the healthy do. This cuts their profits in times of high unemployment. When unemployment was at is lowest sense the 2001 recession in 2006 the industry earned 7.1% (after exec comp, was more like 12% before) profit and their sector ranked as the 21st most profitable.
Add it up, 20, 20, 7, 3=50%. Now do you know why other countries pay 50% less that we do? That is 8% of GDP compared to our 16%.
Its time to join the rest of the civilized world and take profit out of health care. Making money off of people being sick is wrong, and its even more wrong to let people die because they DONT make someone rich. We need single payer, universal free health care as a basic right, like every other industiralized county has, and they do it while spending less on healthcare than the US does now.

Aww... fun with numbers...

 

[5-0 Kenpo]

At this level, and all things being equal, it deals with the profit each insurance company needs/wants to make. If an insurance company is running lean and mean, then, they can provide the same coverage at a reduced cost. If this is not the case, it is a waste of time crossing state lines looking for a better price for ins.

I would agree with you, all else being equal. What I am addressing though is the fact that insurance companies would not be able to put together packages that people could actually afford, because the state mandates what they have to provide. If they could actually tailor their product towards individual needs, then people would be able to afford at least some coverage, if not all that they want.

chaos1551

Its time to join the rest of the civilized world and take profit out of health care. Making money off of people being sick is wrong, and its even more wrong to let people die because they DONT make someone rich. We need single payer, universal free health care as a basic right, like every other industiralized county has, and they do it while spending less on healthcare than the US does now.

Yeah, not with the people we have in office right now that would be running it. No thank you. I don't trust these people to run the post office, much less be responsible for my level of health.

I still would make the case that although you could argue that there may be a sound financial reason for single-payer health insurance, socialogically, it would not work in the U.S.