On Sep 9, 2009, at 11:24 PM, Steve at Verizon wrote:
So you are in favor of nationalizing, not just the health insurance companies, but also life insurance and automobile insurance? Your logic would apply to them as well. Or if not nationalize, make them provide the same coverage to everybody for the same cost. For life insurance you should pay the same premium if you are 24 or 64, smoke or not smoke, have a preexisting condition (i.e. Stage 4 cancer). And your auto insurance should be the same, independent of your age (Boy would I have liked that when I was 21!) or driving record.
The purpose of insurance is to pool risk. Simple math and probability tells us that only some of us will need help when something devastating happens, but that won't happen to most of us. Since we don't know which of us will need help we pool our risk. We all pay in a small amount so that those of us in need can be helped. This is simple and socially useful. Where insurance veered from socially useful to discriminatory and unfair was when they started treating people differently. If you were black, or Jewish, or Moslem, or Catholic you would get charged much higher rate than is you were a white Protestant. If you did not belong to the Church of England and had a claim the insurance company would say thanks for all your past payments, but we've decided not to help you. That is simply wrong.
The only way to get insurance (all forms of insurance) back to being socially useful is to prohibit all forms of discrimination. Put everybody in the pool and charge everybody the same price. Imagine how much less administrative costs there would be if insurers did not have to calculate so many discriminatory rates or battle with their customers over every expense.
I was once denied payment for a doctor visit because my PHP was on vacation and I saw the doctor who was covering for my PHP without a written referral from my PHP.
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