Quote: Original post by Zahlman

Quote: Original post by Mithrandir
The worst part is that all the while I was sitting there, at least a half dozen drug reps entered the office and were able to have a meeting with the doctor almost immediately each time.

... Wow.

If this part is even remotely true, it ought to be far more evidence than any of you doubters need.

I have never, in my entire life, knowingly seen a drug rep.

Really? I see them streaming in and out like bees at my Doc's office. Or at least I used to when I went to the Dr. Fortunately I never seemed to have to wait because of it. It was always fairly easy to get in and out.

Quote: Original post by Eelco

Quote: Original post by jakem3s90

Quote: Original post by Mithrandir
And the fact that I pay for insurance for years and then get rejected for coverage the minute anything serious to me, and the money gets funneled into some executives pocket as profit, isn't taking it out of someone elses pocket?

This is what bothers me the most. Even if the gov't insurance costs the same, and we have some silly bureaucracy, at least we won't have to worry about getting blatantly cheated.

I have a friend whose husband worked at the same place for 20 years, paying private insurance for their family. He lost his job, and couldn't afford COBRA. While laid off, she was diagnosed with cancer. Her husband got another job after some time, and his new insurance wouldn't cover her cancer treatments, because it was a "pre-existing condition". They're now hundreds of thousands in debt, and are going to have to sell their house, and change their retirement plans. It doesn't seem fair (legal?), since they paid in for all those years, and basically got nothing in return.

You are confusing an insurance with a savings plan.

Why would you want to couple either your insurance or savings to your employer? Thats a recipe for disaster (no wonder the government encourages it).

Where does the sales plan figure into any of that? Are you saying that had they saved, they could have afforded the cancer? That's the whole point of insurance. You pay a small amount up front so that IF something crazy happens you don't take a financially devastating hit. Most Americans don't make anywhere near enough money to "save" up for cancer no matter how hard they work, or how responsibly that manage their money. What basically amounts to saying you should have planed better is resoundingly insulting on a grand scale. You can't plan for cancer that is why you need insurance.

Catastrophic situations are just about all that's left being covered for many people. When that gets stepped out on you and/or your employer are paying for nothing. Loosing coverage is an easy and understandable way to not get something covered. If you can never loose coverage then that problem goes away, though it could be argued that it could cause a rise in rates as there are more covered conditions. No where in the described scenario would a savings plan have helped, and thats insurance is for. To shoulder a burden no normal person is able or should be expected to carry.

Quote: Original post by Eelco

Quote: Original post by jakem3s90
I have a friend whose husband worked at the same place for 20 years, paying private insurance for their family. He lost his job, and couldn't afford COBRA. While laid off, she was diagnosed with cancer. Her husband got another job after some time, and his new insurance wouldn't cover her cancer treatments, because it was a "pre-existing condition". They're now hundreds of thousands in debt, and are going to have to sell their house, and change their retirement plans. It doesn't seem fair (legal?), since they paid in for all those years, and basically got nothing in return.

You are confusing an insurance with a savings plan.

Why would you want to couple either your insurance or savings to your employer? That's a recipe for disaster (no wonder the government encourages it).

Let's do some math. Assuming the same contribution of $15,000 per year over a 20 year span for a family of four, the savings plan would have a total of $300,000. Let's throw in some interest, 4.25% per year, compounded. That brings us to $477,921.12. That doesn't deduct any medical expenses over the 20 years prior, but we'll ignore that.

Is $477,921.12 enough to cover cancer care for a woman in her late-50s or early 60s, with a reasonable expectation of living for another 20-odd years? Of course not. Cancer care can cost up to $300,000 per year. She has as little as 2 years of care saved up for. So much for the "savings plan" as a comprehensive solution to medical expenses.

The entire point of insurance is not to save for an unexpected expense, but to contribute to a fund to spread the costs of an unexpected expense outside of the amounts a single individual can normally bear.

Last year, during one of the presidential debates, then candidate Obama asserted, to big applause, that health care is a right not a privilege. If that's so and if President Obama and the Democrats in Congress truly believed that, they wouldn't be dickering around with half measures intended to keep health insurance companies in business. Instead they would have come out fully in support of a single payer plan that would guarantee coverage for every single person. Earlier this year the California Nurses Association sponsored a study that found that not only would such an approach provide universal coverage, it would create millions of new jobs in the process. So instead of dickering over bogus lemonade stand analogies and wading through thousands of pages of Congressional subterfuge, we ought to be asking why Congress is dragging it's heels over protecting our rights and why the corporate media is playing right along with them.

Here's is the press release announcing the results of that study: First-of-Its Kind Study: Medicare for All (Single-Payer) Reform Would Be Major Stimulus for Economy with 2.6 Million New Jobs, $317 Billion in Business Revenue, $100 Billion in Wages.

Quote:
...
Expanding Medicare to include the uninsured, and these on Medicaid or employer-sponsored health plans, and expanding coverage for those with limited Medicare, would have the following immediate impacts:

* Create 2,613,495 million new permanent good-paying jobs (slightly exceeding the number of jobs lost in 2008)
* Boost the economy with $317 billion in increased business and public revenues
* Add $100 billion in employee compensation
* Infuse public budgets with $44 billion in new tax revenues

Further, moving to the new system comes with an unexpectedly low price tag, given the economic benefits and the far-reaching consequences of genuine healthcare reform, DeMoro noted.

Healthcare for all far less than the Wall Street bailouts

Adding all Americans to an expanded Medicare could be achieved for $63 billion beyond the current $2.1 trillion in direct healthcare spending. The $63 billion is six times less than the federal bailout for CitiGroup, and less than half the federal bailout for AIG. Solely expanding Medicare to cover the 47 million uninsured Americans (as of 2006 data on which the study is based) could be accomplished for $44 billion.

The IHSP projections build from an econometric model of the current face of healthcare – applying economic analysis to a wide array of publicly available data from Medicare, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and other sources.
...
Healthcare presently accounts for $2.105 trillion in direct expenditures. But healthcare spreads far beyond doctor's offices and hospitals. Adding in healthcare business purchases of services or supplies and spending by workers, the total impact of healthcare in the economy mushrooms to nearly $6 trillion.

Overall, every direct healthcare dollar creates nearly three additional dollars in the U.S. economy. In current form, healthcare:

* Generates 45 million jobs, directly and in other industries.
* Accounts for 10.5 percent of all U.S. jobs and 12.1 percent of all U.S. wages.
* Totals 9.2 percent of the nation's Gross National Product.
* Contributes about 25 percent of all federal tax revenues. Federal, state, and local taxes from the healthcare sector in 2006 added up to $824 billion.

All those numbers would rise dramatically through comprehensive healthcare reform. But a single-payer system would produce the biggest increase in jobs and wages. The reason, DeMoro said, is that "the broadest economic benefits directly accrue from the actual delivery and provision of healthcare, not the purchase of insurance."
...

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom

Quote: Original post by HostileExpanse

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
It's rather simple really. If the government required a million dollar bond to be on hand prior to opening a lemonade stand there would be less competition among lemonade stands.

You originally used the term "non-competitive" ... but here you've merely stated there'd be "less competition."


Also, there's little in your simple example that describes how the required bond necessarily creates any sort of lemonade monopoly/oligopoly.

Non-competitive is a relative term, I use it in this instance...

It's nit-picky, but "non-competitive" is not a term of gradient. "Less competitive" is such a term, but using the phrase to "non-competitive" to mean the same thing is pretty much an idiosyncratic use of the phrase, which would probably lead to confusion.

Quote: Original post by WazzatMan
Sorry, but that argument is just silly. Banks are extremely lucrative, and can be competitive, but I don't see John Smith opening up a bank anytime soon. Those things require a lot of capital, and a lot of consumers before they gain momentum. Insurance brokers are the same thing. What you have is a lot of big players who can easily dismantle and devour the small ones before they gain momentum and start making viable offers to consumers.

I think you'll find also that in a market with so many few suppliers, especially with a necessity like health insurance, the suppliers tend to gang up and scratch each others back to keep the status quo going. It's lovely that so many have such faith in free market economy, too bad those feelings aren't shared by the actual players in a free market economy.

Don't be sorry, you've just agreed with me under the pretense of disagreeing. Although you think "that argument is just silly", you immediately after state that barriers to entry reduce the number of producers, not realizing that the vast majority of those barriers are artificial and imposed by government.

You then go on to say that companies tend to scratch each others backs in that situation, also not realizing that price fixing and collusion has time and again been shown to be a non-profitable, non-sustainable pricing mechanism time and again throughout history and economic literature, unless the government is involved in the collusion.


So again, don't be sorry. Once you right a couple of misconcpetions you have that could easily be fixed by a bit of study you're agreeing with me.

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Here's is the press release announcing the results of that study: First-of-Its Kind Study: Medicare for All (Single-Payer) Reform Would Be Major Stimulus for Economy with 2.6 Million New Jobs, $317 Billion in Business Revenue, $100 Billion in Wages.

Interesting. Going to see if I can find this study.

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
Contrast this with the unregulated lemonade stand market today. Which is more competitive?

So ... I'm still not clear. It seemed to be implied within your original assertion, but to be clear...

Oligopolies can only arise as the product of government regulation?

Quote: Original post by HostileExpanse

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom

Quote: Original post by HostileExpanse

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
It's rather simple really. If the government required a million dollar bond to be on hand prior to opening a lemonade stand there would be less competition among lemonade stands.

You originally used the term "non-competitive" ... but here you've merely stated there'd be "less competition."


Also, there's little in your simple example that describes how the required bond necessarily creates any sort of lemonade monopoly/oligopoly.

Non-competitive is a relative term, I use it in this instance...

It's nit-picky, but "non-competitive" is not a term of gradient. "Less competitive" is such a term, but using the phrase to "non-competitive" to mean the same thing is pretty much an idiosyncratic use of the phrase, which would probably lead to confusion.

Really? You choose to parse my use of language? Can you then explain the finite bound between competitive and non-competitive since it's not relative?

Quote: Original post by HostileExpanse

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
Contrast this with the unregulated lemonade stand market today. Which is more competitive?

So ... I'm still not clear. It seemed to be implied within your original assertion, but to be clear...

Oligopolies can only arise as the product of government regulation?

No, oligopolies CAN occur regularly under non-coerced market conditions. Monopolies can not occur except as the product of government regulation and monopoly grant.

There is nothing inherently wrong with oligopolies by the way, where-as a monopoly implies the ability to artificially control the market.

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom

Quote: Original post by HostileExpanse

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
Contrast this with the unregulated lemonade stand market today. Which is more competitive?

So ... I'm still not clear. It seemed to be implied within your original assertion, but to be clear...

Oligopolies can only arise as the product of government regulation?

No, oligopolies CAN occur regularly under non-coerced market conditions. Monopolies can not occur except as the product of government regulation and monopoly grant.

There is nothing inherently wrong with oligopolies by the way, where-as a monopoly implies the ability to artificially control the market.

So ... a "free market" with two suppliers is wholly unlike a government-regulated market with one supplier?