My point had nothing to do with how insurance works. It raised the obvious question of what insurance is doing in a health care system to begin with. You have providers of health care and you have people who need those services. Why does there need to be a profit-seeking private venture in between those two parties, one that drives up the overall costs of health care, in part by funding an enormous bureaucracy tasked with denying claims? And we all (or all Americans) know how distorted the pricing of health care services becomes due to attempts to game the insurance companies.Man With a Plan wrote:Gsjackson doesn't know what he (or she) is talking about. Contrarian Expatriate on the other hand, does. THAT is how insurance works. When you understand how something works, you may criticise it. Yes, it forces otherwise healthy people who don't take insurance seriously to sign up for it, to subsidise those who are unhealthy and/or file false claims. Contrarian, I believe that are some states in your country that don't mandate auto insurance. New Hampshire should be one of them, if memory serves. That aside, other posters above me have pointed out that this right-wing triggering of "free stuff" is a bit of a strawman when, you know, defecit will rise as America and its gang continues their global aggressions. I tend to hold the belief that war is expensive. So expensive, that if the citizenry knew how much a war costs, they'd never want one again.
It's no secret that westerners fly to places like Thailand to get competent and effective medical care. Who can blame them? They can buy a round trip ticket, room and board, plus misc. expenses and the medical operation in question, and STILL have more in their pockets than staying stateside and getting an American doctor to patch them up. However, as I've said in other threads, the best we can do is adapt to this landscape. Because insurance is here to stay.
During the passage of Obamacare, Obama received a thunderous ovation from Congress by declaring that insurance companies provide a real service. He was freeing their paymasters from any serious scrutiny. But I have no earthly idea what that service is.
