Today comes word from the Commonwealth Fund that the effect of the American health care system on the finances of Americans is more dire than you might have thought:
The proportion of working-age Americans who have medical bill problems or who are paying off medical debt climbed from 34 percent to 41 percent between 2005 and 2007, bringing the total to 72 million, according to recent survey findings from The Commonwealth Fund. In addition, 7 million adults age 65 and over also had problems paying medical bills, for a total of 79 million adults with medical bill problems or medical debt.
This is the number Democrats need to talk about when the topic is our broken health care system, as well as the forty-six million who lack health insurance. Americans understand struggling with bills and debt; for people who have jobs with health insurance, going without it sounds like something only poor people do.
Americans need to juggle their medical debt with necessities:
Those with medical bills and medical debt are increasingly facing serious financial problems and sometimes facing trade-offs among immediate life necessities. Thirty-nine percent of those with bill problems or debt say they have used up all of their savings to pay their health care bills; 29 percent are unable to pay for basic necessities like food, heat, or rent; and 30 percent took on credit card debt. Twenty-four percent of adults under age 65 with medical debt owe $4,000 or more and 12 percent owe $8,000 or more in unpaid medical expenses.
Having health insurance doesn’t protect Americans from accumulating medical debt.
The proportion of those who are underinsured increased from 9 percent to 14 percent, or 25 million people, between 2003 and 2007. Sixty-one percent of those with medical bill problems or accumulated medical debt were insured at the time care was provided.
Having a job doesn’t get you health insurance in America:
Most people who were uninsured at any point in the last year are in working families. Of the estimated 50 million American adults who were uninsured in the last year, 58% were in families where at least one person was working full-time.
I sure hope we hear some really straightforward and clearly stated solutions from Democrats in Denver next week about health care. I don’t want to hear about insurance, either. It doesn’t work, and it does not protect Americans from medical debt. Expanding the role of insurance in our broken system will only perpetuate the breakage.
I want to hear about health care for all.
UPDATE: This is rather promising. More like this, please.
Barack Obama said he would consider embracing a single-payer health-care system, beloved by liberals, as his plan for broader coverage evolves over time.
“If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system,” Obama told some 1,800 people at a town-hall style meeting on the economy.
Related posts:
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- AARP, AMA, American Cancer Society, Consumers Union Endorse House Health Care Reform
- Baucus Health Care Bill: In a Word, Awful
- Liveblogging the Obama Health Care Presser: Cost Control Up Front; Politics Pushed Aside?
- Mitt Romney’s Idea of Health Care Reform: Giving Big Insurance Whatever They Want
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hi Teddy!
He doesn’t want to offend the insurance lobby.
Doesn’t McCrazy’s health plan include counting, for those who are employed and *do* have insurance, the employer-paid contribution to the insurance as taxable income to the employee?
Yes, and hi!
Positive story in today’s Boston Globe about the Mass Health Plan — several hundred thousand people previously uninsured have been signed up, either by employers, self-insurance, or under state subsidized pool. Huge costs, but it’s getting a lot more folks included.
If heath care is a right, then the notion of profit andf insurance as part of the delivery system is nonsense.
Whenever profits are part of the equation, the care is compromised and shorted. END OF STORY.
ok. it is worse than i thought.
and i just went to the pharmacy to pick up a script and was told that the cost was $311 for 30 days. and i
insurance.
In Cuba that would cost you 2 bucks
We need to get the profit out of our basic rights:
Housing
Health
Education
And we need to get it out of the military…
And then get rid of the military.
This is sucking all our resources.
US spends 50% more per capita on medical care than the next country (Canada) and has worse health outcomes than other developed countries-higher infant mortality, lower life expectancies, etc.
ack, selise. Sounds like you got hit with that nasty new Tier D they started using on people. They put the truly astronomical costing meds with no generic on it and then shove the percentage cost at you. Which is still 300$ and up in a lot of cases.
I see it more and more, especially since the July ‘turnover’ has gone by. That and January is when most insurances change their formulary lists most often. And that nasty little trick called Tier D started to show up in July.
*hugs you*
Re the update:
I’d be more impressed if Obama said he’d back a single-payer system even if he weren’t designing a system from scratch.
I’m not terribly impressed with creating a system designed to insure the paychecks of insurance company CEOs with my tax dollars.
it’s ok. i had a bit of a panic, because it’s been covered so far. turns out the insurance co changed the policy and didn’t tell us. apparently i wasn’t the only pissed off customer who called them up. but the insurance co told me they are going to cover it for a month and in the mean time get me on another plan that will cover it going forward.
still…
that’s exactly what happened.
Digg it!
Sharing risk for profit… how about that!
Yeah, but by talking about it at all, perhaps he’s getting people ready for the announcement on January 21st, “Folks, now that we’ve taken a good hard look at it, we need to start from scratch.” Or, even better, “Folks, you have convinced me it’s the only way to go — let’s start from scratch with single-payer.”
For a very controlled politician, it was a great thing for him to introduce into the debate, I think. He has said it before (he’s said LOTS of things before, I know) but he did not need to say this again.
It bodes well, does it not?
Defense
National security
Disaster relief
It’s a start… He doesn’t want to alienate the insurance industry and get them swiftboating him too.
I hate it when they do that. All we can do is inform the patient with what information we can gather, and the patient has to get the rest from the company themselves. Thankfully, they can refuse to pick up the drug right then and there and we can look for a cheaper alternative. But we still hate the insurance company for basically fixing the system so it’s THEM and not the Physician determining patient care.
It’s why my coworkers and i spend at least 50% of our time in negotiations with insurance companies or working with Doctors to change things around so the insurance company isn’t robbing the patient who might need that treatment ASAP blind.
I am off to bed…
STRUGGLE!
Is this going to affect Medicare Part D?
FYI, the R are pushing a plan for individual choice, because individual insurance policies are much more expensive, and thus much more profitable for the insurance corps, than group policies.
Nice choice. /snark
Medical industry economics is truly f’d up. Bears no relation to the textbook “market.”
Teddy, are you watching KO?
Trangendered individual lost job.
Night SanderO.
not enough advil in the world.
We must have single payer! I lost damned near everything I owned due to a serious health issue and I had the best health plan my employer offered. No one looks at those co-pays on medical equipment rentals, rehabilitation, home visits, etc. That is where they get you.
Even the things you were covered for were a paperwork nightmare-case in point, the infamous private room dispute. The Insurance Company declined to pay for mu Hospital Room, since it was a single occupancy room. The Insurance would only cover a double occupancy room. The hospital only had single occupancy rooms and they even had a rep on site (So they knew already). But I had to make many phone calls and spend a lot of time on hold to resolve the (non)issue.
It bodes better than nothing.
It bodes better than McCain — much better.
But I have this hope for more . . .
Yes, I saw that earlier. More here.
It’s great that KO framed it in a national security setting — just like the gay translators the Army doesn’t have anymore.
They just do not know how to fucking say it in ways people can relate to.
How hard it is to say, “you shouldn’t be looking at a hospital bill or a doctor bill at the end of each month and thinking ‘how am I going to pay this?’” You shouldn’t be afraid to go to the doctor because you can’t pay for it. You shouldn’t be getting calls from collection agencies and having hospitals put leins on your house or garnish your wages, or pay 20% interest on your credit cards because that’s the only way you can get treated. You shouldn’t be going to the pawn shop or PayDay loans and getting further and further behind just because your kid gets sick. All this talk about abstractions — they just can’t make it real.
As if sick people or their families need the constant hassle that is the insurance company.
Know of any data indicating how many citizens know that?
Yes and ya gotta love the I don’t care if it’s a (teddy) Bear on rollerskates line.
The issue is getting out there, yes?
Well, Jane, it isn’t real for any of them — it happens to other people. All of them have a gold-plated policy for life, even if they are convicted of a felony and serve time in a federal prison.
John Edwards’ line about taking Congress’ insurance away on July First 2009 if they hadn’t implemented universal health care was a good one. Regardless of all the nitpicking over “Can he do that?” it struck a nerve with people.
Nobody ever asked Huey Long “Can he do that?” They just capitulated to his threats.
Real promising -because Barack’s words mean soooo much.
No data, but guess not very many people know the facts. The Rs say US has best health care sys in world, why (only rich) people come here from all over the world for medical treatment. The Ds are too dumb to counter with the facts. The US medical sys is exactly what you’d expect from an industry for which the “market” is all f’d up: very expensive high tech treatment for rich people.
It bodes well indeed. Now if only the MSM varmits can resist negative and misleading spin chaos.
I have this nagging suspicion that the version of universal health care that eventually passes is going to resemble the Medicare drug plan, i.e. people who currently have NO insurance will be better off but it will have a huge (and profitable) donut hole.
You mean like Harry and Louise?
According to Reuters, they’re coming back during the conventions:
At least they have better sponsors this time, as opposed to the HIAA in 2002.
The trick is to turn medicare into single payer coverage by gradually making more and more people medicare eligible.
Wish I could get one the Dems’ media “geniuses” locked in a room with my former transplant/cancer/surgical trauma patients for an hour.
The day a major health services union dircetly connects patients with progressive media is the day the insurance companies realize they’ve lost: the stories are so compelling, and the emotions are so raw. Had I had any clinical role other than psychiatrist, it would have been ethical for me to make the intros (patient, meet media effort; media effort, patient).
I used to go home screaming.
(It was West LA, so no one appeared to care…prolly just woulda though it was about going west on Wilshire under the 405 at rush hour…)
but you do. well said, and i wish they would listen to you.
Speaking of health, damn…just saw Rep. Tubbs-Jones died. Same way my mother went, although in her sleep and much younger than Tubbs-Jones and in great health. Ya just never know…live each day to the fullest!
Just so y’all know the unintended outcome of a single payer plan in the US, that puts W or McCane in charge of your medical treatment. And if you think you got choice with the US govt paying, you haven’t been alive during the last 7 years.
The insurance companies might be talking to their employees about the dangers of universal health care: that they could lose their jobs, that the companies could go bankrupt, that there won’t be nearly as many exciting functionary positions available. I do too.
Just before I get off the phone after a one- or two-hour runaround from one of their many, many functionaries and their many, many supervisors, I always say, “Please support a candidate who favors universal health care, so you and I can find a better, healthier way to spend our afternoons!”
This is met by a long silence, and then, “Thank you again for calling.”
Last year from 9/11/2007 to 21/31/2007 my billed medical expenses was over $72,000… I have one of those PPO plans with a deductible of $1500 and out of pocket of $3000 before the plan starts paying at 100% AND that all started again on 1/1/2008. This month I paid off the last bill that I owed….
In my conversation with vacationers from the UK while we were in Greece about healthcare was interesting. There were 5 couples, 3 from England and 2 from Scotland….one woman was an administrator at the Manchester Royal Infirmary, they were all shocked about the state of our healthcare system. After one evening of discussion, one woman said to me…. “Do people die because they don’t have insurance?….. Yep”
i know. but with 47 million people without any health insurance, how else are we going to be able to afford it?
Sander, as you know, I have long been a student of political obligation: what claims governments make and why citizens ought obey or disobey them.
What for is the State? I mean in a positive sense, not in the sense of the degraded horrors which pass for nation states.
It seems to me that if the State has any claims to assert obligation and to exist, it must be in order to cater for universal human needs which each individual cannot manage as a single, discrete cypher. Among those universal needs are assuredly healthcare, education, and death. All take ill, good and “bad” alike. All persons must finally die. The grim reaper has no mind to our protestations of merit. And absent effective and universal education, how can we claim to effect democratic modalities of governance?
You make it sound like everyone has lots of choices NOW.
Given a choice between the insurance companies making the choices for me or the government making choices for me, I’ll take the government.
It is exactly the health care reason that as soon as I can get employment again that my partner and I are asking his folks in Grand Junction CO to move in with us.
They have VA care available for Dad, and there’s a facility there, but live so remote to Charlie’s neded pulmo care that they cannot avail themselves of it. So they pay an unbelievable $400 per month out of their combined Soc. Sec of about $1700 for their Blue Cross, and then more for Charlie’s pulmonary treatments. They live on prox $900 cash per month. No house payment, but really, it’s too skinny for comfort at all.
This, I have to remember, because tomorrow I have to be on the phone with a functionary or three.
I’m not looking forward to it.
Neurophius, I wonder when the term ‘National Security’ might come to mean the WELL-BEING OF THE PEOPLE of the nation, rather than the lucrative, and increasingly, too often, SECRET financing of the Military-Indusrial-Congressional complex which has come, increasingly, to threaten that well-being?
Teddy’s post speaks to the nature of the ‘well-being’ that must become the central focus of all governments, everywhere.
Too bad Murkah has chosen not to lead by example.
I acted as a caregiver to my mom for many years. Although she had physical limitations she had a sharp mind and a great sense of humor. She had emergency surgery last January and didn’t make it. My heart goes out to the family of Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the shock and pain must be nearly unbearable.
Whilst working in Central Europe, I obtained every phamaceutical product I needed to manage my conditions for pennies, whilst here the same things cost significantly vast sums, as indicated in Sander’s comment.
And this was under Communism, too.
Do not let “them” mislead as to quality: most of our phamaceuticals used daily by huge numbers of people come from China, and some from India. If there is a flu pandemic, these supply chains will be severed. Think about THAT.
We hve a very “strange” take on humanity, whereby, when a child is born, we do not welcome her into the world so much as to challenge her right to be here.
Thanks for the digg, neuro!
Per the administrator at the Manchester Royal Infirmary:
Wait times for Surgery in the UK, they have instituted a limit on the wait time of 18 weeks where the clock starts ticking the minute the primary care physician refers the patient to the hospital for surgery. This is monitored and per her there can be some fudging but on a whole elective surgery is performed within that 18 week period. If the situation changes to emergent then it is performed immediately.
Also asked about another urban myth – that citizens over a specific age are denied surgery due to their age. They nearly rocked with laughter at that one…
Also they have a benefit called Duvet days …. they get a specified number when explained I would equate to “mental health days” …… they said…. those days that you want to pull the Duvet over your head and stay in bed…… So the next time you take a mental health day….. call it a Duvet Day!
thanks… :-(
a no brainer…how many more will have to suffer first?
The US sys is soooo f’d up, any change is going to run into major problems. Transitions always stink, and it’s diffucult to predict the course they will take. My guess is that the actual transition in the US will be thru private insurers (lobbies too powerful for pols to fight against). So the econ probs will get much much worse. Then maybe single payer, with severe rationing, which will make it a failure. In other words, the facts on the ground, which is that US has failed to face up to the prob rationally for at least since 1992, which is the first time I wrote about it, and the ideological bias of Rs and large percent of pop who are seduced by “market” solns, make a reasonable outcome for this slo mo US economy suicide almost impossible.
I’m a forecaster, not a policy prescriber, and I can’t see any reasonable outcome.
My 2001 model pacemaker=$28,000 with 2 leads at $750 each. Installation, prep kits, instruments, surgical support crew, pacemaker testing and surgical facilities cost extra (of course). Something like drawing a bad Monopoly card…
but we live in the GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD(snark)
My 61 in response to selise @ 49.
a good start would be ,ENDING the wars,and cutting off the missle shield at the kness imo…$$$$$$$$$$$$$ bring the money back home folks
Just so you are aware of what you’re getting yourself into. US is not Europe. Not the same sense of group responsibility.
Jane, this is why I harp on about refication of people. People are not abstractions, but our political systems function otherwise: as if people are things.
I do not know, am not sanguine, that such a fundamental thing can be/will be addressed within our polities. I think that only a new understanding of humanity will eventuate better states and systems, or even forms of polity not yet envisioned.
To be sure. As if any of that had a snowball’s chance…
I think the easiest transition would be to move everyone to Medicare/Medicaid….. Where specific coverage such as maturity & pediatric coverage would need to cover the gaps that are not expressly written into their plans. They have the lowest administrative overhead and when EVERYONE is on Medicare then Congress would have to increase provider reimbursement.
I really think we would have a healthier and more well-adjusted populace if vacation and Duvet (!) days were legislated, and if there were a lot. The idea that people will come to work day after day after day (with only two-day breaks to do their laundry and blog) is ridiculous. Plus, more people would be employed if there were shorter work weeks and longer mandated vacations.
This is not something I expect Elaine Chao’s Labor Department to address in her waning days in office.
jeez – England, Canada…
Is there a nice, warm, non-rainy country with universal health-care? *g*
somewhere back in the last century we were changed from citizens to international consumers….so we have no loyalty,cept to the lowest price tag
Spain?
Since your ‘prescription’ dovetails extremely well with most likely ‘outcomes’, in terms of Murkah’s future, it is well that we’ve been forwarned, but eCAHNn, please remember, a little sugar, or honey, helps the ‘medicine’ go down.
Happy Daze ahead fellow Murkans, happy daze.
;~D
One thing that could be done, right now, is to create standard forms and say to all the insurance companies, ‘You will use these forms, and only these forms, from now on.’
The staff at medical offices goes nuts, because every company wants information on its own form, and they don’t all want the information entered in the same format, either.
They also need to make sure that insurance companies don’t overcharge the patients and underpay the doctors, too. I’d suggest that insurance be regulated like public utilities (meaning profit levels are limited and rates are set after public hearings), especially if they’re going to require insurance.
Single-payer would be better. (Anyone who complains about it being ’socialized medicine’, point out that that’s what Congresscritters get, and veterans at the VA, and that’s what Medicare is, too.)
yes
ian has late nite upstairs
The people on the other side insists it isn’t a right. “I don’t see anything in my constitution about a ‘right’ to health care.”
france calls me…Italy has Ber lust scummy again
Only sugar I’m in touch with is that which went into my elderberry jam. Other than that, all is lemons without lemonade.
well kinda goes with Life(like not dying) liberty and the pursuit of happiness
I have to hunt the Krugman article again but per his analysis the French have a higher GPD per hour worked than Americans. What he did us use Apples to Apples comparison vs the standard GDP per worker not considering the number of hours worked. So the French have chosen family over working a ton of hours, 4 weeks of paid vacation and a 35-37 hour work week.
How can the family values crowd trash that?
Oh BTW… French employers also provide 5 euro lunch chips for their employees to pay for lunch. They are encouraged to take their lunch!
Single-payer would be better. (Anyone who complains about it being ’socialized medicine’, point out that that’s what Congresscritters get, and veterans at the VA, and that’s what Medicare is, too.)
yup
Spain?
Works for me. dos mas cervezas, por favor…
How was that?
The should give all Americans the policy the Congresscritters get. Or Medicare for All. Something simple, straightforward, that currently works just fine. Except lots bigger.
Exactly. When i hear a Democract, as i have, say how our health care system is ranked crappy compared to other countries, i cringe. Is it true. Yes. Does health care here suck? You know it. But people get their back up when it sounds like you’re making the USA sound like shit. The Dems have to explain this in language people — and it’s everybody — speaks. One other thing they can mention is how insurance companies ration health care and play to people’s frustrations with insurance companies. There are horror stories out there. They should use them.
not crazy about Spain,come visit me in Brittany
yes, so they cant say…it CANT be done
single payer with all gov employees in the same program with the rest of us. the only way, imo, to find something that will work is for the folks making the decisions have to live with the results.
that’s not a solution i know. but maybe we can create the incentives to move us in that direction..
but really… can’t disagree with your forecast. the Rs will try like hell to make the system fail because if it succeeds it will be the virus that infects people with the idea of gov. working for them.
How can the family values crowd trash that?
“They’re lazy. Americans are not lazy, We all wanna be rich. For our families, of course.”
The VA is socialized medicine, Medicare is single payer non-managed health coverage, Congresscritters have plans that are written by the government & managed by companies such as Aetna (I know, I worked for them)
Socialized Medicine is the Kaiser system and the VA…. it is where the doctors & hospitals are employees of the group. NOT independent contractors. The VA owns the buildings, the doctors are employees of the government.
I don’t disagree, I’d just like to point out that Medicare isn’t the panacea a lot of people believe it is, certainly not equal to the health care Congress provides itself. I have to have a Medicare supplement to make it worthwhile and living on a fixed income (disability insurance), that extra premium takes a chunk.
The VA works, with realistic funding from an Administration which gave a shit it would be a Superstar! As it is, they do a great job with what they have to work with! I see many of my old Doctors from the respected Austin Diagnostic Clinic who are now employed by the VA. So they do have quality Medicos! It most definitely beats the shit out of nothing and provides a model of efficiency for the National Single Payer System to emulate-we can do it!
This leads me to inquire; Whatever happened to the Public Health Service? They used to exist, we had to go to them in places that had no military support in those (very) old days. They were the uniformed providers of healthcare to the public, whatever happened to them?
Nowadays the Surgeon General appears to be the last remaining vestige of the Public Health Service. He appears occasionally, decked out as a war hero and speaks wisely and disappears for another four years. They must have been another success story of Saint Raygun-Zaaap!
Actually, Medicare – that US government program, theoretically adminstered by the Prez du jour (Supremes?) has the lowest overhead (roughly 1-3% compared to 25-40 for the private plans).
In deciding which diagnoses and treatments to accept/pay for (or theoretically pay for) the private for-profit plans follow HCFA’s lead: HCFA determines what Medicare will/willnot accept for diagnoses/treatments.
The two exceptions to the low Medicare overhead facts cited above?
Medicare Part D – pushed through by Wall Street friendly Bushies as a reward to Big Pharma/Big Insurance
Medicare Advantadge HMO’s – pushed through by Wall Street freindly Bushies as a reward to Big Insurance.
These two progams serve the Wall Street junkies nicely: the Bushies’ gifts mainline public funds to for-profit corporations.
Which is exactly what Wall Street wants to do with our retirement funds: because
their brain trusts manage funds so wellthey’ve run out of clients credulous enough to believe them.That’s what makes Medicare Part D (where the Wall Street cultists from the Chicago Econ temple made sure bargaining for meds was proscribed…cause they trust free markets so much, don’cha know) and Medicare “Advantage” so hideous: those two programs greatly accelerated Medicare’s funding pressures.
Which, of course, is exactly the goal of the useful idiots in the Chicago School of Econ temple, their masters on Wall Streets, those who willingly dissemble to flack for them, and the unwary they have managed to mislead into the “markets uber alles” ideology.
Too bad the result of all their collective efforts is so lethal: for those of us outside the gilded world of Wall Street and the Village.
Embrace of the “free markets” (corporate propaganda) may be a satisfying religious experience, but is a poor substitute for empirical data.
Sour ya doing otherwise?
Always good to ’see’ you, eCAHN.
Even if you dismal-ate outrageous dreamers,
;~)
Bingo!
I can just see it now: A modern citizen dies and appears for that dread meeting with St. Peter. “And what did you do with the life the Lord God entrusted to you?”
And our hapless petitioner has only a pile of VISA receipts to show for his years of life.
(Of course he has also all the mischief and murder he has committed/sanctioned, on his debit ledger, too.)
Too true, alas.
Which is exactly what Wall Street wants to do with our retirement funds: because their brain trusts manage funds so well they’ve run out of clients credulous enough to believe them.
======================
no shiite sherlock………….crooks and liars all
hahahahaahahahaha
BTW, this tropical storm has really overstayed her welcome.
You are correct my friend! The VA is the best example I know of that demonstrates what we must have to begin with. It exists now, so we have something concrete to work with, a known success story. We can refine this entity and make it better, but this is what we need to begin with. I have talked to many of the Doctors working there and surprisingly (to me, at least) none of them took a pay cut to come to the VA!
Cleanth;
The cosmic applicability of you humor would tickle the fancy of that famous non-believer, Douglas N. Adams, I am certain; and I, meself, have just (barely) scraped myself off the floor, laughing …
Clearly, Murkans have DISCOVER(ed) how to ‘take it with them’ when they move, deservedly, on to their heavenly McMansions.
;~D
4 of my babies left today
i posted upstairs
http://kissmecat.blogspot.com/
Get off of us Pigs…from “off the pigs” which was not done…Thise Corona Del Mar California Ocean side gated communities with two Rolls Royce’s in the garage house the HMO’s executives. It’s become CA Cote D Azur
The old gold.
Forget it if we don’t get the WH
Our health care system is about stealing from working people and giving the money to the rich who are doctors and/or own the system. Until we all become so poor we have to be indigent and get a week govt. supplied health care plan. It’s a disgrace this Private Health Insurance which is a scam of ‘cherry picking’ and denying claims and little else but profiteering on the misery of others.
I am essentially uninsured and scared of injury or sickness…but the poverty caused by paying into the ’scam’ is more than enough to cause injury and sickness. My only hope is marrying a govt. employee who has good benefits. (in my case, my fiancee fits the bill! lucky me but she has to get her NY divorce still..which is another slog btw…)
I like to ask people this question: What if you heard about a company that, after you paid them your money for their goods or services, when you asked for them to deliver said services, they refused? Or suddenly decided it now costs double or triple what they originally told you? Two words come to my mind: fraud, or theft. But this is exactly how today’s insurance companies operate, especially health insurance, and it is also becoming common in home/flood/hurricane insurance.
The only way universal health insurance can work is if it is heavily regulated to prevent denials and usurious premiums. Facing that, the insurance companies will expect some sort of gov’t subsidized backup fund to prevent their losses. Another example of privatizing the gains and socializing the losses. It makes much more sense just to cut them loose.
For those that insist that single payer health care is socialism: think about how the insurance industry model is supposed to work. A large pool of people pay a little each month in premium, and when disaster strikes the victim is paid a claim from the pool of money they’ve collected. Doesn’t this remind you of something? From each according to their ability, to each according to their need? Isn’t that the communist manifesto?
Also note: the larger the pool of people participating in the insurance model, the better prepared they are to handle claims. Best of all would be one big pool… say, all taxpayers?