Sincere Questions About Health Insurance

[DemocratSinceBirth]

If you compel insurance companies to insure folks regardless of pre-existing conditions where is the incentive to buy health insurance? Why not wait to get sick and then buy the insurance... Look at all the money you saved...

I know a guy who went out and bought health insurance (after) he broke his tibia... He went without surgery for about a week before he could get his insurance...Because he owned a business he was able to get insurance without a physical examination...

I'm paying $700.00 a month for insurance... It's more like house insurance... In other words if I get reallly sick and can't pay for the care I don't want the hospital to put a lean on my home...


And I'm paying 13% on my gross wages for Social Security and Medicare...I can use that money right now and worry about the furure when it arrives..

[KittyWampus]

1. #1. if money's coming out of my paycheck, I want it to go to Single Payer not Insurance Co's.

#2. I buy insurance so I can access preventative care and use it for when I'm sick and to guard against catastrophic illness.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

5. I'm Just Saying

In the past ten years I have spent about $50,000.00 a year on health insurance while costing my insuror probaly $5,000.00... If I could just wait to get really sick then buy health insurance that money was wasted...

In fact if you require insurors to insure folks regardless of pre-existing conditions I can see folks cancelling their health insurance...

[Donkeykick]

2. Preexisting Conditions.

What a bunch of schmuck! These insurance companies are so rich, they could still pay off your treatment. :wtf: :eyes:

[DemocratSinceBirth]

7. Yes

But if you compel insurance companies to insure folks regardless of pre-existing conditions where's the incentive to buy health insurance?

What if lots and lots of folks cancelled their health insurance and then only bought it after they got sick?

How would that be different than buying automobile insurance after you got into a wreck and expecting the automobile insurance compant to pay for it?

[Donkeykick]

9. You have a point...

about the car example. But once the car gets fixed it is fixed--or gets replaced...end of case. (I feel that this is like comparing apples to oranges.)

But if you have a preexisting health condition you're going to need health insurance just in case it gets worse. Now it may not even get worse, but I feel that a person shouldn't be denied health insurance because you would think of them as an automobile that was in an accident.

Surely a person shouldn't be denied automobile insurance if they were involved in an accident previously?

[Warpy]

3. Unfortunately, getting sick is not like that

Whatever it is and whenever it happens, you will be totally blindsided. It is not a consumer choice and cannot be dealt with in the consumer marketplace.

The best bet is spreading the risk universally among young (prone to car accidents leaving them needing months of hospitalization and rehab) and old, alike.

Anything else is shortsighted and cruel. We see what putting health care into the hands of corporate bean counters is doing to us. It is killing us.

[NightWatcher]

4. I thought that you could then sign people up for the insurance..but charge them retroactively

back to the previous year's open enrollment date.

The idea is to encourage people to sign up so that they can not only get hospital treatment, but can get preventitive treatment as well. I'd be more willing to buy insurance so that I could get medicine when I have a sore throat and not just when I have to be rushed to the ER.

It is great that both of our candidates are debating the finer details of a national healthcare plan while the repukes are falling over themselves to worship reagan

[sandnsea]

6. Preventive Care

If the insurance is affordable, people will buy it beause living without insurance is terrifying.

[orleans]

8. my concern is that i will be "forced" to buy insurance and the fucking

insurance company will still refuse to pay for treatment if/when needed.