Seemingly many on this board think it is more important to screw insurance companies

[ncteechur]

than provide coverage for more folks.


Not saying they are mutually exclusive but you can only do what you can pass and if I have to choose between
the two, I'll take the covering a few more folks option while stopping recission and pre-existing conditions
and eliminating lifetime limits.

[spotbird]

1. Some people think insurance companies

are in business to help people. They aren't. They are in business for one reason.

[Schema Thing]

4. No, no one believes that.

[spotbird]

25. Then why do they keep calling this

health care reform? It isn't any such thing.

[napi21]

2. I'm with you on this one. I guess we have our purists too. n/t

[mike_c]

3. in the end, achieving social justice for all americans DOES require...

...that we stick a stake into the hearts of vampires like the insurance industry. Making life a little more tolerable for their herds of victims isn't really much reform, is it? Not when the vampires still have them by the throat for the long haul.

[shadowknows69]

16. [phone]

Vampires indeed.

[Aramchek]

5. Exactly. Many here want the Insurance Industry dismantled immediately

despite the damage it will cause.

They don't really care about getting the uninsured covered.
They want to take down the Corporate Overlords!

[Cleita]

10. It hasn't happened anywhere else, so why should it happen here?

It won't dismantle the industry. They still will be covering cars, houses, life insurance, worker's comp for wages and any other number of offerings for catastrophic coverage. They might even be offering "bells and whistles" health coverage for things Medicare doesn't cover. You really don't think they are going to go out of business? How naive of you.

[Aramchek]

12. Nowhere else had the system that we do. If you really think Big Insurance can just be erased,

you are deluded.

You really need to sit down and reconsider the repercussions of what you want.

[Cleita]

14. Big insurance will not be erased as much as I would like us to go to

a government insurance run system for everything. Pigs will fly first. However, insurance covers a whole lot more than health care. This is where they shouldn't be allowed to operate by law except in offering insurance for things not covered by basic health care like they do in France. Yes, in the French system single payer basic health care and insurance co-exit peacefully side by side.

[Aramchek]

18. that's where we are headed, the Repukes know and fear this

It just can't happen all at once. It is a gradual process.

[spotbird]

27. The Corporate Overlords

are destroying what is left of the country. The process of returning democracy should start, instead we are just giving our owners more power. It's nauseating.

[PSPS]

6. There's far too much wrong with this bill for it to be taken seriously

From another post I made on the matter, here's just a few of the bill's shortcomings taken from Pete Stark's summary on his website:

- limits age rating to 2:1.
This codifies individual-risk-based pricing which is contrary to the proper health insurance model of pool-risk-based pricing, thus we have a "ghetto" of citizens saddled with and private insurers guaranteed double premiums.

- Grandfathers current individual policies.
None of this legislation, as bad as it is, will apply to current policies.

- employers have a five-year grace period to come into compliance.
Employers can summarily drop or restrict coverage without any consequences.

- option for states that agree to meet federal standards to run their own exchange.
The more "exchanges" there are, the more they are guaranteed to fail. The largest risk pool possible is the only workable model, so this giveaway to private insurance will undermine any possible competition.

- All plans will limit annual out-of-pocket expenses for enrollees at a maximum of $5,000 for an individual and $10,000 for a family
In other words, this is no better than the "pretend" policies many have now where, to keep premiums affordable, one must opt for the "catastrophic" coverage. Unless you have a very serious illness, it's like you have no coverage.

- the public option must survive on its premiums.
This would be reasonable if the "public option" were allowed to be truly "public." However, it isn't. Instead, it is so limited in its coverage and eligibility that it will never have a risk pool large enough to "survive on its premiums."

- The legislation authorizes start-up loans to assist states with the creation of health insurance co-operatives as an additional option.
Another taxpayer giveaway to the private insurance racket. Taxpayers will help fund the very things that will doom this to failure -- fracturing of the risk pool into the smallest possible size. The more states that create "co-operatives," the faster this whole idea will go bankrupt.

- Individuals are required to obtain health insurance coverage or pay a fee equal to lower of 2.5 percent of their adjusted income above the filing threshold or the average premium on the Exchange. Individuals and families below the income tax filing are exempt. (NOTE: In 2009, the threshold for taxpayers under age 65 is $9,350 for singles and $18,700 for couples).
It goes on about sliding scales and multiples of the poverty level, but this really amounts to the government forcing people to buy a defective product -- private health insurance. While you may get a subsidy, this is just a guarantee that the private health insurance racket will get guaranteed money for everyone in the country, courtesy of the US Treasury (taxpayers) if someone can't afford it.

This is just a giant giveaway to the private insurance companies. Now we know why the champagne corks are popping at their corporate parties.

[Sinti]

7. I think they actually have to find a way

to both provide insurance, at reasonable rates, and preserve at least for now the jobs in the insurance industry. I don't think this is something people have thought about. You can't just shut down insurance tomorrow and replace it with a public plan. We need more jobs ATM, not to destroy existing ones.

How about a substantial percent of the money they take in, as an insurance company, must be paid out to policy holders - such that the outrageous profits just aren't there. This kind of thinking also turns the incentives around - it incentivizes insurance companies to give more care, rather than less. More care given would equal larger bonuses possible.

The bill is not finished, there's no reason to get all excited... no, we're not there yet. Don't make me stop there car, turn around, and go home. We'll see what happens. The world will not end here. If in the end it's really the huge F-up that people say, join the Tea Party folks and try to shut it down. They don't have room in the jails for all of us.

[Cleita]

8. No many of us think the insurance companies should stop offering health

insurance and let Medicare take over. Let them insure what they should like cars, houses and other types of catastrophic coverage, not our health and need for medical care.

[Sebastian Doyle]

9. The fucking insurance companies are screwing us

And the DLC just rewarded them with 45 million FORCED customers. How the FUCK do you justify that?

[Cleita]

11. Maybe they are closer to the industry than

they would like us to believe.

[Sebastian Doyle]

13. I can pretty much guarantee you that at least one person in this thread

certainly fits that description. Her replies in defense of these criminals are too painfully obvious.

[sharesunited]

17. What that brings about is regulation of policy premiums and return on investment.

The for-profit health insurance business eventually becomes like a regulated utility.

Why hasn't government simply shut down private electric companies and generated power directly since it so so vital?

Because there are benefits to letting the private sector live and harnessing the good it can do.

[Sebastian Doyle]

19. Private electric companies should have ceased to exist after the ENRON fiasco

It's time this country woke up to the reality that some things simply should not be privatized. Don't want to threadjack this into a sidebar discussion of that, but energy would be one such area, health care would be another.

[Cleita]

21. Amen! n/t

[Cleita]

20. That too is not true.

When I lived in Los Angeles, we had the government run Department of Water and Power. We seldom had power failures except during times of extreme catastrophes like earthquakes or mega brush fires. Even in times of drought we never ran out of water. Sometimes we were asked to take conservation measures, but we never ran out. You can imagine how delivering power and water to a city like Los Angeles with very little disruption can be. The Dept. of W&P did an outstanding job with little thanks. Oh, yes my electric bill was much less than where I live now. I live up the coast today and we have PG & E for our power company. Power outages are a given during storms. We all have camping lights and some of us have generators because it's such a frequent occurrence. I also pay twice as much for this shitty service, not to mention that our local nuke plant operated by Duke Energy that provides the power has issues of it's own. Privatizing of utilities has spotty results.

[sharesunited]

22. Can PG&E charge whatever it wants for electricty?

No, rates are tariffed.

Can a service connection be refused for any or no reason within PG&E's sole discretion.

No, there are published rules and regs which require them to let you hook onto their grid.

I wasn't suggesting that private enterprise is necessarily superior in what it delivers. (I lived in LA too, and DWP did serve me well.)

Private capital with government regulation is a viable and politically realistic way to provide what is needed.

Although it's possible in theory to float a state bond issue and take over PG&E's entire plant in your state by eminent domain, how politically easy or difficult do you think that would be to accomplish? And what would state ownership do to improve service?

[Cleita]

24. They offer shitty service for twice what I paid in LA. Also, there have

been attempts to improve the system by Democrats with a publicly run system and they have been shot down by our Republican governor.

[sharesunited]

26. Sounds very much like the amenity of health insurance doesn't it?

Somebody with the ability to get in the way of making a big change does so.

[abelenkpe]

15. Insurance comapnies

are in financial straits. They made all the same bad bets big banks did. By mandating 45 million new customers they win a stay of execution.

All dems and progressives want coverage for all Americans, some just hoped to get it without looking as if they are propping up insurance companies.

There is a growing tide of anger against wall street and large corporations and democrats would do well to recognize this. See:

The Night They Drove the Tea Partiers Down
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/opinion/08rich.html?_r=1

to read a better explanation than I can articulate.

[BolivarianHero]

23. One insurance company CEO makes 40 times as much money as Canada's Minister of Health...

Fuck those bastards.