Comments on: Health Insurance Answers Depend on What Question We Ask

By: superdestroyer

superdestroyer — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:22:58 +0000

The posting is disingenuous because it kept using the term Health Insurance when it really meant health costs. When discussing health plans there is no discussion of actuarial issues, grouped risks, or out year costs. Instead, the proposed health plans are just a means of asking everyone to pay for collective medical costs,. The usual means of collectivizing costs is the proposalthat taxpayers pay the health costs of those who do not pay taxes. Thus, wage earning middle class Americans will pay more taxes so that tax cheats, non-working 20 somethings, and others do not have to contribute to their own health costs.

By: GeorgeSorwell

GeorgeSorwell — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:42:48 +0000

Our candidates instead ask us to line up and make sure these for-profit insurance companies get their premiums every month.

Bridget is completely right.

And the only thing I can add to Macan's comment is this: do you really think your private insurance carriers are more efficient or less bureaucratic than than the government is?

By: Macan

Macan — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 08:50:56 +0000

As a conservative from a different country, I do not understand the irrational antipathy of American conservatives for socialized medicine.

Yes, it is often inefficient and bureaucratic. But it is the one great achievement of the welfare state…and still more efficient by all measures than the costly American system.

This is a very sad post, really. It is hard to look upon the present state of affairs in the US in this regard, as Bridget lays it out, without sadness at the human toll.

By: Jim_Satterfield

Jim_Satterfield — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 03:05:29 +0000

A very accurate assessment, Bridget. Conservatives say they want to break the job/insurance link by creating a system that allows everyone to buy their own insurance. First, I have yet to see a proposal from them that would actually accomplish this for those who have problems in the existing system. In addition as you noted it completely ignores that inconvenient fact of life called unemployment even as reports show that the length of time that many people who lose their jobs spend unemployed is getting longer.