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keakap wrote:Heath-- THANK YOU, thank you, thank you, for the shot of truth, reality and sanity.

Reminds me, liberalism is a mental disease.So is ultra conservatism with religious underpinnings

I from the guvmint. I kin hep u fix dem!:D

dusty wrote:I am no expert here at all but I believe that it is the various state insurance boards that restrict which companies can sell which insurance where. I believe the state boards also effect rates.

I suspect that much of what we tend to blame the Federal Government for is actually perpetrated at the State (and local) level. Again, if this is true, We the People are also to blame. We do have some effect on what happens at the State (and local) level.

Do you even know the name of your local Insurance Regulator? I don't.

I believe that is true. And I believe that, if serious health insurance reform - that would allow people to keep the plan and doctor they have if they like it, AND allow more people to become insured, AND lowered the cost of that insurance - were desired, all they would have had to do was allow more competition in the marketplace by allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines. (Plus, that would have been Constitutional under the commerce clause unlike the unconstitutional [the SCOTUS was wrong] mess we have now.)

More insurance companies selling more plans to more people across the whole country would have resulted in more competition, better plans, and lower premiums. That one thing was all that really had to be done. Add in some protection against denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, and some regulation that companies had to offer at least one plan meeting a certain level of coverage (but NOT a law requiring individuals to buy that plan or be fined) and I think most people, excepting those who want a single-payer system, would be happy and it would have worked a lot better.

dickg1 wrote:A 72 year old male is on Medicare and regardless of his plan in addition to or in place of Medicare (an MA plan) he is not paying for maternity coverage. Unless an individual is disabled, Medicare automatically starts at 65 (there are no other exceptions, disabled or 65, that's it!
Dick

OOPS! Make that a 62 year old male.

Btw, the Medicare that starts at 65 is paid for, by me. I saw it on my paycheck stubs. Really. But that's "part A", only.

And this is another smokescreen.

dusty wrote:I am no expert here at all but I believe that it is the various state insurance boards that restrict which companies can sell which insurance where. I believe the state boards also effect rates.

I suspect that much of what we tend to blame the Federal Government for is actually perpetrated at the State (and local) level. Again, if this is true, We the People are also to blame. We do have some effect on what happens at the State (and local) level.

Do you even know the name of your local Insurance Regulator? I don't.

Your point points out very well why it is that I do not say "Federal Government" in most cases, when government is the subject.
F'rinstance, Ocommiecare has no teeth without the other gov't entities being "involved". (And "involved" includes NOT doing their job of protecting the electorate.)

Local insurance regulator? Beats me. But I'm not a Democrat, which in Hawaii means that I have no "say" in state gummint.
;-)

heathicus wrote:I believe that is true. And I believe that, if serious health insurance reform - that would allow people to keep the plan and doctor they have if they like it, AND allow more people to become insured, AND lowered the cost of that insurance

Single payer health insurance does all that AND would increase choice of doctors (because every doctor, hospital, etc is in network) AND would cover the additional 50,000,000 uninsured for the same or less than we already spend in tax.

When a government (hell, it could be Walmart for all I care) buys insurance for 350 million people, they get a huge bulk discount. Also, by having one plan that covers everything without exception, administration costs of that plan drop from over 30% to less than 1% of the total. If it's the government who acts as the agent, the profit is also removed saving even more.

I do agree with keakap (did I really type that? ) that most people confuse healthcare with health insurance. Most people also confuse government run healthcare (The VA, England) and government run insurance (every other developed country except the US).

Well, Joshh, I am glad we can at least agree on the benefits of cooking with gas.

However, just the fiasco that the government created implementing the ACA confirms long held beliefs the government has no business running a business. The Facebook IPO mess pales in comparison to the HHS mess.

It almost seems as if the US government is deliberately incompetent doesn't it?

JPG40504 wrote: Reminds me, liberalism is a mental disease. So is ultra conservatism with religious underpinnings

Interesting comparison. To denote a whackjob on the right we add "ultra", conditionally no less.
Yet to identify a whackjob on the anti-America left needs only one word.

But I agree that any ultra or radical or extremist, et yada cetera yada, is loony tunes, regardless if it's the party that was started to fight slavery, or the 'other' one.

joshh wrote:Single payer health insurance does all that AND would increase choice of doctors (because every doctor, hospital, etc is in network) AND would cover the additional 50,000,000 uninsured for the same or less than we already spend in tax.

Possibly so, but I'm not convinced (because the Doctor/Patient ratio is too low already and will become even lower in a single-payer system).

Maybe I'm not convinced merely because I lean toward individualism rather than collectivism.

But, even if it does what you say, it's unconstitutional. (Despite what the SCOTUS might have to say. They're not infallible. They've been wrong before, they were wrong on Obamacare, and they'll be wrong on something again.) But a great deal of what the government already does is unconstitutional in my opinion.

heathicus wrote:...allow more competition in the marketplace by allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines. ...

More insurance companies selling more plans to more people across the whole country would have resulted in more competition, better plans, and lower premiums. That one thing was all that really had to be done. Add in some protection against denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, ... and it would have worked a lot better.

Sounds largely like removing a lot of gummint interference/ mismanagement.

But about this "pre-existing conditions" thing. Am I the only one that sees this as an oxymoron? Insurance and pre-existing condition are not compatible terms. If you want financial protection against future risk you get insurance. If you want an existing health care issue paid for, you buy a service- like, say, Health Care (Not insurance).

This is one of the bigger fallacies with o-c-care, and I'm sure it is intentional. Tax or penalty? Insurance or Care? "Period" or parentheses?