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DesideriScuri -> RE: Koch Funded Anti-Obamacare Ads (9/21/2013 10:30:55 AM)
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ORIGINAL: Moonhead
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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
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ORIGINAL: Moonhead
So government is bad but medical insurers are good, then?
In either case your doctor is following guidelines laid down from above,
Actually, no.
Actually, yes.
Or have they stopped all this crap about refusing to treat pre-existing conditions and fixing budgets for treatment without telling anybody about it?
Actually, no.
IMO, insurance companies are part of the problem. Moving government into their position will only shift the problem from one group to another. In some discussions (mostly on FB with some of my fellow HS grads), the reasoning went that the high cost of medicine is because employer-provided insurance is a separation from the care provider and the receiver and the payer. Insurance companies negotiate a lower cost with the providers for that insurance company's members. Based on those negotiations, they forecast the amount of risk an employer's covered employees present, and set the premiums accordingly.
Insurance companies, originally, had incentive to negotiate for lower care costs. Lower care costs result in lower premiums, assuming same risk pools. Lower premiums help get larger member pools, which will also help them in negotiating lower care costs.
Fast forward to today's shit mess. Insurance companies are negotiating with the hospitals they own for care costs. They still set premiums based on risk pools, but, care costs are going to be higher. Insurance companies don't have a high profit margin, but care providers do. When you own the insurance company and the hospital, you can take a hit on the insurance side profits as long as you can make them up on the provider side. That is, in effect, a monopoly, and monopoly pricing has taken it's toll. This is precisely why I support legislation separating the two. That would return the pricing competition between hospitals and insurers.
Government has less incentive to raise rates and get the lowest possible prices. They do not have to negotiate to raise money for this. They can take it from the general fund, run deficits and then raise political capital to increase tax revenues based on whatever they find to be most likely to be successful. Republicans can talk about raising money for defense spending, after shorting defense spending to fund health care. Democrats will talk about raising money for social welfare, after shorting social welfare spending. It's a shell game.
So, no, it's not government bad, insurers good. They're both bad.
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