Posted by Sir Four at 4:57pm Jul 17 '09I'm not ignoring other points he made. Let me get to them.
"If GE develops a new vastly expensive technology that insurance companies balk at paying for and private individuals can't afford it doesn't get bought by hospitals and never hits the market. This seems unfair and untenable to you. But that best serves society as a whole."
What you are talking about here (and with the frogs) is that since we don't have infinite money, at some point we must make hard choices about where we set limits. I don't know where you got the idea that this is untenable to me, as I had a thread on just that topic. Any responsible debate on healthcare reform has to tackle the issue of setting boundaries on coverage, or else we're just in fairy la la land.
"Then you have 99% of the population suffering these enormous costs so that 1% can be helped to get ultra-expensive care for rare diseases,"
Here's where you start to go wrong, however. In this sentence you use words like "enormous costs" and "ultra-expensive" but these are just to exaggerate your position, which is to let people pick and choose a la carte which diseases they'd want covered. Moreover, the very point of insurance is for 99% of people to pay for the care of 1%--and the reason you sign up is the concern that one day you may be the 1%. But the sharing of that burden is what makes it affordable.
Now, if you could exclude coverage for RareDisease that effects 0.1% of the population, maybe you would gamble on doing so. Maybe many people would take that gamble. Maybe doing so would save you a couple bucks a month on your policy. But then we get to a point where there essentially is no adequate coverage for RareDisease--the $100,000 it costs to treat it is not distributed across a large risk pool, and the insurance model breaks down.
What I'm getting at is, insurance can only work properly if it is sold as a package covering a wide range of possible treatments. Of course your premiums end up covering some random people unlucky enough to get some shitty disease. That's the point. Maybe one day you'll be that unlucky person, or maybe you won't. But if you can start customizing your coverage to eliminate this that and the other disease, you're essentially destroying insurance.
"manufacturers are essentially giving products away at cost to [socialized-medicine] countries, while passing the burden of profit on to the US health care system."
Are you okay with that status quo? Is it fair that the cost to Americans continues to climb to such heights? If we reform our system, might not the other countries come to find that they have to contribute more?
"If GE develops a new vastly expensive technology that insurance companies balk at paying for and private individuals can't afford it doesn't get bought by hospitals and never hits the market. This seems unfair and untenable to you. But that best serves society as a whole."
What you are talking about here (and with the frogs) is that since we don't have infinite money, at some point we must make hard choices about where we set limits. I don't know where you got the idea that this is untenable to me, as I had a thread on just that topic. Any responsible debate on healthcare reform has to tackle the issue of setting boundaries on coverage, or else we're just in fairy la la land.
"Then you have 99% of the population suffering these enormous costs so that 1% can be helped to get ultra-expensive care for rare diseases,"
Here's where you start to go wrong, however. In this sentence you use words like "enormous costs" and "ultra-expensive" but these are just to exaggerate your position, which is to let people pick and choose a la carte which diseases they'd want covered. Moreover, the very point of insurance is for 99% of people to pay for the care of 1%--and the reason you sign up is the concern that one day you may be the 1%. But the sharing of that burden is what makes it affordable.
Now, if you could exclude coverage for RareDisease that effects 0.1% of the population, maybe you would gamble on doing so. Maybe many people would take that gamble. Maybe doing so would save you a couple bucks a month on your policy. But then we get to a point where there essentially is no adequate coverage for RareDisease--the $100,000 it costs to treat it is not distributed across a large risk pool, and the insurance model breaks down.
What I'm getting at is, insurance can only work properly if it is sold as a package covering a wide range of possible treatments. Of course your premiums end up covering some random people unlucky enough to get some shitty disease. That's the point. Maybe one day you'll be that unlucky person, or maybe you won't. But if you can start customizing your coverage to eliminate this that and the other disease, you're essentially destroying insurance.
"manufacturers are essentially giving products away at cost to [socialized-medicine] countries, while passing the burden of profit on to the US health care system."
Are you okay with that status quo? Is it fair that the cost to Americans continues to climb to such heights? If we reform our system, might not the other countries come to find that they have to contribute more?
Some more response to [private] - Sir Four