Re: {OT:} AARP Facts about healthcare

You've made a good point here - insurance companies are in the business of
making money - providing actual health care is a nuisance to them that comes
along as part of the baggage.

I would like to pose a question though - would you rather have the insurance
companies or the government decide on what rationing occurs? I've had to
deal with insurance companies and the people (including physicians) who
denied claims (attempted to ration care) and I've seen a fair number of
elderly people who just couldn't get it together to fight the insurance
companies and paid whatever they were asked, much to the insurance
industry's benefit (this is not a coincidence -insurance companies make
millions, I think, because people just give in and pay when their insurance
coverage should have paid). It seems to me, the government may be no worse,
and maybe better, since at least the bearcats have to answer to their
constituancies and get votes. Free market thinking may not be a good fit
when you're dealing with human (or environmental) welfare.

My impression is that Americans (an now it seems like the French as well)
will eventually be required to decide how LITTLE health care they can
tolerate (I'm not looking forward to where all this is going)..

hk

"Richard Yates" <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:h5hnev$v9g$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
ktaylor wrote:
On Aug 5, 9:30 pm, edspyhill01 <edspyhil...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
FACT #2: No legislation currently in Congress would mandate the
rationing of care. Period.

This article seems very deceptive to me. One does not have to
legislate rationing care or medicare limitations for it to emerge
because it will be the regulatory agencies that manage the bill. AARP
is not naive enough to miss this point. Some sort of rationing, for
example, will have to be instituted. It will be an appointed
bureaucrat who will determine how the rationing will go, not any
legislation.

The AARP email makes an attempt to correct the gross distortions - soem
are outright lies - that are being disseminated. To that end it includes
short descriptions to directly dispute those points. It does not look to
me like it is intended to convey all of the complexity in the issue.

Insurance companies and others are saying that the bill will explicitly
mandate rationing. That is not in any of the bills. They play on the fears
dredged up by the word "rationing" and imply that it is something new.

Guess what: care is rationed now at every level. Some get more and some
get less and some get none. Your sentence "Some sort of rationing...will
have to be instituted." is simpy naive. OR COUSE there will be rationing,
just like there always has been rationing and just like there is rationing
now. "Rationing" is just a buzzword intended to alarm not to inform or
solve. The point is that the "rationing" now is too extreme in its
inequality of distribution.

"It will be an appointed bureaucrat who will determine how the rationing
will go..." Well, right now you have a claims adjuster in charge of your
rationing. He is a bureaucrat. His explicit job and the measure of his
performance is how many claims he can deny. Your insurance company is a
bureaucracy. The most successful ones are those that can:

1. Best avoid insuring the people that are sick or at higher risk for
getting sick,
2. Get the most money from you as premiums,
3. Pay out the least money in claims.

This is all just straightforward economics. Insurance companies are not
evil or greedy. They are playing the role that we have set for them.
There's nothing controversial or even wrong with it. It's just business
and result of the obvious incentives of economics.

And THAT is why access to medical care should be managed in the public,
not the private, sector.





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