An Interesting Number About Health Insurance

[g5000]

On this Wiki page, if you scroll down, there is a list of health insurance companies:

List of United States insurance companies - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I picked a random one. Cigna.

Here is their health insurance shopping page: Health Insurance Plans for Individuals and Families | Cigna Healthcare


Now take a look at the only states for which they sell non-government personal health insurance:

Notice they do not serve all 50 states.

Anyone who thinks we have a free market is either ignorant or an idiot.

 

[g5000]

Reforming Health Insurance: Competition Across State Lines

Competition across state lines is necessary for any fundamental transformation in American health care. But the precarious financing of state individual-market risk pools, as structured by ACA, is inherently incompatible with vigorous interstate competition.

manhattan.institute

The U.S. Constitution was designed to promote interstate commerce, but Congress acted in 1945 to artificially fragment insurance markets state by state. As a result, individuals can buy health plans only from insurers that are licensed by the state where they live. Without any competition from companies based outside their state, the result is higher premiums on the individual market—and premiums that vary greatly from state to state, with large disparities consistently tracking state borders. This is in sharp contrast with the premiums for employer-sponsored plans—which are exempt from state regulation and vary little between states.
Boom. Hostages.

Reforming Health Insurance: Competition Across State Lines

Competition across state lines is necessary for any fundamental transformation in American health care. But the precarious financing of state individual-market risk pools, as structured by ACA, is inherently incompatible with vigorous interstate competition.

manhattan.institute

 

[g5000]

OP is on a long winding road to...FREE government run healthcare for all. Just wait and see, it's coming a few pages in.

Actually, UHC is inevitable because of idiots like you.

This is what I have been saying for some time now.

 

[kyzr]

On this Wiki page, if you scroll down, there is a list of health insurance companies:
I picked a random one. Cigna.
Here is their health insurance shopping page: Health Insurance Plans for Individuals and Families | Cigna Healthcare
Now take a look at the only states for which they sell non-government personal health insurance:

Notice they do not serve all 50 states.
Anyone who thinks we have a free market is either ignorant or an idiot.

You did NOT prove that Cigna has a monopoly in those states.
If you have a choice of several insurance companies, that is a free market.
Obamacare is available in all 50-states.

 

[g5000]

Oh look it's captain obvious, well no shit Sherlock. Another swing and a miss from the cheap seats. You may want to go back to the minors of debating you are getting your ass kicked.

I bet you think you are making a point, but all you are doing is digging yourself into a hole you won't be able to get out of.

Your cult leader has already taken you way to the left. That's why you are so confused right now about what a free market is and why you are facilitating the inevitability of UHC.

 

[g5000]

You did NOT prove that Cigna has a monopoly in those states.
If you have a choice of several insurance companies, that is a free market.
Obamacare is available in all 50-states.

Obamacare is a GOVERNMENT health care plan. Thanks for making my point for me.

Obamacare is a stepping stone to single-payer health care.

You cannot call any insurance company in the country. I don't know why you are so incredibly ignorant of what a true free market is.

You stupidly bleev the ability to call a handful of companies is a free market.

I provided a list of all health insurance companies. You cannot call ALL of them. You are limited BY LAW as to which ones you can call, and you are paying a very heavy price for that.

Literally.

 

[BluesLegend]

I bet you think you are making a point, but all you are doing is digging yourself into a hole you won't be able to get out of.

Your cult leader has already taken you way to the left. That's why you are so confused right now about what a free market is and why you are facilitating the inevitability of UHC.

(yawn) anything else? I linked your post to a medical research site for the worst causes of boredom.

 

[LAUGHatLEFTISTS]

Now, you may occasionally hear a politician say something to the effect we need to be able to buy health insurance "across state lines".

That is very misleading, but it does highlight the fact you are limited to what companies you can buy from. And so is your employer.

Next time you hear a politician say "across state lines", ask yourself why they aren't saying "across the entire country".


Our health care system is broken. Everyone knows this, and insurance companies are laughing all the way to the Too Big To Fail bank.

More and more Americans are being priced out of the market. Health insurance costs have been skyrocketing for decades. You think "Bidenflation" was bad? Look at health insurance inflation.

Decades.

Long before Obamacare. Long, long before.

During all that time, the Republicans offered NOTHING to fix the problem. In fact, to win the senior vote in 2004, they created a NEW trillion dollar government health insurance program without paying for it. And that's because they repealed the law which required every new program be offset with either spending cuts or taxes.

So Obamacare was inevitable. It was the Democratic answer to the cries of the American people.

But as I predicted when it passed, it has not brought costs down.

Donald Trump saw an opportunity to exploit this pain and he promised to repeal and replace Obamacare "on Day One".

Strangely, no one ever asked to see his plan. I know this because I repeatedly asked his followers to show it to me, and that just pissed them off. They didn't want to believe they were being hoaxed.

Trump was just piggy-backing on the Republican Party's claim to do the same if the American people would just give them all the power.

When the GOP did get all the power in Congress and the White House, they were caught with their dicks in their hands.

Trump and the GOP had no plan. They never did.

And health insurance costs continue to skyrocket to this day.

Here's the thing.

So many Americans have been priced out of the private market for health insurance, 40 percent of them are now on a government sponsored health insurance plan of one kind or another.

Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, VA, Tricare, CHAMPVA.

40 percent.

I think that is an interesting number which highlights just how broken our health insurance system is, and for the dual reasons of Republican apathy and rising costs, it has now become inevitable we will end up with Single-Payer/Universal/Medicare-for-All health insurance.

The healthcare crisis was made up to get the community organizer that nobody knew existed elected president.

 

[dblack]

Thank your lucky stars that your employer has health insurance. You are not a hostage but a beneficiary of your employer's negotiated insurance coverage. If you had to pick up a phone and call for coverage, you couldn't afford it.

Horseshit. The reason we can't afford it is because employer provided health insurance isn't viable and it's destroying the market. I'm not thanking anyone for foisting such a scam on consumers.

Which brings me to the other thing we need to do, stop giving tax breaks encourage the employer dependency for health care.

 

[Darkwind]

I just want to know who the fuck made the decision to separate eye and dental from normal healthcare coverage?

I'd like to meet the bastard in a dark alley, tied up, and I with a cudgel.


Stupidest thing outside of Tommy Taint in the world.

 

[Eman623]

My personal belief about health insurance is that we should be able to pick up a telephone and call any insurer in the country, and choose a plan which works best for ourselves and our families.

This is what we do for all other insurance. Home, life, auto, renter's, you name it.

So why can't we do that with health insurance?

We can't because health insurers own our politicians and will not let that happen. They abhor competition and have bribed our government to partition our country and create health insurance zones which have a minimum of competition.

Hospital corporations are also regulated such that they can't expand across the nation.

If you were allowed to call any health insurance company, there would be fierce competition for your business. You would also be able to bundle your health insurance, like you do with all your other insurance, to get a discount.

What's more, you would not lose your job and your health insurance at the same time any more. And when you get a new job, you would not have to wait three to six months to get your new employer's insurance.

Instead, you are hostage to your employer for your health insurance. Literally a hostage to your employer.

It is a fact employer-sponsored health insurance (ESHI) bends the cost curve UP. However, labor unions want us all hostage to ESHI.

Of course, employers want us hostage, and they like the big tax write-off for providing ESHI.

This means the ability to pick up a phone and call any insurers for ourselves is never going to happen.

More in the next post, where I will provide the interesting number.

Reforming Health Insurance: Competition Across State Lines

Competition across state lines is necessary for any fundamental transformation in American health care. But the precarious financing of state individual-market risk pools, as structured by ACA, is inherently incompatible with vigorous interstate competition.

manhattan.institute

Technically speaking, I cannot call up any home or auto insurer in the country. I can only call the ones that are licensed here in California. It's nowhere near as restrictive as health insurance, but home and auto insurance are not an open and free market either.

 

[Harry Dresden]

As a retired vet, I am entitled to Tricare and the VA.

I took one look at the cost of my employer's insurance and was disgusted at how expensive it is. And it gets worse every year. My poor hostage co-workers have to pay more and more for coverage, and their deductibles and co-pays are outrageous.

Don't get sick in America.

i get what you are saying....as a retired federal worker i got to choose from a whole bunch of different plans my whole career with them......others i know only get a few to pick from and some are pretty bad.......

 

[Mac1958]

Unfortunately, there will be no particularly good answers for health insurance as long as Americans remain so fucking fat and stationary. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women. Over 42% of American adults are obese, with a BMI of over 30.

So I wonder what a conversation on health insurance would look like if our obesity rate were closer to 5% or 10%.

 

[gipper]

Unfortunately, there will be no particularly good answers for health insurance as long as Americans remain so fucking fat and stationary. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women. Over 42% of American adults are obese, with a BMI of over 30.

So I wonder what a conversation on health insurance would look like if our obesity rate were closer to 5% or 10%.

The leading cause of death are pharmaceutical drugs, which proves HC in the US is a fraud including insurance.

Prescription Drugs Are the Leading Cause of Death​

BY PETER C. GØTZSCHE APRIL 16, 2024 PHARMA, SOCIETY 15 MINUTE READ

SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

And psychiatric drugs are the third leading cause of death

Overtreatment with drugs kills many people, and the death rate is increasing. It is therefore strange that we have allowed this long-lasting drug pandemic to continue, and even more so because most of the drug deaths are easily preventable.

In 2013, I estimated that our prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer,1 and in 2015, that psychiatric drugs alone are also the third leading cause of death.2 However, in the US, it is commonly stated that our drugs are “only” the fourth leading cause of death.3,4 This estimate was derived from a 1998 meta-analysis of 39 US studies where monitors recorded all adverse drug reactions that occurred while the patients were in hospital, or which were the reason for hospital admission.5

This methodology clearly underestimates drug deaths. Most people who are killed by their drugs die outside hospitals, and the time people spent in hospitals was only 11 days on average in the meta-analysis.5 Moreover, the meta-analysis only included patients who died from drugs that were properly prescribed, not those who died as a result of errors in drug administration, noncompliance, overdose, or drug abuse, and not deaths where the adverse drug reaction was only possible.5

Many people die because of errors, e.g. simultaneous use of contraindicated drugs, and many possible drug deaths are real. Moreover, most of the included studies are very old, the median publication year being 1973, and drug deaths have increased dramatically over the last 50 years. As an example, 37,309 drug deaths were reported to the FDA in 2006 and 123,927 ten years later, which is 3.3 times as many.6

In hospital records and coroners’ reports, deaths linked to prescription drugs are often considered to be from natural or unknown causes. This misconception is particularly common for deaths caused by psychiatric drugs.2,7 Even when young patients with schizophrenia suddenly drop dead, it is called a natural death. But it is not natural to die young and it is well known that neuroleptics can cause lethal heart arrhythmias.

Many people die from the drugs they take without raising any suspicion that it could be an adverse drug effect. Depression drugs kill many people, mainly among the elderly, because they can cause orthostatic hypotension, sedation, confusion, and dizziness. The drugs double the risk of falls and hip fractures in a dose-dependent manner,8,9 and within one year after a hip fracture, about one-fifth of the patients will have died. As elderly people often fall anyway, it is not possible to know if such deaths are drug deaths.

Prescription Drugs Are the Leading Cause of Death ⋆ Brownstone Institute

 

[kyzr]

Obamacare is a GOVERNMENT health care plan. Thanks for making my point for me.

What point? Obamacare is a healthcare option. You are free to choose it or any other provider, a free market.

Obamacare is a stepping stone to single-payer health care.
You cannot call any insurance company in the country. I don't know why you are so incredibly ignorant of what a true free market is.

You can call any healthcare provider in your state to compare prices v coverage.

You stupidly bleev the ability to call a handful of companies is a free market.
I provided a list of all health insurance companies. You cannot call ALL of them. You are limited BY LAW as to which ones you can call, and you are paying a very heavy price for that. Literally.

You say a handful of companies does not make a "free market". I say it is.

Free Market Definition & Impact on the Economy

The free market is an economic system based on competition, with little or no government interference.

www.investopedia.com

A free market is an economic system where prices for goods and services are determined by supply and demand without government intervention. It is characterized by voluntary exchanges between buyers and sellers, allowing for competition and individual choice in economic activities.

There are no government PRICE CONTROLS, so be definition it is a "free market".

 

[dblack]

What point? Obamacare is a healthcare option. You are free to choose it or any other provider, a free market.

Oh, black is white now? Who knew?

ACA limits options, limits freedom. That's the entire point: To force everyone into a health insurance model that's a proven failure. And to keep the insurance industry in tall cotton.

 

[kyzr]

Oh, black is white now? Who knew?
ACA limits options, limits freedom. That's the entire point: To force everyone into a health insurance model that's a proven failure. And to keep the insurance industry in tall cotton.

Not sure whose side you are on with that post?
If you are against Obamacare, what is a better GOP option? Hint: there is none.
No one is forced into anything, get a job with good healthcare coverage.

 

[dblack]

Not sure whose side you are on with that post?

I don't do "sides".

If you are against Obamacare, what is a better GOP option?

They have none.

But a better option is to simply repeal ACA. Better yet would be to drop all the incentives pushing people into employer provided healthcare and deregulate.

 

[kyzr]

I don't do "sides".
They have none.
But a better option is to simply repeal ACA. Better yet would be to drop all the incentives pushing people into employer provided healthcare and deregulate.

I disagree with those options.
1. ACA is mostly used when employer plans are not available.
2. I prefer a law requiring employers to provide healthcare plans.
3. "deregulation" means what? The "wild west" regarding healthcare coverage?

 

[dblack]

I disagree with those options.
1. ACA is mostly used when employer plans are not available.
2. I prefer a law requiring employers to provide healthcare plans.
3. "deregulation" means what? The "wild west" regarding healthcare coverage?

And you've highlighted exactly what's wrong with the healthcare market.