Heh... right. If you control the purse strings, you control everything - as you've proven. If government is supplying the cash, than can simply mandate which services they will pay for, which they won't, how much they will pay, who is eligible, who isn't, etc, etc....
Government isn't supplying the cash...
taxpayers are. Government is just the entity that makes sure the cash gets to the doctor who treated you. And right now, insurance companies already mandate what services they pay for, and they do that because of the profit motive. No profit motive = no denial of claims. The
only reason a health insurer won't pay a medical claim is because doing so would affect their profit margin. That's it. That's the only reason why that would happen. In a single-payer system, that wouldn't be the case so long as the system is well-funded. A 6.2% payroll tax to replace Medicare tax and employer-provided insurance would be able to fully fund Medicare, removing the need for Parts A-D, and thus, reducing expenses for people on Medicare and on private insurance right now. It makes no sense that as a society, we spend 20 cents of every dollar to health care. That's entirely because of insurance companies. There is no other reason.
Wow.. you really don't get what a hedge is. Do some reading:
Hedge (finance) - WikipediaIndividuals live with the risk that they might get sick and not be able to afford an available cure. They pay insurance companies a monthly fee (a premium) to cover some or all of the costs if the risk is realized.
Right, and that is in a for-profit model, not a single-payer model. In a single-payer model, there is no risk because everyone is in the same insurance pool. So I don't know why you all get so fixated on the "mitigating risk" while ignoring the fact that risk is only mitigated
because insurance companies are profit-driven. Remove the profit motive and you remove the risk. It's that simple. Again, that's why single payer systems beat ours in nearly every measurable health metric there is, including cost. If what you're saying is true, then the universal, single-payer systems would result in
more health care spending, not less. So what we have here is a case of reality clashing with fantasy. There is no way to reduce costs and provide universal coverage in a for-profit health insurance system. It is impossible. So why are we bothering with this? There is no advantage to having the transaction between an insurance company and your provider privatized. It does not improve or enhance your care at all. In fact, it restricts it. It restricts your choice of doctor. It restricts your options for treatment. And it does that in service not of your health, but of the insurance company's profit margins. By defending for-profit health insurance, you are defending price gouging, rescission, and claim denials. None of which does anything to improve or enhance your health care.