11th Circuit Court of Appeals slams Individual Mandate

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You make an excellent case for federal regulation mandating lifesaving care regardless of the patient's ability to pay.

• I (and most people who actually work in the various public healthcare systems across the world would also) disagree with that ONE LETTER. There was quite a bit of outrage over that ONE instance and, furthermore, Oregon is an anamoly when it comes to euthanasia laws. Euthanasia isn't legal in Canada, a country with singe-payer healthcare, and I've haven't heard stories like the Oregon one from countries that actually do allow physician-assisted suicide.
• A nice PR move by ONE COMPANY doesn't erase all the the evidence that Private Health Insurance plans are refusing to cover millions of Americans with various "pre-existing conditions" and that PharmaCare companies are abusing their patents to make record profits.

Also, from the source article (rather than the lame-ass spin doctor at the examiner):



http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=5517492&page=1

While I certainly support giving everything one can for a patient, no matter the cost, there's a world of difference between denying coverage towards a woman dying of cancer that might marginally improve her chances is a lot different from denying coverage to people in the prime of their lives over various minute "pre-existing conditions".

Furthermore, the reason said drugs were so outrageously expensive in the first place is because Big Pharma has a patent-granted monopoly on drugs whose R&D was significantly funded through NHS grants and public university research (privatized profits, socialized risk, corporations love that).



Commenter ryt has nail on:



Manitoba's socialized healthcare system has never let me down, diagnosed me with diabetes, and bumped me ahead in numerous emergencies due to my NEED. I certainly perfer it to private health industries that ration care on the basis of how healthy you are (with the healthier getting more care) and how much money you have.

Last edited by Master_Pedant on 16 Aug 2011, 12:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

Nope, I just made an excellent case of why government run healthcare is a bad thing. If an insurance company pulled a stunt like that, there is a pretty good chance they could end up with a huge lawsuit slapped on them, and all kinds of negative media coverage.

That is why I advocate competition across state lines, because you would have a lot of competitors whom would enjoy showing ad after ad after ad, about this poor woman's plight, mentioning their competitor by name, and milking this story for all its worth to get all of that company's other customers. Assuming that company survived, the upper management would be in the unemployment lines, because there would be a bunch of extremely angry investors.

So as I said, the free market can do a pretty good job of holding people accountable.

Anyways a more rational choice for a healthcare setup is that when people join a healthcare plan, they have a certain number of years (let's say 5 years) where they pick up the costs of their pre-existing conditions, or if they were on their parent's insurance beforehand, that company has to reimberse the new insurance company. Now we make it rather hard for insurance companies to deny or drop coverage, but people can't simply discover they have this health issue that costs a lot of money, get an insurance policy, and expect the insurance company to foot the bill.

That would keep people from essentially scamming the insurance company. Now, we also allow small businesses to get together and jointly get a health insurance policy for their workers as though they were a large corporation, this also helps with cost and makes it less likely for the insurance company to pull any shannigans, because this group of small businesses would have a pretty significant purchasing power, and losing them as a customer would cost the insurance company a fair bit of money.

See, 3 ideas:
1. Competition across state lines.
2. 5 year lag time for insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions or previous insurance company in the case of children being knocked off their parent's coverage getting the bill for 5 years, so that people can't go get insurance after being diagnosed with something and expect the insurance company to pay for treatment. After those 5 years, the insurance company has to handle the pre-existing condition costs.
3. Small businesses being able to get together and jointly get a health insurance policy like a large corporation.

All three of these involve government largely getting out of the way or not sticking their nose into things. All three of these would be more effective than Obamacare, and it wouldn't even take 10 pages to write.

You're kidding? Private insurance companies refuse to pay for medical coverage every single day. Even as a healthy young man, I have had plenty of headaches dealing with them trying to refuse coverage for anything at all. At one point they tried to sneak around and change their policy of covering anesthesia while I was unconscious in surgery.

I love it when the religious Right claims socialized medicine is evil yet they don't realize that ancient israel had socialized medicine.

To torpedo your entire argument, one of the Democrat's main claims is there are no death panels deciding who gets care and who doesn't.

Well we saw a death panel deciding that a woman should kill herself, because it didn't fit with their cost benefit analysis, and we saw the dark reality of what Obamacare is going to be like.

Whether or not you choose to be honest with yourself is something you have to decide for yourself.

As a young Manitoban, I've had few such problems. When I was young (back in the years of rightwing, "Progressive" Conservative government), I waited in quite a few crowded waiting rooms. As I aged (and the NDP took power) that became less noticeable, although I haven't had to show up for too many surgeries. I was rushed ahead in line after a car crash due to my diabetes.

States rights issue. Currently insurance policies are subject to state laws. You're saying that the insurance company should be able to pick and choose which state's laws they want to conform to.



I'm pretty sure that 5 years is longer than current and pre-rombamacare delays for coverage.

You're also suggesting unavoidably that people should suffer and/or die for failing to insure themselves early enough.



You clearly don't know how employer-funded health insurance works. This is far easier said than done.

In fact, there are not at present any laws actually forbidding insurance companies from selling across state lines- but to sell in any given state, your plan must conform to that state's laws. Republicans want that requirement stricken down, so that insurance companies do not have to abide by the laws of the states in which they want to do business.

As I pointed out that many insurance companies have a defacto near monopoly because you can't compete across state lines. For example only 3 health insurance companies have licenses to operate in California. Now imagine if suddenly that was opened up and there were now a few hundred insurance companies that people could choose from. Do you honestly think those three insurance companies would behave like they had been? Well they might if they are extremely stupid, but it would probably result with them being ran out of business. A lot of these companies just arriving on the scene would be looking at all these horror stories as a dream come true.

1. They get plenty of people willing to say on the air that Insurance company such and such denied treatment of such and such medical condition... -- Plenty of material for advertising to bash competitor.

2. They actually would find a benefit to helping these victims of their horrible competitor in the way of positive testimony about them... -- Again lots of good advertising material.

3. These insurance companies would have a hard time pulling these stunts because their competitors would jump all over them on it.

Precisely. Why do the modern conservatives hate state's rights?

So did those practitioners of socialized medicine in in ancient Israel have death panels?

They aren't, they are against states creating government sponsored monopolies, you seriously think there aren't insurance companies trying to get into some of these states that aren't being denied licenses simply because of the fact that the current companies are campaign contributors to the politicians.

Inuyasha, your claim about cross-state competition is completely bogus, and is based on a misunderstanding of the law.

As to insurance companies competing with each other by running ads attacking each other, for this to do anything you would first have to disconnect health insurance from employment, as almost no Americans today directly choose their health insurance provider- their employer makes that choice for them.

Under Capitalism the price of medical insurance does not take into consideration your ability to pay.

Well then, if insurance is to be sold across state lines without being compelled to conform to the legal requirements of the state in which it is sold, then surely the regulatory authority establishing guidelines for insurance policies must lie at the federal level. There is Constitutional justification for this in the interstate commerce clause, and practical justification in the fact that you are denying the possibility of a state-based approach. So why do you (and other conservatives) oppose having the federal government exert regulatory authority over the insurance industry?