Why in the world should **Insurance** companies cover pre-existing conditions? (death, cost)

[ovcatto]

Originally Posted by Frank DeForrest

How dare people be expected to pay for and assume responsibility for their own healthcare.
Perish the thought of giving up cigs, beer,coffee, lotto tickets, etc. to pay for the most important aspect of ones life.

Let's one is diagnosed with cancer (Donna Summer a non-smoker died of lung cancer... go figure), as a result of the cancer can't keep up with the demands of their job and have to quit or get laid off (fired would be sooo heartless). They lose their job and lose their insurance. Ah, but they get to keep the cancer.

Now by some miracle their cancer just mysteriously goes away, so they let's say they decide to be a job creator and start their own business. Being smart people they try to purchase health insurance... ah but they can't because the had cancer which has a pernicious way of resurfacing.

Miracles not withstanding.

So... when the cancer re-emerges they have no insurance and no way to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars in initial treatment (not a made up figure just the the national average) what would the wise, self-sufficient job creator do?

[Jaggy001]

Originally Posted by BJW50

The hospital bills the insurance company. The hospital will change you an arm and a leg even for the routine stuff if you don't have insurance.

Unless they amputate them by mistake

[HurricaneDC]

Originally Posted by Frank DeForrest

I wonder how long before people expect their auto carrier to pay for oil changes and worn out tires? Think about how premiums would be affected.

Oil changes are also far cheaper than all the medications my mother has to take for bipolar disorder so that's not really a good comparison.

[Dale Cooper]

Originally Posted by jojajn

So you are against Medicare?

I know you're not asking me, but yes, I'm absolutely against Medicare? Want to know why? Because employed people are forced to pay in advance for it their entire working lives. I'm continually amazed at how many people think Medicare is free. Au contraire, my friend! It's far from free. And even when one stops working and retires, they pay monthly premiums for Medicare. Parts B, C, and D are most definitely NOT free. The monthly premium is deducted from Social Security checks, which for those intellectually impaired, is also not free.

[Dale Cooper]

Originally Posted by jojajn

Look up the going price for an appendectomy. Since most jobs, that our "job creators" are supplying, pay minimum wage, who could afford it?

I know from personal experience that people get HUGE discounts for paying cash and bypassing the insurance scam.

[MaseMan]

Insurance companies should cover it as they are the de facto health care providers in this country, as decided by the politicians many years ago.

[Mircea]

Originally Posted by Little-Acorn

Some people seem to have a very strange view of what insurance companies do.

I'll do you one better. They don't have a friggin' clue what insurance companies do.

Originally Posted by Little-Acorn

They point to the problem of people who have a pre-existing condition, trying to sign up for new insurance, only to find the insurance companies won't pay for the the treatment for that pre-existing condition.

And why is that?

Who are the morons who insisted upon having their employer get all into their business and private lives via health care?

If people provided their own health care, they wouldn't have to worry so much about per-existing conditions.

Originally Posted by Little-Acorn

Insurance is a gambling game where you bet on what will happen in the future. You "bet" that you will get sick or injured, and the company "bets" that you won't.

It's a little more complicated than that. The bets are placed after evaluating the odds -- for real insurance, but then you don't have real insurance for health insurance.

Originally Posted by Little-Acorn

If you get sick or injured, the company pays you the stipulated amount (paying for a portion of your medical treatment etc.), and if you don't, you pay them (premiums).

Not necessarily.

Suppose your home is damaged. They are not going to pay more than the home is worth to repair the damage. If the home value is $115,000 then they aren't going to pay $150,000 to repair it. Now, it could be that you have a special kind of insurance that will do exactly that, but that would cost more money in premiums.

Originally Posted by Little-Acorn

A pre-existing condition cannot be insured against. It's like betting on the outcome of a horse race that's already been run - there is no "chance" involved, and no "unexpectedness" to the outcome (any more).

That's an excellent analogy.

Originally Posted by Little-Acorn

If you want to set up some kind of universal pool to pay for pre-existing conditions, fine, go ahead. But why drag insurance companies into it? It's got nothing to do with their areas of expertise, and they never volunteered to do it in the first place - for good reason.

That's an outstanding point.

Risk analyzing...

Mircea

Originally Posted by Gtownoe

Didn't read your post. However, if we had Universal Healthcare non of this would matter. Free health care with privatized options.

"Free?"

What, money just falls out of trees? On which planet?

Amused...

Mircea

Originally Posted by jojajn

They don't want any sick people, who might cost money, in their risk pool. This is why a National Healthcare plan is so vital to the citizens of our country.

Then you start your own risk pool, and leave me out of it.

Originally Posted by jojajn

So you are against Medicare?

Why does Medicare exist?

Medicare exists because stupid morons were too apathetic and lazy to take responsibility for their own health care plans. Everyone got their health care plans through their employer....

...and none of the Big Brains had the foresight to see that one day people would retire and not have an employer.

Oooops.

So how do you get an health care plan when all of the health care plans are tied through employers?

Oh,....l get it. You had no clue that in the 1960s there were only 16 health plan providers in the US. That explains a lot. There were 11 national health plan providers and 5 regional health plan providers.

Yes, today there are more than 600 health plan providers, and there are no longer any regional or national providers, because each State started regulating it, but that was not the case in the 1960s.

But surely everyone can see the Liberal Philosophy at work here...

....create a problem and then spend $Billions to fix the problem.

1]So FDR creates a problem by levying a Wage & Price Freeze and you cannot get a raise, but you can get a benefit called catastrophic health care coverage, to solve the problem FDR created.

2] Another problem is created when all health care coverage becomes tied to an employer, and retired people, who don't have employers end up with no health care coverage. That artificially created problem is solved through Medicare.

3] Then another problem is created when employers have way too much access to very sensitive private personal medical information about employees, and that problem is solve with HIPPA.

4] Another problem is created through a combination of medical technology, pharmaceutical drugs and employer sponsored health care when pre-existing conditions pop up. And the solution to that artificially created problem is supposed universal health care.

Which brings us to Medicare. Medicare is done. It will collapse between 2016 and 2018. Seeing how you cannot figure out how to pay for it, I seriously doubt you can figure out how to pay for a, um, "free" (snicker) universal health care plan.

If you want to impress me, figure out how to pay for Medicare and Social Security first.

Not impressed....

Mircea

[Jaggy001]

Originally Posted by Mircea

Why does Medicare exist?

Medicare exists because stupid morons were too apathetic and lazy to take responsibility for their own health care plans. Everyone got their health care plans through their employer....

...and none of the Big Brains had the foresight to see that one day people would retire and not have an employer.

Medicare exists because seniors vote and the families of seniors vote. Seniors consume more healthcare than other groups and either bankrupting them and their families or leaving them to die is very bad politics.

[Ceece]

Originally Posted by Dale Cooper

I know from personal experience that people get HUGE discounts for paying cash and bypassing the insurance scam.

My Dr's and hospital don't offer discounts, HUGE or otherwise. They may "write off" bad debts they can't collect but that's another story. You aren't going to save 80% by offereing cash, that you may not have anyway.

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by Ceece

My Dr's and hospital don't offer discounts, HUGE or otherwise. They may "write off" bad debts they can't collect but that's another story. You aren't going to save 80% by offereing cash, that you may not have anyway.

Right! I work for a dr's office and we don't offer tons of discounts. We have no overall policy for that. Sometimes we'll give a discount to someone who just lost their ins, but people who choose not to get ins. don't get much sympathy from us. They're counting on getting ins. in a more informal way, e.g. getting these discounts. Our local hospital give 10% discount for paying cash. My hip surgery was $76,000. That would mean a $7600 disc, bringing the cost down t about 69K.