There is No Hope - This Country is DONE!
Real Estate Investor · OH · Member since 2008 · 4k+ posts · 1k+ votes
I've sadly come to the conclusion that our country is done, over, kaput! I finally came to this conclusion over the weekend as we were circulating petitions to put a Constitutional Amendment on the November ballot in Ohio to stop Obamacare. As you know, I live in Ohio and in a somewhat rural area. This should be prime territory for conservatives. I was SHOCKED at the number of people that wanted Obamacare and many of these people should have known better. I heard comments like "now my son will have free insurance". It was absolutely apparent that these people think that Obamacare is free and comes from Obama's magical stash. They are too STUPID to understand that someone must pay for this stuff and there are a LOT of these people.
Therefore, I'm sorry to report that the USA as we've know it is OVER!
While I am not a fan of government subsidies, I do need to point out that pre-existing conditions are not analagous to getting car insurance after an accident.
Insurance is designed to transfer the risk of uncertainty in return for a fee - the premium. Once you have a car accident, there is little uncertainty over its costs (unless it is one of those rare accidents that results in a large lawsuit). It is therefore not insurable in the economic sense of the word.
Pre-existing conditions are different in a couple of ways. First, everyone is going to have some health condition at some point in their lives that would become "pre-existing" from that point onwards and therefore is not like an avoidable accident. Second, even after you have a health condition, there is a wide range of expenses that you can incur related to it. (For example, you could have hypertension and die of something else with no unusual expense related to your hypertension.) Therefore, pre-existing conditions do make sense for insurance coverage.
The reason why insurance companies have traditionally avoided covering pre-existing conditions is not related to their inappropriateness for coverage but to something called "adverse selection." This refers to the risk of the first insurance company that covers a particular risk ending up with all the people who have that condition, thus driving up its costs and premiums, and then losing all its healthy patients due to the high premiums, consequently necessitating it to raise premiums again, etc. This vicious cycle can continue until the insurance company goes out of business.
That's why insurance companies try to have a "healthier" patient base than their competitors and this also, unfortunately, creates a cycle of each company trying to have a healthier base than its competitors, thereby making insurance harder and harder to get for everyone. That's the situation we were in and a simple solution to eliminate the race to the bottom AND the problem of adverse selection is to pass a law preventing insurance companies from denying someone based on a prre-existing condition.
Insurance companies are actually quite happy with the rule that does not allow them to deny patients based on pre-existing conditions because it increases their revenues and profits. It makes perfect actuarial sense to them. The problem that I have with Obama's health care plan is that it does not do much to address the primary health care problem in this country, which is that costs have gone out of control due to a variety of market distortions.
BTW, whenever anyone tells me that only economists and stock analysts can understand any financial matter it reminds me of this great video.
Under the Obama plan, there is no single payer or public option. You do not have to change your insurer, or plan. Insurance is still privatized.
In fact, it's very similar to the plan advocated by Mitt Romney (R). So you guys should be happy about it.
Heh!! I dropped out of this silly thread LONG ago, but my name keeps being brought up.
1. Vikram- post on you and JScott being the same person was tic. I know, because you do vote for many of my posts....
2. Tim- Yes, I was a janitor and have expertise in window washing, carpet cleaning(very lucrative) and buffing floors. I'll put THOSE talents up against anyone. No college degree though, in RE or anything else. Have a great day. Rich.
p.s. I've been posting a LOT lately-burning time. I fly out today to Scandinavia for 12 days. I'm too cheap to pay for much internet time on cruises, so less posts coming.
For the record, I worked for an insurance company (one of the top 3 or 5 depending how you rank) for going on 20 yrs now, but not for a moment has crossed my mind that would make me some sort of an "expert" in that area.
P.S. Nor have I ever had the narcissistic urge to see how fond Google, Bing or other virtual entities are of my own beloved self. Nobody better be looking for me there, ever...
Oh- I guess I'm an expert in Real Estate also. At least, that is what I'm called when I testify in real estate matters in court cases. Expert witness, for what that is worth. I get paid as one. Rich
Well geeze Sorin. Since you've got 20 years in the insurance industry why didn't you contribute anything to the insurance discussion at hand? Why did you limit your posts to trolling about apostrophes and such?
Based on your 20 years experience in the field, answer me just one simple question. Is insurance designed to be a transfer of risk for past, present or potential future losses?
Past, present or potential future losses? It's not that hard.