Insurance news

[missroserose]

The good, or at least less-sucky: Between getting married and Brian turning 25 over the last year, our auto insurance has gone down almost $250 per six-month premium. So that's nice, even if it's still a mandatory large expenditure. Sigh.

The wince-inducingly awful: Word is the health insurance industry as a whole is rejoicing - not only is it looking like healthcare reform as a whole is going to bring them millions of new customers (including government subsidized lower-income people), but the one bargaining chip the government had planned in order to keep them from taking complete and total advantage of their customers (the creation of a public option to compete with the private sector) is losing support, and there's talk of only requiring them to cover 65% of costs on cheaper plans. Jesus H. Christ on a cracker. I didn't honestly think things could be any worse than they are, but pass this "reform" and the poorer folk are going to be even more screwed - not to mention the taxpayers who'll be subsidizing their worthless "plans". But the insurance industry gets richer, so everybody who matters wins!

As a sidenote - I particularly love this bit: "In the first half of 2009, the health service and HMO sector spent nearly $35 million lobbying Congress, the White House and federal healthcare offices, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics." And how much of that $35 million came from/is going to be offset by denying paying customers' claims for bullshit reasons, thus sticking them with even more bills?

I dunno about you guys, but I'm headed straight to the city of Headdesk in the great, time-honored land of Political Demoralization. Anyone else want to come along?

Comments

[moonwick.livejournal.com]

I gave up on having faith in our feds long ago; welcome to the club. ;)

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Serves me right for wanting so much to have faith in our government. :P

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

*hugs* I'm sorry they let you down. I really wanted to be wrong.

[amanda_lodden.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the What-Are-Those-Fuckers-Thinking-ville. Do you need a ride from the airport? I can pick you up.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Sadly, I'm not even wondering what it is they were thinking - it's not hard to guess at all, if you follow the money. I guess I was just halfway hoping they'd actually have the greater good of their constituents in mind, rather than the greater good of their campaign funds. *sigh* Somebody needs to start the Good of the People lobby, and soon. If only we could find some way to make the Greater Good profitable...

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

Between getting married and Brian turning 25 over the last year, our auto insurance has gone down almost $250 per six-month premium.

I have got to get married. I think the government needs to legalise same-self marriages because I'm tired of being discriminated against.

I'm headed straight to the city of Headdesk in the great, time-honored land of Political Demoralization.

You mean Kommunist Kanada, with its evil socialised medicine? *sigh* I would once again like to put in a request for a opposition party. Spine mandatory.

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe you should ask your housemate if she wants to share a bank account? You could propose on bended knee, offering a signed affadavit. :)

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

So much hope and change right now...oh yeah.

Responsiblity for Health

[faith-rose08.livejournal.com]

How about a totally new approach to health care, like each of us taking total responsiblity for creating and maintaining our own good health? I have observed over the years that 70% or more of human illness stems from mental causes that manifest as physical conditions. Learn about the mind, discover how it works and you over come the great bulk of human ills.

You will still need doctors occasionally, as you might need a lawyer occasionally, but you break the "doctor, drugs, dependency" cycle that keeps so many people sick. Personally, I would rather focus on taking responsiblity for my own condition, than deploring those who don't. Frustration and Despair are both conditions where one abdicates power - you can literally feel your energy drain away into the vast sea of helplessness.

Turn your attention to things you can do something about and your energy renews! This is the power of putting yourself in a position of being cause. Good health is a product of being willing to confront a situation and find or create a way to be at cause where your energy grows, rather than allowing yourself to be at effect where your energy drains away.

Doctors love folks on "energy drain" they seldom see the other kind! Think about it. Your power to confront and take responsiblity for yourself - rather than abdicate power to the doctor, the government or the insurance company - is a direct indication of your level of mental, and thus, physical health. That's where you begin. Take it on a gradual rising scale and someday, my Darlin' Daughter, you will be the leader of a tremendous grass roots movement of people who decided to get well in spite of everything! This is how I see it. Love, Mum

[gracewanderer.livejournal.com]

I'm still in favor of no public option, and changing the laws so that the health insurance industry is treated more like a public utility (sewer, water, power) than a normal business. Specifically, the industry should be heavily regulated in terms of how much profit they can make (almost none) and how they can do business.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

I'm a little skeptical as to how that would work, simply because it's so unwieldy - it'd take an extremely complex network of laws, exceptions, and rulings, not to mention oversight (something the federal government traditionally hasn't been good at), in order to make it work. Simply making available a baseline standard of care at a reasonable price would be much simpler - the insurance companies would have to live up to that standard in terms of care and service in order to be competitive, and the market would take care of itself.

[gracewanderer.livejournal.com]

It's working fine for water and electricity.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

[a] Public utilities are much simpler beings than health care, and don't generally involve the possibility of human life hanging in the balance, and [b] not if you talk to the people in places I've lived. Also, I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that [c] there wasn't already a huge profit-making infrastructure in place when they became regulated entities, and thus nowhere near as much inertia to overcome.

[gracewanderer.livejournal.com]

All of these are true, but that doesn't mean it won't work. I'm much more inclined to be cynical about the government going into business themselves* than about the government regulating private industry in a market that it doesn't have a stake in.

Incidentally, the option I like most is to have health insurance companies that are non-profit, member-owned institutions, kind of like credit unions, with similar membership "requirements". (In Utah, the requirement for most credit unions is just that you live in a certain county, or even that you live in the state of Utah.) But I haven't heard this discussed as an option so, whatever.

*Where they are a competitor but also set the rules for the marketplace, and can also partially fund themselves with tax money, there won't be any real competition, and when the private companies go out of business all we'll be left with will be shitty government run health insurance options. But I'm sure you've heard this argument before and have some reason for thinking it won't happen this way or thinking that it wouldn't be bad if it did.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

I like the nonprofit credit-union-style option too, but there's a very good reason it hasn't been discussed - money. Health insurance companies make millions of dollars of profits every year, and forcing them to go nonprofit would be political suicide - they can afford to hire armies of lobbyists (and indeed, already have) to persuade/bully lawmakers into refusing to support legislation they don't like, not to mention disseminating the kind of bullshit misinformation that's derailing public support for the current effort. The only reason they're even on board with the current idea is because requiring everyone to have health insurance is a potential goldmine for them - especially if they can get that pesky public option idea swept under the rug and instead have the government directly subsidize "plans" for low-income people. Instead of having to compete with the government, they get money directly from the government. You can imagine how many execs are jizzing their pants over the possibility.

I have heard that argument, and I agree that it's not a perfect system. As I recall, the original plan put income limits on the public option, so if you earned more than a certain amount of money you had to either go with an employer-funded or privately-bought plan. But even without that, I tend to think of it as the lesser of two evils, and given the record profits they're making, I think the insurance companies have a lot of leeway before they're in any danger of going out of business.

[gracewanderer.livejournal.com]

You don't need the government to pass laws requiring a company to be a non-profit entity, you just need some people willing to set up a non profit organization and start offering services. I know of at least one non-profit health insurance company (DMBA) and they offer some of the best coverage at the lowest rates in the state. Unfortunately you have to be an employee of the LDS church to get coverage from them.