Sure, if you are equating private jets to people's lives.

Hey, you don't get to afford private jets if you run an insurance company by operating it in good faith. You know, underwriting policies carefully based on risk, screening applicants, and reviewing claims with the intention of paying them fairly unless there really is fraud. No, you make money by handing out policies as free prizes in cereal boxes, investing the premiums, and then doing everything you can to avoid paying any claim, ever.

What they say in front of Congress is probably much different that what they'll do in practice.

My sister was just in the hospital for kidney stones and instead of trying to get her well, we're worried about paying for it all and all the specialists and meds. :(

This isn't going to end well. Don't these executives realize that they are the PR people for their industry right now and this may not go well for them?

I would rather not have our health care go the way of Canada because of a bunch of dumb ass executives not realizing how the winds are blowing.

I still have yet to understand why an industry dealing with people's health should be private. It is just flat out going to cause problems as long as there is someone that stands to make a buck as long as someone can not get proper treatment.

@sonneillon: I would rather that happen, so there we go :)

This is a clear situation where a group of assholes has ruined the system for everyone. I don't blame the companies for rescinding policies that were issued on incomplete or incorrect information. There are too many scumbags out there who won't fully report their history because it would raise their premiums. It would be too difficult for the company to sort out the true "good faith" claims from the "I'm trying to cheat you" claims. When people fill out insurance forms, they simply need to put all of their effort into it, rather than treating it like the form you fill out at Jiffy Lube. There will still be some people who simply and honestly forget to put stuff down, but that's the unfortunate cost of protecting the system against true fraudsters in an effort to keep costs down (relatively).

@johnva: I don't hear any Canadians demanding a private health insurance system. They're just demanding more funding for the system they have.

I think everyone can agree that increasing funding to the US system would not help anything.

@johnva: And after talking to my Canadian friends, I would hope to see it go that way as well. As long as it's not something considered to be elective, they get VERY prompt treatment.

Besides, who wants to do something basic like go to the hospital to deliver a kid and have to think about how fast we can get the mother and kid out of there because it's costing so damned much.

I have slightly more faith in insurance companies than some government bureaucrat rationing healthcare.

@Eldritch: Read what they said. I think you will find it easy to believe them this time.

@I Love New Jersey: I have slightly more faith in insurance companies than some government bureaucrat rationing healthcare.

I don't know why.

Profit driven health care where your health is the very last thing that your insurance provider cares for.

Or health care administered by politicians who are directly accountable to the public.

I'm not sure where healthcare "rationing" comes into play. I am sure that becoming sick or injured in Canada will never destroy a family for financial reasons. Didn't I just read that over half of American personal bankrupcies are due to medical bills?

@Esquire99: The whole reason this is a problem is the fact that insurers are allowed to treat people so poorly just for having a preexisting condition. You shouldn't have to go beg for coverage just to be able to access affordable health care. That's the reason people lie.

@suva: Because they can make a buck is why many work in health care. I believe health care should be 100% private, however we need to make simple provisions for people to effectively dispute a bad decision. I would even be in favor of "very limited" assistance for the presently uninsured. I dread the day the government runs health care in any form. (DMV, road construction, I could go on and on) Even if it is removed from private hands someone will always stand to benefit, either through bribes or contracts someone will make a buck. I don't want to start a flame war. That is my opinion as intelligently as I can put it with as fatigued as I am right now.

Socialize medicine already. Health should never be a for profit industry.

@Brian James Schend: @suva:

Yep. I kind of hope these asshats are arrogant enough not to shut their damn mouths :)

@blazergst: Medicare functions better and more efficiently than private insurance. This direct comparison has already been directly tried in this country with so-called "Medicare Advantage" (aka Medicare Dis-Advantage) plans vs. traditional Medicare. That was an attempt to privatize Medicare and it ended up as a disaster and scam on the taxpayers by insurance companies. It was sold as being more efficient to have it privately run, but it ended up costing more.

Medicare's not perfect (in particular, its reimbursement rates for doctors need to be raised to be more reasonable), but it's a lot better than private insurance in controlling administrative overhead.

@johnva:
The problem isn't the insurers. The problem is the high cost of healthcare. I don't believe people are entitled to health insurance. They are entitled to health care and the government should focus on lowering the actual costs rather than simply figuring out a way to pay those outrageous costs.

@I Love New Jersey: But you're fine with the insurance companies "rationing" healthcare? How is that any different (except that they are even LESS accountable than the government, AND are allowed to take a huge percentage of your premiums as profit)?

I'm getting increasingly cynical about the insurance industry in general. Why don't we all just stuff the "premiums" into certificates of deposit and use the savings when we need them? Guaranteed coverage right there!

@andrewe:
If you think dealing with an insurance company is difficult now, wait until the government runs it. Instead of taking 2 weeks to sort out a problem, it will take 2 months. Want to try and call the insurance "company" when you get home from work? Sorry, they only answer the phones Monday through Thursday between the hours of 8:45 and 4:15.

@Esquire99: I agree that providing health CARE to all should be the goal rather than health insurance. But the current privatized insurance system IS a major contributor to cost inflation. And we're paying those costs for essentially no reason. Who cares about choosing your health insurance, as long as it's decent? I personally care a lot more about choosing my doctor, and you would still be free to do that under a single-payer system.

But it seems we mainly agree; my point was that the problem is caused by the fact that our system is set up so that if you don't have health insurance, you're totally screwed. Providers all charge you like 3-6x more if you're uninsured than they charge the insurance companies (this is partly so that they can get the insurers to pay a reasonable amount after they negotiate down), a totally unfair and inhumane situation. And when a single illness could cause you to incur hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in costs, you're even more forced to have insurance if you don't want to lose everything you have and end up on welfare and Medicaid. The problem is not so much insurance as it is the fact that we've made insurance the only way to access health care unless you're super-wealthy.

@Esquire99: If we run a single-payer system in a rational way, that won't be your problem; it'll be the provider's issue. If we want to control costs, we want to get away from the insurer having frequent direct contact with the patients.

@johnva: Insurance works becasue the payouts are smaller than the premiums paid across the board. Preexisting conditions mean you are more likely to have a new condition (or flare up of the old condition) which means you should pay more.

@Esquire99: The funny thing is, healthcare is expensive for 2 reasons. 1. It is a necessity, and 2. people don't pay their bills.

One of my accounting professors was the head accountant for a large hospital chain, she said their "acceptable loss" was between 40 percent for their ER. that means, 4 out of 10 people who come in, will not pay their bill, so they would charge the other 6 extra to cover the cost of the 4 who didnt pay.

Before there was a health insurance industry, patients and doctors seemed to get along just fine. It seems to me that it is time to do away with this 3rd party health insurance industry that exists only to siphon money out of the patient/doctor relationship. It is time to create a new paradigm. How about we take the money we give the health insurance industry and invest it in medical cooperatives?

@johnva:
I'll concede that. However, that doesn't mean the solution is single-payer healthcare. The solution should still be on passing laws, tort reform for example, that will help ease the cost of providing healthcare. It's insane that it costs $20k for a night in hospital. Be it through tax breaks, etc., the government should focus on a lower cost health care system rather than socialized medicine.

No one in a country with a socialized medical system wants private insurance for good reason. While the quality of care may not be as high at the highest level, the quality of average care and the health of all citizens is much better in countries with socialized medical care.

I've lived in Japan for 20 years so I know firsthand about the shortcomings of such systems. However, I also know that no families go bankrupt if someone in their family develops cancer or needs a heart operation. I also know that no one is ever refused coverage because of preexisting conditions.

The bottom line is that the private vs. nationalized medical care issue is a debate between the haves and have nots. Those that are covered would rather not surrender their superior coverage so that those who have nothing or poor coverage have an average level of care. Sacrificing having the best for yourself so others aren't in a very bad situation isn't easy, but it is better for the culture and society on the whole.

@xtc46 - thinksmarter on twitter:

I know what a preexisting condition is, thanks. The problem is that LIFE is a preexisting condition. I, along with millions of other people, was born with a genetic illness. So I get discriminated against by insurers. I understand perfectly their rationale for wanting to do this instead of just charging everyone the same and dividing up their total costs (so they can be more competitive, and more cynically, so they can dump the "expensive" people on the taxpayers and skim extra profit). I just think it's unjust and wrong from a human rights perspective and no different from treating people differently based on the color of their skin. This is why I think that if we actually care about providing healthcare to all, we need to ditch private insurance as the model we use to do that.

I understand why they do it. I just think it's wrong.

@suva: Nixon! May he continue to molder in the grave.

@blazergst: "however we need to make simple provisions for people to effectively dispute a bad decision."

They have tried this, it never works though because the system is designed from the getgo to be against the recipient and for the provider. Its like Vegas, sept your life is literally on the line.

Heck most companies make it VERY easy to dispute, only to deny it again and again to the point you cant dispute it anymore.

And when the government runs things right, it really works well no offense. NJs DMV was a nightmare while it was privatized. The Government stepped in, took it over and its a night and day difference from what it was. I haven't even waited in a line in the years since they took it over. When I first got my license when it was privately owned, it took me 4 hours to even get my photo taken, they had a queue over 100 people long.

@Esquire99: Why? Purely ideological, belief-based reasons? It's already a proven fact that single-payer systems cost less to provide healthcare to all than any system which involves private health insurance. I agree that costs are the problem, but the more privatization you have the higher the costs will be IF universal health care is also a goal (which is absolutely should be, for humanitarian and pragmatic reasons). If you're going to provide care to everyone instead of turning people away, then single-payer is a proven model that is much more efficient than layers of privatization.

@ShariC:

@VenetiaOstrich: Medical cooperatives still don't solve the problem of discrimination based on preexisting conditions, which we must solve in order to provide affordable universal healthcare. They also don't solve the problem of providing care to the poor, who wouldn't be able to afford to buy in.

Really now...what is the f'in point of having insurance these days..? [I mean unless it's free from work by all means] First word regardless of claim is "Denied".

3 words look at Sweden

even after taxes they pay far less for health care then we do, get the highest quality healthcare in the world, have little wait time for even elective surgeries and spend LESS than we do with private insurance. Maybe our government cant run it but we can bring in someone from the outside who can.

@Jim Topoleski: gah that was annoying, what I was trying to say was thats basically the whole debate about EVERYTHING right now, even taxes.

God forbid Americans help Americans anymore. Certain parties have sold it hard that helping others from your dime is criminal, and that they are only poor or needy because they expect you to pay for it.

No one EVER wants to be poor. But in this country not only do we have utter disdain for it, but people out there want to make it outright criminal to not have money.

@johnva: I agree with some of your points. But doesn't Medicare take up something like 16% or 17% of the federal budget (from memory). Maybe the answer is more of a why does it cost so much rather than how do we pay for it. What if we treated medical care more like buying a car or burger? If it were completely private/free market system it would be our responsibility as the consumers to find the lower cost providers. I would love to see a menu with services provided at x in the lobby. :-) Between that and baseless lawsuits I bet insurance companies could save a boat load. I don't want this to seem like an argument in favor of anyone, this post proves the insurance companies have no soul.

@ShariC: We really don't even need to sacrifice anything, if we fund our hypothetical socialized system at as high a level as we are currently funding our private health insurance system. Just cutting out the amount going into obscene profits, marketing, claims, executive salaries and perks, and other administrative waste would be enough to cover all of the uninsured. The reason other countries don't always get the best care in their socialized systems is that they spend much less per capita on them than we spend on our healthcare system. How much we spend is a political choice for us to make.

@Jim Topoleski: Republicans would bring back debtor's prisons if they thought they could get away with it.

@johnva: I wonder how much of the high costs of healthcare are caused by incredibly expensive and heavily advertised prescription drugs.

@blazergst: Health care is inherently expensive, especially with advancing technology. There's no way around that. Medicare costs so much money partly because it covers a helluva lot of people and partly because it covers a group of people who are sicker than the average. If everyone of all ages were in the same pool, paying in premiums, the average cost per person would go down (because there would now be more low-cost people in the pool). Right now, our system is this: let the insurers take all the healthy young people for the healthiest, wage-earning periods of their lives, skimming off the excess they are paying in as profit. Then, when they get old enough that they would start costing the insurers a lot of money, dump them on the taxpayers. Classic socialized risks, privatized profits. And a scam on us all.

@BridgetPentheus: Not just Sweden. Socialized systems of various types provide more while spending less all around the developed world. Our is the radical experiment (a right-wing one, in our case), not the socialized systems. If we want to get a great system, all we have to do is look at all the best systems in the world and copy their best features. But we would likely have to shoot all the insurance lobbyists first.

@Alys Brangwin: Future grad student: Unfortunately, Nixon's buddies are still here, carrying out his ideological agenda from beyond the grave. One of them was our Vice President until January.

as long as health-care is for-profit, health care is going to do everything in its power to deny service to all patients possible. This is never going to be fixed in america, too much capitalist greed.

@Sunny Yeung: Even simpler... Just blow off the Insurance Comapnies.
Pay the equivalent of your premium into your own savings account at the same frequency that you used to pay the premium.
1) You are not missing the money.
2) You get to pay cash for your medical problem (no-one refuses cash).
3) If I were a woman, I would now have enough money to get my breasts enlarged, because I flicked off my insurance company years ago, and have been saving the premium into my own "health fund".

@dragonfire81: A lot. Direct-to-consumer advertising should be re-banned (allowing it was another radical right-wing experiment instituted by the Reaganites, IIRC). But you have to understand, no one solution is going to be the magic bullet when it comes to controlling costs. It's a multi-faceted problem that needs to be dealt with both on a comprehensive policy reform level and at the level of each of the specific subproblems (such as the one you mention). The big question is whether our corrupt political system is up to the task (I'm feeling pretty cynical about that now).

@dragonfire81: Oh, and don't forget that when Bush and his Republican buddies in Congress created Medicare Part D they specifically prohibited the government from using its purchasing power to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs.

@Sunny Yeung: You'd be screwed and bankrupt if you ever had a really bad problem. No one who isn't very wealthy can self-insure and be safe from bankruptcy in this country.

Where I live, in BC, Canada, there's a law in relation to life insurance (maybe other kinds as well, not sure), that states that if a policy has been in effect for two years, it doesn't matter if there's misrepresentation on the part of the insured; if the insurance company didn't do its due diligence then it is bound to abide by the terms of the contract. At least, I think that's how it works, and it doesn't apply to cases of out-and-out fraud. Someone who knows better can correct me!

It seems that some similar law would help this situation, if there's not already one.