Unless, that is, your house is on fire.

The other systemic problem with our current practice is being underinsured. The vast majority of people who declare bankruptcy due to medical costs have “good” insurance! The status quo is a huge fraud.

[Most states mandate car insurance; how does that compare?

That is WHY we HAVE a GOVERNMENT. - Dan ]

[Absolutely wrong - insurance is precisely a way to socialize risk. It was invented by shipbuilders to realized that storms and other bad luck could wipe out an individual or a regional group of companies. By joining a risk pool, each company could manage risk by paying a known amount, rather than gambling that they'd never be left destitute by a random act of god they could not control.

Socialism is the same thing, although it ranges between the fantasy fringe of communism and the very practical types of socialism that pervade America, from public schools to the public freeway system. ]

It’s true that group insurance plans spread risk amongst many individuals, and everybody in the group pays the same rate because there is an aggregate risk of payout from the insurance company. But when individuals seek insurance, they pay varying rates depending on the risk that they will demand a payout. In a socialist system, rates wouldn’t depend on individual factors.

[Asking people to pay more for health insurance because they smoke is sensible. Asking people who have cancer to pay more is eugenics. Be aware that what you are describing associates you with some rather dangerous ideological bullshit.]

Typical consumers of insurance always lose money on the deal, which is why insurance companies are profitable. In the aggregate, it is never financially sensible to buy health insurance, because you are better off keeping your money and paying for care directly. This is why very wealthy people don’t buy insurance. Why pay somebody to pay your bills when you can do it yourself? Average people like me get insurance while knowing we are losing money because we don’t want the financial risk associated with low-probability but expensive procedures.

[Rich people don't pay for insurance because they can self-insure. The potential risks of crashing their car or getting sick are negligible for the very rich. For everyone else, carrying car or health insurance is a dangerous gamble, as one unfortunate accident could wipe out everything you own along with your credit. ]

Insurance companies don’t ensure pre-existing conditions because there is no risk associated with them. It’s like gambling on a horse race when the race is already over, or putting money down on the roulette table when the ball has stopped moving. If the insurance company is to stay in business, it would have to charge people with pre-existing conditions more than they would have to pay directly.

[There is no risk? No, there is certain risk! Insurance companies don't want to accept risk, they just want to profit. But companies that hold massive leverage over consumers need regulation to prevent abuse, and terminating people who the insurer realizes might get sick after they've paid premiums for decades is a good example of that.]

Take life insurance policies as an example. There is no uncertainty in the fact that the policyholder will die. Instead, the insurance company wagers that the premiums paid will exceed the final payout. Hence, the more likely an individual is to die within a certain timeframe, the larger the premiums. If you take out a million-dollar policy against your life for a six-month term and you are on your deathbed, the insurance company will charge you almost a million dollars for a premium.

Car insurance provides other examples. Why do your car insurance rates go up if you file a lot of claims or violate lots of traffic laws? Because you have demonstrated that you are a riskier individual. Socialist auto insurance policies wouldn’t care about this, because all risk would be investigated in the aggregate. By the same token, auto insurance doesn’t pay to fill your gas tank or pay for your routine maintenance. These costs are “pre-existing conditions” of operating a vehicle, and carry no risk.

Can somebody explain to me why it’s okay for Apple to turn a profit for offering goods and services, and it’s okay for the auto mechanic down the street to turn a product for offering goods and services, but insurance companies are devils because they turn a profit for offering services? Their profit margins aren’t even very high: http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/08/health-insurance-industry-ranks-86-by.html

[Apple exists in an industry full of competition. Insurance companies do not. Few people have a choice beyond the two or three options offered by their company, and self employed people have even fewer options. It's not because the market can't solve the problem, but because the right has worked to allow and protect monopolized oligarchy among health insurance companies.

You talk a lot about "socialism," but you're really advocating corporate socialism, where big companies' profits are subsidized by the government (and health insurance most definitely is) without any benefits to American citizens. Forcing them to compete isn't more socialism, it's less cronyism. - Dan]

Tell you what: let’s jailbreak a Touch and cripple it to only run Text-To-Speech. We’ll sell it for half the price of the competition at $4000. Then for $50 we sell an App that does the same thing, so all they must do is reload the iPod and install the App.

Heck, for $6000 we can include a similarly crippled Mac Mini that we can “unlock” too, and still be 25% cheaper than the competition. Anybody wanna go into business with me?

It seems to me that The Government, representing everyone, should act as a secondary insurer. The insurance companies would all pay a percentage, and then get paid out for certain high-risk (read: expensive) people. In this way the risk is distributed across all, and there is no need for insurance companies to try to exclude those at risk or with pre-existing conditions. Rates would be lower to insurers that promote preventative care. This would be “single payer”ish, but preserve competition.

I am now convinced that only insurance companies make fallible decisions in the name of “bad science”, and I no longer fear that a government option which will likely lead to a single payer (http://www.breitbart.tv/obama-in-03-id-like-to-see-a-single-payer-health-care-plan/) will make equally-bad or worse decisions while depriving us of the choice to select a different provider. Obviously, a genius like Obama has figured out all of these issues, but just can’t explain it to the average idiot.

I, for one, welcome our new government insurance overlord!

[When has the modern Republican party not funded wars via debt? Reagan turned the US into a debtor nation while he funded illegal wars in Latin America financed by terrorist arms deals with Iran. Then the same people funded war crimes in Iraq against Iran. Then GW Bush spent $4 trillion (in debt, not paid for by taxes or by spending cuts) on Iraq to hasten the Rapture for fundamentalists while trying and failing to appropriate the nation's oil wealth. If you can't keep up with the argument, you are obligated to concede failure before running away!

The US would be far better off with single payer health care. Obama has said it is not attainable however. You can have a differing opinion on that, but you still need to refute facts and answer facts raised that obliterate your opinion. That's how argument works - Dan ]

You’re right that things like murders are a small factor relative to the cancer death rate. Nevertheless, the murder rate in the US is the highest of any developed nation, and beats the next-highest developed nation (Finland) by a factor of two. (Source: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita)

Heart disease rates are actually right in the middle of many developed countries. (Source: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hea_dis_dea-health-heart-disease-deaths) I also submit that a significant percentage of heart disease is caused by poor health in general, resulting not from lack of care but instead from lack of good judgment. For example, the obese are likely to contract numerous health issues, but they aren’t obese because they aren’t seeing doctors. And they aren’t obese because they don’t know any better. Poor habits are often to blame. Unless you outlaw McDonald’s and force them to exercise, well, you’re not going to make these people healthier. Things like common obesity are reflective both of culture and a general reflection of the relative wealth of even “poor” Americans. How many obese people do you see in Uganda?

I would also submit my libertarian viewpoint that most of the diseases killing most Americans are neither contagious nor fast-acting. The people dying from a lack of health insurance are not a risk to other citizens. Since most of the “40 million” Americans that don’t have health insurance are either well above the poverty line, illegal aliens, or already eligible for government-provided care (Source http://risch.senate.gov/public/?p=BreakdownoftheUninsured or read any of Google’s results for “breakdown 47 million uninsured” for further analysis), anybody in this category that dies from such conditions gets no sympathy from me. It is not a social good to keep those alive whose death poses no risk to others and who are too irresponsible to acquire their own care.

As for those that legitimately can’t afford insurance, if it is a social good to care for them, we might as well just send them checks.

["people dying from a lack of health insurance are not a risk to other citizens" ... Centuries of critically important public health services indicate that *if* this is the case, it's *because* the government has involved itself to cure and prevent diseases from polio to syphilis to everything else. To suddenly stop and suggest that this is "finished" and that the government should stop serving the public good over ideological theory sounds poorly conceived to a fantastically ridiculous degree.

That really says very little about why the govt should pursue a death panel approach that says "we don't care about doing anything to help *insurance* reach 47 million people." It's actually pretty sickeningly immoral that you would support a continuation of this pro-insurance profiteering that has made one of the worlds richest nations a place where 47 million people are routinely scheduled for euthanasia by the "pro-life" republican death panels. - Dan]

Less people get to the life-threatening stage and they live longer if basic health care is cheap, and essential health care is free. This has been proven in practice all over the world. And even the most expensive, deluxe government-run health systems (as per France) are far cheaper than the USA for-profit system (15% of GDP and growing fast).