Is anybody still naive enough to think that we will ever have affordable healthcare without single payer? If they are, a recent statement by an organization of health insurers with the Orwellian name of "the Council of Affordable Health Insurance" should open your eyes to the futility of Obama's like Chamberlain, attempting to appease their demands.
Uwe Reinhardt, an economics professor at Princeton writes in the New York Times:
In March 2008, the Council of Affordable Health Insurance took aim at state regulations that would require companies selling health insurance in the non-group market to spend at least 70 percent of collected premiums on direct health benefits – a fraction insurers call their "medical loss ratio," also known as the "health benefit ratio."
In its March 2008 newsletter, the council wrote:
"Insurers need to have enough money to pay claims. In most states, individual coverage faces [medical] loss ratios between 55 and 65 percent."
On its Web site, the council describes itself as "a research and advocacy association of health insurance carriers active in the individual and small group market."
In effect, the organization tells us here that unless its member companies are allowed to burn 35 to 45 percent of premiums on marketing, broker commissions, administration, other expenses, and profits, they cannot thrive in the non-group market for health insurance.
...
"The question arises how much longer these low health benefit ratios, defended by the council and by like-minded think tanks, can remain part of the American health system, especially at a time when the annual cost of health care for non-elderly Americans keeps rising apace; when unemployment is high; and when employment-based health insurance in the small-group market is steadily eroding, driving more and more Americans into the market for individual health insurance."
In Reinhardt's article "What Portion of Premiums Should Insurers Pay Out in Benefits?" he continues with an interesting explanation of just some of the reasons why private insurers expect such high profits on individual insurance, (regardless of if it is priced by health status or age. Also, we have to remember that they provide a valuable service in that the government cannot deny care to the poor without appearing to be a devil, private insurers, protected by ERISA Section 514, can and often do. According to the Supreme Court, its part of their function in society.)
There is one of the best of many reasons - the proof is right there - in their own words, for the argument that as long as we remain wedded to this private mandatory system of rationing care, and insulating the government from responsibility - even though they pay 60% of every healthcare dollar (because people who get sick ofen lose their jobs and then, their insurance and other assets) WE CAN'T SUCCEED IN MAKING HEALTHCARE AFFORDABLE.
Why do we do it then? What nightmare do they expect in the future that requires that they remain so wedded to these contract killers?
???
Bluntly, it comes down to a choice. Health Insurers, and their license to kill, (ERISA Section 514 and wholly uaffordable levels of profit in the face of extreme need and obvious unaffordability) or us.
Americans are spending such a large percentage of their healthcare dollar on the insurance sector, that we are faced with a choice. If we keep the insurance industry - continuing its license to kill, we are making a choice to also give up on affordability, and accept rapidly declining access to basic healthcare for all segments of our society, from poor to well to do.
Its obvious that that declining standards of care caused by US HMO style "prevent care™" in US healthcare faclilities even effects the wealthy, even when they choose to self pay.
It a characteristic of totalitarian states that successful campaigns to desensitize their populations to ever increasing levels of barbarity, require increasing the level of fear and coercion incrementally.
Its a fact that if you place a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump out, but of you place a frog in a pot of water and gradually bring it to a boil, it will not.
By allowing healthcare prices to rise to clearly unsustainable levels, while making examples of those who inevitably, cannot pay these impossibly high premiums, we are committing a criminal act on a massive scale. Nationals of other nations often recognize this, but Americans have been blinded by an organize campaign to lower our expectations and desensitize us from barbarity.
We need to understand the effect of policies like pricing healthcare out of the reach of large segents of our population is murder.
It is not acceptable to ignore the research done by the entire rest of the world on user fees and their impact on the poor. They inevitably cost far more - they save nothing.
Obama's age tax, for example, has been shown in Massachusetts and other states that allow "age based pricing" to be a proxy for pricing insurance by health. The effect has been to make healthcare unaffordable for people just as they reach the age where they begin to need it.
Following healthcare policies that attempt to justify funneling healthcare discounts to the young and employed, and price increases to those over 40, the individual market and the often far healthier well to do, is clearly an intentional attempt to deny care to those who need it-
This has the effect of making the United States the worst developed country in the world to be chronically ill.
SHAME ON YOU WHO ENDORSE THIS