How about Rick Santorum??

No Wolfgang, insurers aren't afraid of competition, they know the playing field won't be level. The evidence is right there with the Medicare program where dear old Uncle pays providers approximately 83% of their "cost" dollar (not their charge dollar...their cost dollar). There's no negotiation for their services, it's "if you want any federal dollars, take it or leave it."

Hospitals, for example, are compensated by DRGs (diagnostic related groups). If the fee covers the cost of a Medicare patient, congrats...if it's more, you make money....if it's less, tough, maybe you'll win on the next one. More often than not, hospitals have been losing and shifting the costs to commercial insurers. Your beloved Gubmint is one of the...

Foxy's favorite attack mechanism is the pre-existing condition clause. I have one question for anyone who uses this argument....can you go w/o home owners insurance (not likely if you have a mortgage) then call a property & casualty insurer the moment your house catches on fire or after it's destroyed by a tornado?? Of course you can't....anymore than you can call an acquire insurance after you've wrecked your car.

NOW, if you could, can you imagine what the cost would be?? Sure you can...in fact, in Foxy's home state of TX, if your covered by a group plan with from 2-50 lives, all insurers must provide coverage for pre-existing conditions (guaranteed issue). The only protection they have is that they can charge the group...

and many others continually repeat many unsubstantiated falsehoods on this board as if repeating lies will ultimately make them truths.

For example, Phylo trots out the comparison of overhead expenses between Medicare (2%) vs. the avg. commercial insurer (12%). His intention is to make readers believe 1) that Medicare is actually providing care for 2% overhead (as pointed out by another poster it can't/doesn't), 2) 12% overhead for an insurer is equal to its "profit" (it isn't) and 3) people who have insurance were bankrupted by huge expenses (most weren't...many simply didn't have the $1k-$3k combined deductible and coinsurance expense required by their policies).

In exchange for a premium, an insurer provides a...

I'm sure many here are sorry for your plight. And reading here daily, I don't find many that object to finding non-governmental (free market)answers to any of the legitimate problems the nation faces in its health care delivery system.
You have to remember to separate the delivery of health care services from the financing of the need for health care services (insurance).

Most of the objections on TH stem from the overreaching proposals put forth by the current administration. Regs contained in HR 3200 go far beyond addressing the cost of health care services, reducing health insurance premiums, increasing access to health care services or reducing the numbers of the truly uninsured. As one poster has asked, why does a health...

Next, let's distinguish between health care (providing a service and charging a fee for that service) and health care financing through an insurance contract (a payment mechanism whereby one party promises to make a payment for specified, covered charges in exchange for a periodic premium payment). Granted, limited by space, my definitions are somewhat abbreviated. Most people are upset with the "health care system" but are they talking about the providers of care or are they upset with the insurer? Do we need to address waiting times for services and outcomes or are people mad about the level of deductibles, copays and/or premiums?

The "univeral" solutions for any of these problems will be different and will have unintended...

Does anyone else feel like we're really getting to "debate" this issue? Does anybody else feel Rahm-rodded like me? Do you think we're even focusing on the correct problem?

Tom in NC (reply #16)posted some key facts and posits that the number of uninsureds is surely less than the numbers bandied about (and we all know it's about the power grab and not about the "uninsured" anyway). He left out the fact that a significant number are also in the 18-29 yr old age bracket and consider themselves "bulletproof" and therefore choose go without insurance. Many later regret this decision when they become ill and complain about the bad old insurer's insistence on pre-existing condition clauses. But I digress.

Do we need to overhaul...

You're both sort of on the track, but be careful of what you wish for. Willis, it's true the employer gets the deduction for the premium expense, but an employee receives a "benefit" without taxation (using Shapiro's example, up to $12k per year for a family). What's out of whack with our current system is the incentive is greater, or of higher benefit, for those with higher incomes because they're in a higher tax bracket. The better, or more expensive the benefit, the more the tax break for them (no incentive to shop wisely).

Shrinque, giving the purchase decision and tax deduction to individuals will have no effect on the cost of insurance. It will, however, result in people making different choices in the types of plans they...

Don't know what happened to the first post (but it was brilliantly written).

To summarize, there is a big difference between health care (the service) and health insurance (the financing mechanism).

Insurance is a COTRACTUAL relationship and is heavily regulated by the state you live in. In the case of group insurance, the contract is usually between your employer and the insurer...or in many small group cases, a M.E.T. or Multiple Employer Trust (the group purchasing arrangement everyone clamors for that's been in existence for decades). For individuals, the contract is between you and the insurer.

The CONTRACT (or in the case of the MET, the certificate of participation) spells out, IN ADVANCE, which medical...

Pre-existing condition clauses protect the insurer (it's pemium competitiveness and it's existing and future customer's costs) against any individual who would wait to purchase insurance until the time that know they have a major need. After all, the basic premise of insurance (any discipline...car, homeowners, life or health) dictates that we purchase protection against unknown, or unexpected, catastophic expenses. Imagine how much car insurance would cost if we all could wait until we wrecked our cars before insuring them.

Recission only happens occasionally (except in CA where highly publicized abuses have been identified and reversed with the culprits being punished and fined). Generally used with individual plans, it's a...