re: #28 Obdicut

Except that this does, in fact, happen. And in many places, businesses function as a monopoly. So this statement of yours is both factually untrue, and practically untrue.

Congrats.

Hey, can you name a single innovation that the health insurance companies have created? Something that’s improved the delivery of health care for their customers?

Taking one’s business to another government? That’s called revolution. It’s a desperate remedy, entirely inappropriate to gripes over medical systems.

As to business functioning as a monopoly, what’s your point? The fact is that health care, and health insurance, have not functioned like that, not in my experience.

Health insurance companies include HMO’s. Again, in my experience, my HMO tries to do what the name says: maintain health. They give good advice, they try to stay on top of things, etc.

As to health insurance, here’s an innovation: if you get sick and you don’t have enough money in the bank to pay for the treatment, you’re not automatically left to passing the hat hoping for enough donations to cover it. You have a contractual right, a call on the funds of the insurance company from one point of view, but if you look at it strategically, a call in the funds of the rest of the insured pool. You’ve pooled your resources, in effect, to help each other out if need should arise. The health insurance company takes a percentage to cover the cost of administering this, sorting out valid claims from fraud, and so forth.

Now as I have already granted, there do exist insurance companies that plunder their members and deny coverage on phony grounds. But can we talk about the others?

They evangelize for better sanitation practices in hospitals. They try to educate their customers. Just as fire insurance tries to educate its own customers about why it’s a bad idea to store oily rags next to the water heater, or why it’s a good idea to keep a little fire extinguisher with the right kind of “ammo” in the kitchen.

So my statement is actually factually and practically pretty much on the mark. You didn’t give any valid counterpoint to anything I said.