How about we allow insurance companies to compete across state lines? It's FEWER CHOICES that result in HIGHER PREMIUMS.
If you have more insurance companies to choose from they'd have to compete for your business, and prices go down.
This is why cameras are so cheap today for what you get. Competition.
Quality goes up, prices go down.
This is FAR CHEAPER than an entire government takeover.
"Save 15% or more on health insurance by calling Geico."
I can buy car insurance across state lines. I don't have to buy car insurance through my employer. Why should health insurance be any different?
So when the government takes over healthcare and decides how much insurance costs, and it's such that private companies decide they can't compete, resulting in only ONE CHOICE, namely, the government, what then?
With no competition, no one really has to go the extra mile to provide the best service. Where else can you go? You're stuck. And the prices will rise, since the government is not known for efficiency. And everyone will suffer monetarily, and some, with their health.
If you have more insurance companies to choose from they'd have to compete for your business, and prices go down.
This is why cameras are so cheap today for what you get. Competition.
Quality goes up, prices go down.
This is FAR CHEAPER than an entire government takeover.
"Save 15% or more on health insurance by calling Geico."
I can buy car insurance across state lines. I don't have to buy car insurance through my employer. Why should health insurance be any different?
So when the government takes over healthcare and decides how much insurance costs, and it's such that private companies decide they can't compete, resulting in only ONE CHOICE, namely, the government, what then?
With no competition, no one really has to go the extra mile to provide the best service. Where else can you go? You're stuck. And the prices will rise, since the government is not known for efficiency. And everyone will suffer monetarily, and some, with their health.
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gb hill
Veteran
It was the Dems that put the knife in the back first! Joe is looking after Joe. Besides he's from the biggest insurance state He's not about to bite the hand that feeds him.
TennesseJones
Well-known
Please don't wait for a Saviour.
Fascinating language on this web page. Forgive me a tangent, i have never understood the relationship of christianity and the right in these discussions. it seems tangentially worth asking about, with the god and country and self reliance sort of an undercurrent here.
Poverty in the richest countries in the world must be a disgrace. it disgraces us. This is not a socialist reading, it is self evident from a cursory reading of the gospels. You are not loving your neighbour as your self if your neighbour starves, are you? If your neighbour dies due to lack of healthcare when your country could provide it, surely that is a disgrace? You turned the other cheek not to receive a further blow, but to avoid the suffering in front of you. or to watch tv. wide screen plasma tv perhaps.
we can do better, in these rich countries, and we must do better.
Fascinating language on this web page. Forgive me a tangent, i have never understood the relationship of christianity and the right in these discussions. it seems tangentially worth asking about, with the god and country and self reliance sort of an undercurrent here.
Poverty in the richest countries in the world must be a disgrace. it disgraces us. This is not a socialist reading, it is self evident from a cursory reading of the gospels. You are not loving your neighbour as your self if your neighbour starves, are you? If your neighbour dies due to lack of healthcare when your country could provide it, surely that is a disgrace? You turned the other cheek not to receive a further blow, but to avoid the suffering in front of you. or to watch tv. wide screen plasma tv perhaps.
we can do better, in these rich countries, and we must do better.
gb hill
Veteran
Exactally!!...and competition creates jobs!
wgerrard
Veteran
LOL!!
... those that don't will be fined & imprisoned?
I agree that this health care bill is a mess, and too much of it serves to transfer public money to private insurance companies. I want a single payer system as in the UK or France. Anything short of that is a false promise. The corporate market has failed to deliver health care to all and deserves to be scrapped.
You can't have real health reform, even in its current wimpy guise, if businesses can legally avoid participating. It's too bad that some people need to be threatened with fines (the jail sentence charge is bogus) before doing engaging in ethical behavior.
wgerrard
Veteran
What knife? We ran the creep for VP! You can't be a Democrat if you oppose core Democratic policies, support the opposition Presidential candidate and speak at his convention. Leiberman owes more to the people who line his pockets than to the people he represents. The only way to stop that is to publicly finance Congressional and Presidential elections, ban corporate political contributions, and end the legal travesty that says corporations are legal persons. That last would return us to the situation that prevailed for most of our history and, hence, is a conservative stance. Toay's conservatives won't support it because they are corrupt money grubbers.
wgerrard
Veteran
And large dominant corporations fear competition and do everything in their power to prevent it. That is the reality that conservatives ignore. The unlimited and unregulated growth of corporate power has always been the greatest threat to competition known to capitalism.
AS I've said, the private health market has failed to provide health care to tens of millions of Americans. If the corporate market is so wonderful, explain how that happened? Explain how profit-based corporations are going to willingly provide servces on which it is impossible to make a profit?
The competition you advocate has only resulted in more people losing health care, and in more corporate bureaucrats getting rich by denying coverage and sending people to early graves. Your claim that all we need to do is allow more money grubbing corporations and their morally deficient managers and investors to compete is entirely bogus. It doesn't matter whether or not they can sell across state lines. They are not going to sell any coverage to anyone unless they think it is profitable. Profit-based health care is not capable of caring for all Americans.
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gb hill
Veteran
My son is a cook in a restaurant. they won't give their employees full time benefits so they keep them poor by a system they call part time. My son also has seizures & can't even hold a drivers license. Guess what! He gets help through Medical ministries. He also gets help through a NOVANT program. No cost to him. HUMANA also has a program. He went to apply to the government called Medicare, they turned him down because he doesn't have an illegitimate kid running around! Now who is disgraced!
wgerrard
Veteran
He went to apply to the government called Medicare, they turned him down because he doesn't have an illegitimate kid running around! Now who is disgraced!
Is your son eligible for Medicare? Can you show me documentation that shows you need an illegitimate child to qualify for Medicare? Must be an awful lot of 65-year-olds with illegitimate kids running around.
Your gripe should be directed at his employer, who chose profit over your son's health and their social responsibility.
[Blue Cross raising my premium while continuing to pay its execs tens of millions of dollars and continuing to reward its bureaucrats for denying coverage owed to its customers is considerably more morally offensive than any taxes levied by government to pay for a universal social good. Private for-profit health companies oppose competition and damage the health of Americans. Time to see the truth and end them. Stop being a toady and a tool for the rich.]
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Rick Waldroup
Well-known
My son is a cook in a restaurant. they won't give their employees full time benefits so they keep them poor by a system they call part time. My son also has seizures & can't even hold a drivers license. Guess what! He gets help through Medical ministries. He also gets help through a NOVANT program. No cost to him. HUMANA also has a program. He went to apply to the government called Medicare, they turned him down because he doesn't have an illegitimate kid running around! Now who is disgraced!
I find it fascinating that you apparently embrace a big business system that you correctly recognize as keeping workers poor. This is the nature of Big Business in America. You remind me of the tea baggers who rant and rave against a system that a lot of them depend on for support. Most of them are simply empty heads waiting to be filled by the insane ramblings of right wing lunatics who preach hate and fear.
emraphoto
Veteran
"...they turned him down because he doesn't have an illegitimate kid running around!"
was this an actual requirement or are you just regurgitating the same untruths that are found in your world of privelage?
was this an actual requirement or are you just regurgitating the same untruths that are found in your world of privelage?
gb hill
Veteran
I agree! thats what gripes me about the republicans too, too big on business cutting out the little man. He's in his 20's If your disabled or blind or have a kid you can apply for medicare/medicaid. I really don't know enough about it to discuss I admit that. They told him that if he had a kid living in the house that was his, they would give it to him. Too me this doesn't make any since but he's going through NOVANT so all is good he hasn't had anymore seizors in several months & is on medication & seeing a doctor regularly. I'm not against a national HC I'm for making the system better & affordable for all people. To say that people are dying because of them getting no HC is as extreame as saying there will be death pannels. My views on some things might be a bit wacko to some of you but I ain't that crazy...least not yet!
gb hill
Veteran
Nah!! I was ranting because they said it didn't matter if he was married or not. He's not married but his livein gf is expecting in December.
Since the congress refuses to do the easy, right thing and allow health insurance companies to compete across state lines, promoting competition, one has to ask the question "why?" Why would congress not want their constituents to have as many choices as possible?
Just look at the 2000 pages of the healthcare bill. It's not about health, it's about power.
gb hill
Veteran
I'm against the corrupt techniques of gigantic corporations in this country. I also reconize that it's these same corporations that are employing those who still hold jobs especially in big cities. It is also the small business owner being taxed to death by democrats as well as some republicans. Like I said earlier I'm an independent yet do lean conservative. You listen to too much liberalism like Ed Shultz & Keith Oberman plus Chris Matthews. Just like many listen to too much Sean Hannity, & Glen Beck,
You need my friend, to tune in to Michael Savage
He tells it like it is!
Rick Waldroup
Well-known
Greg, I had rather cut my nuts off than listen to Michael Savage, who is a complete nitwit.
gb hill
Veteran
Wonderful observation! I was there! You win a prize!...an ACORN
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gdi
Veteran
You do understand that Blue Cross is raising your premiums largely in response the increases in medical costs, don't you? Executives make a lot of money, true, but most made less in 2008 than in 2007. Insurance company profits are in the 2-3% range (while the fraud rate alone in Medicare is 12% - $47 Billion). And speaking of denying claims - do you realize that the plan with highest denial of claims is actually Medicare?
As Robert has pointed out - the government (the 100's of state and federal regulators) stifle competition by imposing a myriad of mandates and preventing cross state purchases of insurance. Insurance companies do compete against each other, very aggressively.
Your multiple arguments are hard to reconcile - first you state the current bill proposes needed reforms and you rail against the Democrats who don't fall in line and vote for it, but then you state you don't like the bill and anything short of a full government takeover is a false promise. The left needs to be careful with this all or nothing attitude, or they will derail the whole effort.
Rick Waldroup
Well-known
Yeah, Greg, I have been to a couple of the tea parties, too. I can assure you that the shots I have are much, much more disturbing in content than what you posted.
I would urge anyone who is interested in seeing how deranged the far right wing extremists are, to simply attend one of these events. It is an eye opening experience.
I would urge anyone who is interested in seeing how deranged the far right wing extremists are, to simply attend one of these events. It is an eye opening experience.
Yes, it is eye opening, especially when SEIU thugs start beating people up. Why isn't the media talking about Ken Gladney?