Originally Posted by radind

We have a fundamental disagreement as to what constitutes a free-market.
-I maintain that the current health care monster is not a free -market.

Private, for-profit health insurance companies who make record profits off of people's illnesses/health issues. I guess you're right, it's more like a monopoly.

Originally Posted by princeofcats67

Turtle: That's alot closer to the truth. The health Insurers ARE more like a Monopoly. I say let them actually have to go out and compete with one another for customers WITHOUT the protection from the Fed Govt. Until you realize that BIG Pharma, BIG HC Insurance, Big Banks, BIG Oil, BIG Telco, BIG Tobacco, BIG Auto, and BIG whatever is really BIG Govt, you'll never get past your Anti-Corporate bias. There are differences for sure, but in many ways they have become one in the same. Goldman Sachs=East India Trading Company. Too Big To Fail applies to all now! PoC67

Very good. I concur.

The problem is government action to serve the corporate interest instead of the public interest. The suggested remedy that the government keep its hands off entirely runs into the problem of being impossible. Shrink the government to the point where it doesn't do that any more, and you increase the relative power and influence of the corporations, who insist that the government take their sides, and you're back where you started.

The only solution is for government to continue intervening -- but against the corporate interest rather than for it. This can be done, we know, because it's been done before.

Originally Posted by princeofcats67

Turtle: That's alot closer to the truth. The health Insurers ARE more like a Monopoly. I say let them actually have to go out and compete with one another for customers WITHOUT the protection from the Fed Govt. Until you realize that BIG Pharma, BIG HC Insurance, Big Banks, BIG Oil, BIG Telco, BIG Tobacco, BIG Auto, and BIG whatever is really BIG Govt, you'll never get past your Anti-Corporate bias. There are differences for sure, but in many ways they have become one in the same. Goldman Sachs=East India Trading Company. Too Big To Fail applies to all now! PoC67

The SCOTUS ruling of Citizens United v. FEC really solidified my stance that direction.

Just because conservatives want corporations to be people, it doesn't mean that they are. Corporations should not get legal, economic and now political benefits over natural people. I guess conservatives really enjoyed the fairy tale Pinocchio, because they are trying really hard to make something unnatural into something natural. It's just plain wrong.

Originally Posted by 85turtle

The SCOTUS ruling of Citizens United v. FEC really solidified my stance that direction.

Just because conservatives want corporations to be people, it doesn't mean that they are. Corporations should not get legal, economic and now political benefits over natural people. I guess conservatives really enjoyed the fairy tale Pinocchio, because they are trying really hard to make something unnatural into something natural. It's just plain wrong.

If the people who made that decision have read Pinocchio, why aren't they checking their noses every morning for branches and leaves?

Originally Posted by princeofcats67

Risk-Pools are BS. Not only are they a Ponzi, but they can easily break-down due to unintended consequences.

Risk pools are not BS. I work in the insurance industry, so I have some idea of what I'm talking about here. Let me use homeowners insurance as an example of how it works.

An HO policy pays to rebuild a home if it burns down. It also covers other things, but that's the most important thing. Everything else is incidental. The basis of it is that most people could not afford to pay from their own funds several hundred thousand dollars to rebuild a destroyed dwelling.

A home catching fire and burning down is the classic insurable risk, because it's a low risk of financial catastrophe. That is, odds are it won't happen to you, but if it does, you're screwed. If you don't have insurance and your home burns down, the consequence will almost certainly be default on a mortgage and loss of the property.

Let's say for the sake of argument that the risk (given reasonable precautions) is 1/100 of 1%, that is, one in ten thousand. Let's say in a given insurance pool you have a million homes covered. Of those million, the prediction is that 100 of them will burn down. Instead of each of those 100 people being faced with the impossible task of coming up with several hundred thousand out of their own pockets to rebuild their homes, each of the million people in the pool pays an average (let's say) of $500 per year to buy the coverage, which is easy to do. Everybody whose home burns down receives an insurance payment to rebuild, and so nobody defaults on their mortgage and loses their property (for that reason).

The idea is that it is better to exchange an uncertain risk of catastrophic loss for a certainty of trivial loss -- the insurance premium.

This is not a "Ponzi scheme," nor is it any kind of gambling. There can be no net gain from an insurance policy (barring fraud), only avoidance of catastrophic risk.

In rejecting this idea, you are proposing a VERY radical idea of your own.

Health insurance is more or less the same in concept. A serious medical condition often requires treatment that simply can't be afforded by most people. It's the equivalent of your house catching fire and burning down, only it's even worse because if you can't take care of it you don't just lose your property, you die. Pooling that risk makes perfect sense. But for a proper pool we have to include everyone, not just sick people.

As presently constituted we have a self-selected pool consisting of people who know they're going to need medical care. Translating to homeowner's, it's the equivalent of an insurance pool consisting of only homes with faulty wiring, century-old plumbing, and leaky tubs of gasoline stored in the basement. Add to which the contractors inflate construction costs every year. Such a pool would result in very high premiums, as necessary to offset the inevitable payouts.

Part of the solution has to be requiring people to pay into the system, whether they're in immediate need of medical care or not. This is not some radical notion. It's really in your benefit, even if you're healthy, to do this, because nobody can be 100% certain of staying healthy and not needing medical care. Trying to go it alone on pay-for-services basis without risk pooling will work for you only so long as nothing bad happens. If something does, you're screwed.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Risk pools are not BS. I work in the insurance industry, so I have some idea of what I'm talking about here. Let me use homeowners insurance as an example of how it works.

An HO policy pays to rebuild a home if it burns down. It also covers other things, but that's the most important thing. Everything else is incidental. The basis of it is that most people could not afford to pay from their own funds several hundred thousand dollars to rebuild a destroyed dwelling.

A home catching fire and burning down is the classic insurable risk, because it's a low risk of financial catastrophe. That is, odds are it won't happen to you, but if it does, you're screwed. If you don't have insurance and your home burns down, the consequence will almost certainly be default on a mortgage and loss of the property.

Let's say for the sake of argument that the risk (given reasonable precautions) is 1/100 of 1%, that is, one in ten thousand. Let's say in a given insurance pool you have a million homes covered. Of those million, the prediction is that 100 of them will burn down. Instead of each of those 100 people being faced with the impossible task of coming up with several hundred thousand out of their own pockets to rebuild their homes, each of the million people in the pool pays an average (let's say) of $500 per year to buy the coverage, which is easy to do. Everybody whose home burns down receives an insurance payment to rebuild, and so nobody defaults on their mortgage and loses their property (for that reason).

The idea is that it is better to exchange an uncertain risk of catastrophic loss for a certainty of trivial loss -- the insurance premium.

This is not a "Ponzi scheme," nor is it any kind of gambling. There can be no net gain from an insurance policy (barring fraud), only avoidance of catastrophic risk.

In rejecting this idea, you are proposing a VERY radical idea of your own.

Health insurance is more or less the same in concept. A serious medical condition often requires treatment that simply can't be afforded by most people. It's the equivalent of your house catching fire and burning down, only it's even worse because if you can't take care of it you don't just lose your property, you die. Pooling that risk makes perfect sense. But for a proper pool we have to include everyone, not just sick people.

As presently constituted we have a self-selected pool consisting of people who know they're going to need medical care. Translating to homeowner's, it's the equivalent of an insurance pool consisting of only homes with faulty wiring, century-old plumbing, and leaky tubs of gasoline stored in the basement. Add to which the contractors inflate construction costs every year. Such a pool would result in very high premiums, as necessary to offset the inevitable payouts.

Part of the solution has to be requiring people to pay into the system, whether they're in immediate need of medical care or not. This is not some radical notion. It's really in your benefit, even if you're healthy, to do this, because nobody can be 100% certain of staying healthy and not needing medical care. Trying to go it alone on pay-for-services basis without risk pooling will work for you only so long as nothing bad happens. If something does, you're screwed.

Agreed. I've worked in the health insurance industry before, and risk pooling is key to the business of insurance. Without it, insurance doesn't exist, much less be a viable business model.

The only way you can eliminate the idea of insuring or risk pooling is if services are so dirt cheap that almost anybody could pay for them. And I think the doctors and medical suppliers will have something to say about that.

Originally Posted by 85turtle

The SCOTUS ruling of Citizens United v. FEC really solidified my stance that direction.

Just because conservatives want corporations to be people, it doesn't mean that they are. Corporations should not get legal, economic and now political benefits over natural people. I guess conservatives really enjoyed the fairy tale Pinocchio, because they are trying really hard to make something unnatural into something natural. It's just plain wrong.

I agree that corporations should never have ben given the legal status of 'persons'.

Yes, lets have that quality health system like they have in Canada. Its so good that important officials and wealthy Canadians come here for treatment.... http://www.google.com/hostednews/can...Yz_6_b-gsGGDxA

I love these excerpts:
An unapologetic Danny Williams says he was aware his trip to the United States for heart surgery earlier this month would spark outcry, but he concluded his personal health trumped any public fallout over the controversial decision

"I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics-**NO but you have no problem with other Canadians receiving sub-standard care

"I wanted to get in, get out fast, get back to work in a short period of time," the premier said-**Of course, had he had to wait, like most people with socialized medicine he'd probably be dead now

"I would've been criticized if I had stayed in Canada and had been perceived as jumping a line or a wait list. ... I accept that. That's public life," he said-** A wait list in Canada for procedures? Say it aint so....

"I have the utmost confidence in our own health care system in Newfoundland and Labrador, but we are just over half a million people," he said-** So why did you go to the USA again?? Does population affect quality of care??

All of you libs think socialized medicine is great unless it affects you. then, if you have the money, its time to fly off for quality care that a private system affords.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Risk pools are not BS. I work in the insurance industry, so I have some idea of what I'm talking about here. ...Part of the solution has to be requiring people to pay into the system, whether they're in immediate need of medical care or not. This is not some radical notion. ...

Very good post. I don't see a way to develop a rational system without first putting every citizen in a single pool( no exceptions, no exclusions). The overhead costs should be lower and the expensive unneccesary emergency room treatment could be eliminated. Then several options could be developed and debated. The current congressional approach for change is too convoluted and complex.

Originally Posted by Weave

Yes, lets have that quality health system like they have in Canada. Its so good that important officials and wealthy Canadians come here for treatment.... http://www.google.com/hostednews/can...Yz_6_b-gsGGDxA

I guess you haven't talked to any elderly Canadians who refuse to spend more than a week or so in the States because they are terrified of becoming bankrupt by an illness and the ensuring bills. Phoenix and Florida sun cities are missing a number of comfortably-off Canadians who would happily be snowbirds and winter in the States were it not for that pesky fact that we don't have universal health care.

I have.

Originally Posted by Weave

Yes, lets have that quality health system like they have in Canada. Its so good that important officials and wealthy Canadians come here for treatment.... http://www.google.com/hostednews/can...Yz_6_b-gsGGDxA ...
All of you libs think socialized medicine is great unless it affects you. then, if you have the money, its time to fly off for quality care that a private system affords.

Before we make comparisons, there should be some attempt to adjust for the different levels of spending on medical care in different countries. The US per-capita spending is higher than in Canada and in most other countries. I would not propose to reduce our current total spending on medical costs. By cutting out waste, we should be able to do much better at the same total level of spending. I am an independent with mostly conservative views. However, the medical non-system does not lend itself to conventional 'free-market' approaches. I have never heard of a parent with sick child going around looking for the low bid. We are at the mercy of the 'SYSTEM'. We can do better than we are doing and better than the misleading examples of other countries.

Originally Posted by princeofcats67

BR/MJ: One of the inherent problems with evaluating Risk is that unforseen/unimaginable events occur(and almost always more often and harsher than predicted).

POC, you are advancing this argument to discredit the entire concept of insurance, and it just won't fly. It's impossible to predict the odds with perfect accuracy, but it can be predicted well enough to do the job.

If the pool is to protect .0001 of the Homes, what if the Market experiences an occurance of .0002? How about .0005? What then?

Then insurance companies lose money. Of course, the most likely reasons for this to happen are usually excluded from coverage, e.g. nuclear war, civil disturbance, etc. Absent some factor of this nature, it's just as likely for the number of claims to drop below expectations as for them to rise above.

In theory I understand where you're coming from of course. If one wants to participate, so be it: Caveat Emptor. My main issue is in the REQUIREMENT to participate.

Too bad. In the case of health care, if you're allowed to opt out, the whole thing crashes. I can of course understand why the individual mandate of the proposed health care reform is unpopular, but it's also a crucial part of the whole thing. Without it, there's no way to bring down premiums for health insurance.

I can go more in depth, but in a nutshell, I'm going to die one day; I may have other choices as how best to spend my money. I'm OK with not being taken care of; I know for others it's different. I have no desire to live forever and luckily I won't. A Risk Pool may be functional, but that doesn't make it "necessary".

Strictly speaking, nothing is necessary, except to avoid something else we consider unacceptable. Widespread bankruptcy and the collapse of the economy are generally considered unacceptable. If for some reason you don't regard them as unacceptable, then ipso facto health care reform ceases to be "necessary."

There really are, however, many functions that have to be about US, not just ME. Your refusal to accept "being taken care of" has impacts that are not restricted to your own life. It pushes up health-insurance premiums for all those who aren't OK with "not being taken care of." (Just so we understand what that means in practice: most of the time death for medical causes isn't quick and easy, but follows after a more or less lengthy period of severe pain and disability. There are exceptions, such as an acute brain embolism, but in most cases that's the way it works. So when you talk about "not being taken care of," you mean mean accepting a long period of hideous pain and personal incapacity, or else suicide. And while it is arguable that you have a right to make that choice for yourself, in effect by doing so you will also be making it for others, by raising the premiums to the point where many people can't afford it. Or at least, that will be the effect if too many people choose your way.)

Insurance in general is a Ponzi.

You misunderstand what the word "Ponzi" means. The essential quality of it is the potential of gain, and the certainty that some people will lose. These do not describe insurance in either particular.

Originally Posted by princeofcats67

BR: It's "structure" is that of a pyramid scheme; A ponzi, where the expected payment is the Promise/Cerainty of coverage.

No. That's not what defines a Ponzi scheme. Here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme

"A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned. The Ponzi scheme usually entices new investors by offering returns other investments cannot guarantee, in the form of short-term returns that are either abnormally high or unusually consistent. The perpetuation of the returns that a Ponzi scheme advertises and pays requires an ever-increasing flow of money from investors to keep the scheme going."

A Ponzi scheme is an INVESTMENT operation. That is: participants put money into the operation in the expectation of receiving a return, of getting their money back plus profit. Insurance, in contrast, is NOT an investment operation. People buy insurance with no expectation of getting their money back, let alone making a profit. If you do get more money from your insurance policy than you put into it, that's a BAD thing, something you would rather avoid, and the amount you get back is offset at least 100% by a loss suffered from some misfortune. Nobody ever makes a profit from an insurance policy (except by fraud), and no insurance company ever offers a policy as an investment.

About us and not me: There is something inherently "wrong" when a System needs ME to function properly.

But that describes all human societies that have ever existed. Participation in such a society always carries obligations as well as privileges. You can opt out only by leaving the society altogether, but that usually entails going to a new one, which also imposes obligations. If you think there's something "inherently wrong" with that, then you think there is something inherently wrong with the human condition, because we are social animals, not solitary ones, and social obligations are a concommittant of life in that state.

PS: There may be a case for a State mandate; I doubt a Federal one is Constitutional, but what does that rag matter? It hasn't stopped either side before.

I am reasonably sure that a mandate enforced by criminal penalties would not be constitutional; however, no such criminal penalties are proposed, only a tax, and the power to tax is in the first clause of Article I, Section 8.

Originally Posted by Weave

Yes, lets have that quality health system like they have in Canada. Its so good that important officials and wealthy Canadians come here for treatment.... http://www.google.com/hostednews/can...Yz_6_b-gsGGDxA

I love these excerpts:
An unapologetic Danny Williams says he was aware his trip to the United States for heart surgery earlier this month would spark outcry, but he concluded his personal health trumped any public fallout over the controversial decision

"I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics-**NO but you have no problem with other Canadians receiving sub-standard care

"I wanted to get in, get out fast, get back to work in a short period of time," the premier said-**Of course, had he had to wait, like most people with socialized medicine he'd probably be dead now

"I would've been criticized if I had stayed in Canada and had been perceived as jumping a line or a wait list. ... I accept that. That's public life," he said-** A wait list in Canada for procedures? Say it ain't so....

"I have the utmost confidence in our own health care system in Newfoundland and Labrador, but we are just over half a million people," he said-** So why did you go to the USA again?? Does population affect quality of care??

All of you libs think socialized medicine is great unless it affects you. then, if you have the money, its time to fly off for quality care that a private system affords.

A Canadian bigwig elected to have a less intrusive surgery that was only performed by a few doctors, and, on the advice of a friend, sought one in Miami. The operation he was offered in Canada was no less likely to be successful, just less desirable from his point of view.

So your point is that rich people have more options. Of course they do. But in Canada, everyone has a good option. That's not true here.

Originally Posted by princeofcats67

BR/MJ: One of the inherent problems with evaluating Risk is that unforeseen/unimaginable events occur(and almost always more often and harsher than predicted). If the pool is to protect .0001 of the Homes, what if the Market experiences an occurrence of .0002? How about .0005? What then? Just look to the "geniuses" that ran the Risk Models in the Bond Markets through the years. They were the smartest of the smart(They really were), but when a System is placed under stress, the improbable needs to be accounted for.

Are you arguing that this applies to home fires or human health? If so, then some external force needs to be added, because normal actuarial data is pretty consistent through the years. Sure, it drifts with time, but only epidemics, war or something similar will create a shift like you describe.

Originally Posted by PoC

... Are those Policies invested? Are they hedged? I'd bet they are. Who are they hedged with? How well-hedged is the Company with which those policies are invested/hedged? Look to Municipalities(and all others) that had Bond Investments with GS, MS, MER, LEH, BSC, or ......AIG! It's all connected and Systemic Risk is inherent...Still.
In theory I understand where you're coming from of course. If one wants to participate, so be it: Caveat Emptor.

Insurance Reciprocals are common, because they spread the risk. Yes, all insurance companies absorb some risk from the others and unload a lot of theirs in a similar manner. They share the burden, not the market.

Originally Posted by PoC

... My main issue is in the REQUIREMENT to participate. I can go more in depth, but in a nutshell, I'm going to die one day; I may have other choices as how best to spend my money. I'm OK with not being taken care of; I know for others it's different. I have no desire to live forever and luckily I won't. A Risk Pool may be functional, but that doesn't make it "necessary".

If there was an option that would allow the health care providers to just let you die if you arrived at the hospital with no insurance, then your argument would be valid. Otherwise, no. You are insured by me and every other person with paid insurance. We expect you cover yourself if you can. If you can't, we don't mind helping.

Originally Posted by PoC

... Insurance in general is a Ponzi. The actual money is never there to pay-out in total. Same with the Banks. There's not enough Currency if everyone wanted their savings. We're just programmed to believe that this process is normal.

You do understand the concept of a Ponzi scheme, I assume. If so, then you realize that Ponzi, and all the other practitioners of the art, are always upping the ante just to stay even. Insurance has no need to do that. They are always just a little bit ahead, with stable revenues able to cover claims on that stable base ... barring the famine or plague, of course.

Originally Posted by PoC

... You may believe I'm just being difficult, but we've experienced these Dislocations over and over through World History. The financial damage just gets diverted to other areas. Kinda like how the "toxic assets"(MBSs) are now on the books of the Treasury/Fed and FRE/FNM(ie: the US Taxpayer). They're all connected; It's Systemic in nature.
No thanks! PoC67

If done properly insurance is not gambling. Neither is simple banking. Trading is gambling. So is creative finance. The more exotic the security or remote the derivative, the worse they are. Credit Default Swaps? Even the name is an oxymoron.

Originally Posted by princeofcats67

I'll admit to being a troll on this one, but it is occuring none-the-less:

First we hear: HC costs are unsustainable and something must be done to cut costs.
Agreed. I believe there is a Consensus on this.

Then, we hear:The ONLY way to cut costs is to require everyone to participate in the risk pool.
Well actually no. There are other ways to cut costs. No one is saying to do nothing, but that is the argument Team-O gives us. Their way or nothing and doing nothing is unsustainable(in which everyone agrees). FWIW, the Stimulus/Recovery Bill was done with the same tactic.

Then, we hear:We need to cover everyone and the only way to do that is to require coverage because that's the only way to cut the costs to make it sustainable.
WTF! What happened to cutting costs first. Did you see the switcheroo? Which shell is the argument under?

Wait and see the money get diverted into Social Security. I'll make a $1000 bet on that! PoC67

OK, you're a member of the tribe. Doctors tend to be conservatives. So do health care, pharmaceutical and medical device executives. They are the source of the costs. What are you going to do to get them to lower them?

Doctors rebel every time someone mentions anything vaguely resembling oversight, and the others oppose anything that might be construed as regulation. Setting prices or, worse from all their perspectives, mandating outcome based pay is not gong to make you any friends. But feel free to give it your best try.

Me ... I'll take the first step and work on the rest later. Completely reforming this beast might take a while.

Originally Posted by princeofcats67

Insurance/Commercial banking gambling? Again, I understand that we're psychologically normalized to the pyramid structure of the confidence game. Simple Banking is that; So is Insurance.

This has nothing to do with being "normalized." Rather, it has to do with you using a fallacious argument. I'm not sure of the name of it, but it involves identifying a characteristic (however minor) which two things have in common, one of which is viewed negatively, and claiming on the basis of that characteristic that thing A is a form of thing B.

The most egregious example of this I ever saw was someone who tried to claim that pro-bono medical or legal work constituted slavery because it was unpaid labor.

The essential, defining quality of gambling is not a "pyramid structure." It's the risking of money for a small chance of large gain on an outcome largely outside the control of the person taking the risk. Playing craps or roulette in a casino is gambling. Investing in the stock market shares the essential characteristic of gambling but departs from its archetypal form to such an extent that calling it "a gamble" is usually recognized as only a valid metaphor.

Insurance does not share that essential characteristic. An insurance policy holder does not "risk" the premium, he spends it -- there is no possibility of a return. It is gone. In return for this fixed price (not risk), the policy holder is guaranteed (not offered a chance of) payment to cover a specified loss if such should occur. One must twist the connotations of words and engage in fallacious reasoning to make that out to be gambling in any way, shape or form.

Nor is the structure of insurance "pyramid-shaped." There is no apex of the pyramid, no "winning" policy-holder who gains the money of the "losers." A person who collects on an insurance policy is not a "winner." He is someone who is badly ill, whose house has burned down, who is responsible for a bad car accident and is taken to court over it, whose employee suffers an on-the-job injury and makes a WC claim, whose insured loved one has died. It's worse to be uninsured in such a situation than to be insured in one, but it's better still not to be in one in the first place. An insurance claimant is not a winner. He's a loser who's loss is covered by insurance.

Insurance is a shared risk pool. It is not a pyramid scheme. It has only trivial features in common with a pyramid scheme. This is really quite obvious. The only question now is whether you are making an honest mistake in claiming otherwise or being disingenuous. Your response to this post, if you make one, will determine that one way or the other.

Just because a System is Functional doesn't mean that it is Sustainable. Under "normal" conditions the System does function, but again, do you expect us to experience "normal" conditions moving forward into the 4T?

Sufficiently so that we are not going to see a breakdown of the insurance industry, unless we also see a breakdown of civilization itself, in which case who gives a damn. And the same thing goes for the federal government. There are things the government is going to have to do that it's not doing. The Crisis will continue until we do them. We cannot wait it out, because it's not going to get better by itself. The time is now, not later, because if we don't do it now there won't be a later.

Originally Posted by Weave

Yes, lets have that quality health system like they have in Canada. Its so good that important officials and wealthy Canadians come here for treatment.... http://www.google.com/hostednews/can...Yz_6_b-gsGGDxA

Of course our system is better if you're "wealthy" the issue is those that are not wealthy enough to have health insurance, or are worried about losing it along with their jobs.

Originally Posted by 85turtle

Private, for-profit health insurance companies who make record profits off of people's illnesses/health issues. I guess you're right, it's more like a monopoly.

A recent article in The Economist indicates that the real monopoly seems to be the medical providers( not the Insurers):

Clear diagnosis, uncertain remedy, Governments are increasingly turning to private insurance in order to widen access to health care and make it more efficient. Are they expecting too much?
http://www.economist.com/displaystor...ry_id=15545834

..."The biggest factor behind the cost conundrum, however, is that insurers lack market power. Health-care providers hold all the cards. On this argument, the problem with private health insurance is not that market forces do not work: it is that reforms have not gone far enough to allow proper competition to emerge. For example, in Germany and the Netherlands some insurers have started to negotiate special deals with providers that make the management of chronic diseases easier for patients. However, there are strict limits on what they can bargain for. And insurers cannot easily favour only the best hospitals, because politicians will not let inefficient hospitals go bust."...

No, holding an insurance policy is not like holding a bond. A bond is an investment. An insurance policy is not. With a bond, you may collect on the investment any time you want. With insurance, you can only collect when you suffer a covered loss, and then only to an amount equal to the loss or to the limit of coverage, whichever is less. People can profit from investment in bonds. Nobody can profit from taking out an insurance policy, because one has always lost at least as much as the policy pays out. You still don't seem to understand this.

Specifically what sort of "abnormal" times would result in bankrupting the insurance industry and a failure of coverage? No amount of purely economic upheaval could do that, because few business losses are covered. If the Chinese were to launch a nuke and obliterate Los Angeles, that would not do it, because most policies have an exclusion for nuclear war. A repeat of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco (which unlike the first two is not a 4T event but a random one, but never mind) would not do it because few dwellings carry earthquake coverage and earthquake is excluded from ordinary dwelling policies. (A state agency provides earthquake insurance by the way, and it's VERY expensive, which is why few dwellings have it.) If the South loses its collective marbles and secedes again provoking another civil war, that wouldn't do it because civil war is excluded. In fact, there were no events of any 4T on record that would have bankrupted the insurance industry, which is of course why the insurance industry wasn't bankrupted in any of our prior 4Ts.

About the only thing I can think of, and this would only apply to health insurance, is the release of an engineered virus from some nightmarish lab creating a mega-epidemic on at least the scale of the Black Death. But in that case, bankruptcy of the insurance industry would be the least of our troubles.

There are of course unusual hazards that insurance is no help against. I listed a few of them above. Some of these are the kind of thing that can happen in a 4T. But the overwhelming majority of hazards aren't abnormal hazards but normal ones. You are far more likely to be injured or killed in a traffic accident than in a terrorist attack or an enemy bombardment. You are much more likely to come down with an ordinary treatable disease than with some nightmare plague out of a laboratory. If we arrange things so that ordinary hazards are dealt with, that deals with 99+% of all hazards. For the others, you rolls the dice and you takes your chance. But it's not sensible to make it harder for people to deal with the routine hazards in order to provide a marginal improvement for some selected individuals' hope of surviving the strange ones.

Brian Rush said the only thing that could bankrupt the insurance companies is something on the order of a virus (medical meaning) with a huge death rate.

What flashed into my mind when he said "virus" could also bring it to its feet -- an extraordinarily nasty computer virus that trashes the databases one way or another. And that's far more likely to my way of thinking. Without our computerized databases, our entire bureaucracy -- government on all levels, commercial, and private --- is blind and crippled.

And don't think malicious types out there don't know it, either.

Originally Posted by princeofcats67

You do understand that every major financial institution in the US is insolvent!

No, they're not.

Like I said, let's see if the HC Mandate is co-opted for Social Security; That's actually what I'm most concerned with.

Not permitted under current law.

As a matter of principle, I ignore vague digs and suggestions that I'm wrong about something without any details. Say something coherent or you've said nothing.

Originally Posted by princeofcats67

BR: You must not understand the current Govt Policy of purchasing MBSs and the eventual Reverse-Repos that will occur. The losses of those investments are currently held on a number of Federal Balance Sheets of which FNM and FRE are just two. We're not allowed to see exactly what the Federal Reserve may be holding currently. How familiar are you in this? This is not a vague dig. PoC67

EDIT: Nevermind. It's not worth the hassle. EOM.

POC, I suggest you use BR as a means to deliver your message but don't waste large amounts your time and efforts on trying to convince or proove your points to Brian Rush the individual.

If you're talking about the general fund paying back what it's borrowed in the past from the SS trust fund, that's not the same as the bill authorizing underwriting of SS.