I am always amazed how few people understand how a business works. As a person who is intimately involved in profit and cost discussions every day, I sometime assume those issues are important to everyone's jobs. I know that is not true. Sometimes the best place to get information for me is from the engineers. They are concerned with getting the product to work, or to manufacture better/easier/faster if I can help with that goal they will give me information that helps me make a sell. Engineers are not often part of the profit/cost discussions so they forget the real reason a business exists -- to make money.
I think one of the real shames is that Congress has moved from the Founders intent, a collection of men who want to contribute to the Nation's Governance and then move back to their private lives. The idea of a permanent governing class was not their intent at all. Today the Congress is not made of farmers, businessmen and academics, but primarily lawyers who rarely have had a job outside of politics at some level. As such many do not understand business.
There is much debate around the country about the insurance industry. Most of us have it, most of us hate it and think the premiums are too high. Insurance is a dirty business. They are gambling you will not die, get sick, or wreck your car. The insurance companies pay statisticians enormous sums of money to determine the odds you will cash in or make a claim. They make money by not having to pay out in claims the premiums you pay. The role of the insurance business is to make money for the owners and stockholders of the company, not to pay your medical bills or life insurance. They do not want you to die, get sick, or wreck your car.
Some of the very people who are complaining about the the high cost of insurance are the very ones driving up the cost. If you and I owned an insurance company and a person wanted to buy a policy had a history of heart trouble. The odds that person will make many expensive claims for further heart trouble is increased. You would charge much higher premiums or refuse to cover that particular ailment. That is what you would do if you ran the insurance company. One hospital visit with a week in intensive care would eat the premiums of hundreds of insured just to pay this one person's medical costs. It is a bad risk. I do not like it, you do not like it, but it is business. And yes, if that happened to me I would be the first to complain, but part of me would understand it is just business.
Let us look at it a different way. You drive your cars for years and never have an accident. You go 10, 15 or 20 years never filing a claim. You neighbor has a teenager who does not understand the rules of the road. He has two or three fender-benders over the course of four or five years. Would you expect your premiums to be the same as his? Would you want him to continue to get coverage if it increased your premium? What do you pay in car insurance a year -- $300, $500, $1,000 or $2,000? If you have one wreck you will eat all of that premium and more. If your car is destroyed in hail storm or even totaled in a wreck, did you pay enough in premiums to replace that $20,000 vehicle? By the same token will you ever pay enough in medical premiums to cover your cancer treatments? To to answer one commenter's assertion, of course the insurance companies do not want to pay your claim. That does not make them evil Big Insurance, it makes them business people.
What makes you that are in favor of the Government control of insurance think things will be different? At some level decisions are still going to be made if this treatment or that cost is justified. Currently if your insurance company were to tell an aging policy-holder tough, just die there would be an outcry among the public and the stock price would suffer. If your friendly BMV-type says the same there is no recourse.
You do not have a right to insurance. Many employers offer it as an incentive to get good employees. Some offer vacation with pay, holidays, company picnics, bonuses etc. Companies do not do this because they are nice guys. They offer benefits and certain levels of pay to get the best employees to make the best products and decisions that enables the company to make the most money over time. The business does not exist to provide jobs or insurance. It is there to make money. No company should be forced to provide insurance.
A quick aside, if you want to reduce the number of jobs moving offshore then reduce to costs of doing business. If you cannot make the connection between forcing employers to provide expansive and expensive medical insurance see previous entries in this series.
If you think it is wrong your employer does not cover your pre-existing medical problems, then you have an option. No one is forced to have employer provided insurance. Take out your own policy. Pay the premiums and you will be covered no matter how many times you change jobs, if you are unemployed or a student. There are options. You may not like the costs, but tens of thousands of self-employed get there insurance coverage in this manner.
If you really want to reform the medical cost/insurance issues in this country there are ways. Just as certain people of liberal views want to blame the oil companies for the cost of imported oil, they want to blame insurance companies for the cost of insurance. Do we want to lower gas prices and decrease our dependence on OPEC? Drill our own reserves. Want to lower insurance premiums -- open the industry.
One of the biggest drivers of medical costs is the ridiculous law suits faced by doctors every day. Some are legitimate, some are not. I was born in a Cesarean birth. I sport a scar on my left shoulder blade from the doctors scalpel. My parents did not sue. I am not disfigured, it was not gross negligence on the doctor's part. Today a good attorney would get my parent s several hundred grand for that little scar. Tort reform will lower the cost of insurance and medical bills, yet the President has decreed tort reform will not be part of his health reform. Why not?
Allowing business to pool their purchase and by across state lines will lower costs. What if you could only buy products from your state? If you lived in Philly you could not go to Delaware to buy clothing? What if you lived in East Moline and could not go to Bettendorf to get a new washer or dryer? Would you think that was nuts? Yet that is how the insurance industry is regulated today.
People/groups/businesses should be allowed to purchase only the coverage they want. As an employer if I want just basic catastrophic coverage for my employees I should be allowed to offer that. If I think the world is faced with a population crisis I should not have to offer maternity coverage. As an employee you can think that is bullshit. Your choices are to buy your own policy or work elsewhere. Some states force insurance coverage to make some coverage universal. IN New Jersey an insurance policy must cover hair transplants. What should we pay for that if we do not want to?
Is the current system all that could be desired? Heck no. There are some issues that need reformed and tweaked. The actual number of people who are not illegals, people who choose not to have insurance for various reasons, and do not qualify for medicare, Medicaid, schips, whatever is small in comparison to those of us who are satisfied with our insurance. Those who cannot get coverage for pre-existing etc. need help. I have no issue creating a plan for these 3-4 million individuals. I do have a problem letting the Government destroy what I have to cover those few. BTW, nearly half of the estimated "uninsured" are illegal immigrants.
Remember, we do not have a health care problem in this country. People from all over the world come here for medical care. People of Canada, England, and France are coming here for treatment. When is the last time you heard anyone wishing he could go to Cuba for medical care (besides Micheal Moore)? Getting us long lines and rationing is not the cure for insurance reform.
No comments:
Post a Comment