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Re: FDA Tobacco Ban
Sunday, October 11, 2009 7:07 PM on j-body.org
Weebel wrote:So basically.... from what your saying.. someday the only way you will be able to qualify for midical insurance is if you dont need it...

Well...yes! We don't buy car insurance to in order to become reckless with our cars.

We buy ANY insurance for unforeseen conditions, and there are a lot more ways to get sick than smoking and eating like a fool. It's not like having insurance becomes a license for reckless behavior. You miss the entire point of insurance...if they had to pay out to everyone that buys it, it would be uselessly expensive, and thus not exist at all. The idea is simple...many pay, but only few collect.






Re: FDA Tobacco Ban
Monday, October 12, 2009 6:04 AM on j-body.org
^^ Bingo.

People seem to forget the original premise of health insurance. It was to insure yourself against the unlikely illness or injury, not just a service that pays for all of your health care for one low monthly payment. Just like when you purchase car insurance, they have different rates based on driving record, where you live, and type of car. Why? Because the risk varies by these factors.

Why is this such a foreign concept these days? Catastrophic health insurance, and an HSA, should be what people are doing. The whole HMO era destroyed health care, because it bred the belief that everything should be covered, and when it caused premiums to skyrocket (because they have to collect more than they pay out), people started talking about how the health insurance companies are just screwing them. No one seems to want to see the cause-effect pattern that brought us to where we are now.

Weebel, your question would be kind of like asking "so I can't get collision insurance on my car if it's already totalled?".






Re: FDA Tobacco Ban
Monday, October 12, 2009 6:17 AM on j-body.org
"but smoking is leeeegal, so they should have to insure smokers " ok. Being a crocodile hunter or flying trapeze performer is legal too, but we wouldn't have a problem with even refusing to give life insurance to them....same thing


“Poor Al Gore. Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented. Oh, oh, the irony!” -Jon Stewart
Re: FDA Tobacco Ban
Monday, October 12, 2009 6:03 PM on j-body.org
Greedy Capitalist Pig wrote:The whole HMO era destroyed health care, because it bred the belief that everything should be covered, and when it caused premiums to skyrocket (because they have to collect more than they pay out), people started talking about how the health insurance companies are just screwing them. No one seems to want to see the cause-effect pattern that brought us to where we are now.
This is true but health insurance companies ARE screwing us too. In their defense, screwing people is their business model. They are in business to make money, not to make sure all your aches and pains are gone. Something of a necessary evil in our current system. That's life.





Re: FDA Tobacco Ban
Monday, October 12, 2009 9:26 PM on j-body.org
bk3k wrote:This is true but health insurance companies ARE screwing us too. In their defense, screwing people is their business model. They are in business to make money, not to make sure all your aches and pains are gone. Something of a necessary evil in our current system. That's life.
I don't see how making a profit is a "necessary evil" in our country. That's what has driven our growth and raised the quality of life.

As for profit related to the health care system, it's a very small percentage of health care costs in our country. In spite of the rhetoric you may have been hearing about health insurance companies' profits increasing over 400% since 2000, not only is that a disingenuous number (the HCAN organization--an organization which receives funding from ACORN--who came up with that number, purposely left out the past year in their report, which would have put the change at half of that, had they included the 2008 numbers), but the actual net profit margins have been declining. The AHA (American Hospital Association) has actually reported that the average net profits for insurance providers has dropped from a peak of 3.5% in 2004 to 2.7% in 2006. Given the fact that the actual profit dollars dropped in 2008 (and most likely this year as well), I would expect that a more updated report would show an even smaller net profit margin.

Just to put things into perspective, when an insurance company makes a net profit of 3.5%, that means that their operating expenses, payouts for customers' medical bills, and taxes ate up 96.5% of their revenue. If you really consider that for a moment, you might start to get the idea that the entire argument of the government needing to get into the mix to offer fair competition is disingenuous. To really show how much they pay out, 87% of the revenues actually go to paying for medical coverage.

Now (to get back to how the original topic relates to health care costs) when you consider that high-risk customers will most likely result in an increase of payouts for medical care, you can see how there is very little wiggle room for them, so the money has to come from somewhere. Right now, it comes from everyone else. This is exactly why I believe they should have the right to charge higher premiums, or even decline to offer policies for, high-risk people, especially those who are high-risk by choice, such as smokers.

Here is some good reading for you if you doubt my figures:
AHA Report of Median Operating Margins, 1990 –2006
AHS Profits and Premiums Report







Re: FDA Tobacco Ban
Monday, October 12, 2009 9:40 PM on j-body.org
Now that's a good post.

These companies are experts in their fields, and they are struggling to make 3.5%. How Big Government is going to IMPROVE on that is a total farce. We will spend more for less quality of care. There is no reason to believe anything else.





Re: FDA Tobacco Ban
Tuesday, October 13, 2009 4:20 AM on j-body.org
Bill Hahn Jr. wrote:Now that's a good post.

These companies are experts in their fields, and they are struggling to make 3.5%. How Big Government is going to IMPROVE on that is a total farce. We will spend more for less quality of care. There is no reason to believe anything else.




that is my number one concern, paying more for worse care.




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