CounterRevolutionary wrote:
I think you are missing a historical point here. "Preexisting conditions" coverage was written out of health insurance policies through government regulations under the 1945 McCarran-Fergusson Act when insurance companies were re-classed as a "for profit industry," placing them under the Interstate Commerce Clause.
It's a bit misleading to say coverage of preexisting conditions were written out "though" government regulation. The 1945 McCarran-Fergusson Act is a law AGAINST federal regulation and it was the resulting *absence of regulation* that allowed *insurance companies* to write out the preexisting conditions.
CounterRevolutionary wrote:
Once this McCarran-Fergusson Act is overturned, we will have access to all 1700 health insurance companies across all state borders, where "non-profit" health insurance industries can emerge with fair prices for the chronically ill.
The McCarran-Fergusson Act itself is a bit soft. There is an exception where federal laws can override state laws if the federal law itself is limited to the "business of insurance". So to override the impact the McCarran-Fergusson Act has on the insurance industry is a matter of fine-tuning the federal law. Overturning the law won't really make any difference at all.
I'm curious about how you think free access to insurance across state lines will induce the emergence of non-profit solutions. I agree with you that non-profit solutions are the best way (or at least the more likely way) to provide affordable coverage. Are you saying that McCarran-Fergusson has to be overturned so that non-profit insurance companies like Kaiser-Permanente in California can provide more affordable coverage to customers in states that don't have non-profits?
If so, I like the idea...
CounterRevolutionary wrote:
You cannot be so naïve to think the Public Option will be more just and affordable. Under government management, it will be cheaper to kill us than cure us. It will not only cost us more financially, it will cost us our lives.
Government is your problem, not the solution!
Eh... not so with you on that one... I like that you're looking for alternatives and that you can see the non-profit advantage, but I don't understand the revulsion toward a government-operated option - after all, the government *is* non-profit. From a business perspective, the government operates as a non-profit organization. All of a sudden you get so inclusive, talking about "us" as if we all have the same needs... It's already cheaper for the existing insurance companies to kill a lot of their customers than to fix them... The providers aren't a factor in that realty the patients are... Some patients simply cost a lot of money to keep alive. This is why profit-driven insurance companies want to exclude preexisting conditions (which are usually chronic) ...because they represent those equations where it would be more cost effective for them if the patient died. The customers that profit margins favor are the young healthy customers that pay in more than they draw out... Whether the provider is public or private makes no difference to this variation, but as a non-profit organization is does have that advantage...
Also, contrary to what many people think, private companies that answer to wealthy hedge funds are not always as efficient as a government that answers to poor citizens. The public option the Democrats pushed for in 2016 was based on Medicare, which has a 5% overhead on cost. The average for the insurance industry is 20%.