from Halplm
health insurance for business owners is not prohibitively expensive. I know, as I got it for my employees.
Your experience years ago seems to be contrary to testimony before Congress, personal accounts in various forms of the media, and studies on the subject. For many business owners, it is indeed prohibitively expensive and they have loudly said so many times in many places.
pre-existing conditions is an issue that needs to be adressed, there is no doubt.
And the only way to do that is to put everyone in the same pool so to spread the risk and cost of insuring and covering those who will cost much more because of those conditions. To merely say that a private company must cover them is only to invite the company charging rates that are so high that few with some pre-existing conditions could afford them.
The thing that baffles me, is that while everyone agrees the health care industry needs reform... anyone could possibly believe the government handling health care would in any way be better than what we have!
Surveys should that people on government programs like Medicare have a higher rate of satisfactions with that program that those with private insurers. The administrtive costs for government run health programs is much lower than private companies. So why should this baffle you or anyone else? The facts are there which clearly demonstrate this.
here is the proof
www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/mp_20090629_2600.php
Among those insured through Medicare, however, "the Medicare program" (68 percent) scores nearly as high. Among those with private insurance, "your health insurance company" earns much less trust (48 percent).
Perhaps that result is just about perceptions of corporate interests and not about patient experience?
We can test that question with data from a set of surveys known as the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems. CAHPS is an initiative of the Department of Health and Human Services that developed a standardized survey questionnaire used by virtually all health insurance plans -- public and private -- to assess patient satisfaction. Most private insurers use the CAHPS questionnaire and disclose the data to the National Committee for Quality Assurance in order to receive their accreditation. So thanks to CAHPS, we have a massive collection of data comparisons of how patients experience and rate Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance.
Those comparisons show the depth of Medicare's popularity. According to a national CAHPS survey conducted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in 2007, 56 percent of enrollees in traditional fee-for-service Medicare give their "health plan" a rating of 9 or 10 on a 0-10 scale. Similarly, 60 percent of seniors enrolled in Medicare Managed Care rated their plans a 9 or 10. But according to the CAHPS surveys compiled by HHS, only 40 percent of Americans enrolled in private health insurance gave their plans a 9 or 10 rating.
People have a higher rate of satisfaction with government run health insurance programs than they do with private for profit ones.
at the root of the issue seems to me to be the belief that companies operating for profit somehow wish to exploit their customers, while the government is benevolent in all aspects.
I think you have hit the nail upon the head with the first part of your statement. At the root of this is the issue of belief. We can discuss all the facts we want to and we can crunch the numbers and we can listen to a legion of people tell us their horrible experiences with the medical health industry. But the issue of belief will still be there on both sides and facts, statistics and numbers will not change some opinions if they are fixed and set in ideology.
There is no shortage of information and stories from many people who have indeed been exploited by private insurers all in the name of profit. Just yesterday I posted the facts right here about staggering increases in profits from ten major private insurance companies at a time when the rest of the nation is in recession and the real incomes of real people are declining. The drive for profits is part and parcel of a private company. It is their sole reason for existing.
IMHO, on the contrary, companies operating for profit want to maximize what they can provide for their customers such that they can maximize their market share and thus profit... while the government only wishes to maximize the number of people dependent on them to consolidate power and maximize the number of votes those in power can get in the next election.
No. Companies want to maximize profit. Period. The customers, the product, the entire process is but a means to an end. If they can do that by maximizing customer service, then they might do that as you suggest. If they can do that by having a minimal level of customer service, then they will do that. If they have to cut services to increase profit, they will do that. If they have to remove some customers from services because they are regarded as too expensive and a danger to high profits, then they will do that also. If they have to increase rates and prices in the quest for higher profits, then they will do that also. And if they have to decrease customer services while increasing rates and prices in the quest for increased profits, they will and have done that also.
If we say that profit is good and desirable for a private company, then why do we shrink from the reality of how those profits are achieved in many cases? This is not theory in a college textbook. This is reality that impacts the lives of hundreds of millions of people. The theory of how business is suppose to work means nothing next to the reality of how it does work and impacts the lives and deaths of actual real people.
Anymore than I resent my taxes going towards the things that Vison listed ... schools, roads, bridges, military, police, fire, customs and excise, airports, etc.
It sounded vaguely insulting, although I wasn't sure quite why. 
).
