Democrats (and some Republicans) regularly bash health insurance companies for not covering preexisting conditions. But isn’t that like expecting a home insurance company to write a policy for fire after your house has already burned down? Health insurance seems to have become something other than real insurance—no longer a bet by both parties on an uncertain future catastrophe but simply a means for paying for a service that the insured is guaranteed to use. Of course absolving insurance companies from paying for known serious chronic conditions throws us onto the public option, not a solution to be welcomed.
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Health insurance seems to have become something other than real insurance—no longer a bet by both parties on an uncertain future catastrophe but simply a means for paying for a service that the insured is guaranteed to use.
Exactly. Health “insurance” isn’t insurance at all. It is primarily a way for healthy people to pay the costs of the chronically ill. In the health care debate, people usually start with one of two premises:
1. People should be able to spend their own money as they choose, even if they choose letting someone else die.
2. People have a right receive health care, even if it means compelling others to pay for it involuntarily.
In both cases, the first part of the premise sounds noble, and the second part sounds horrible, but whichever option you choose, you have to choose the good with the bad.
Democrats (and some Republicans)
are there any republicans who will go on the record stating that preexisting conditions should be a reasonable cause for insurers to reject applications for health insurance? i note that the “republican rebuttal” to obama’s healthcare speech asserted:
i think it is just an empirical fact that americans, and therefore politicians, treat health insurance as if it is subject to moral/normative calculus in a way that they do not treat disaster insurance, life insurance or car insurance.
The word “insurance” is part of why the whole debate is so fubar. Really what we’re talking about is health care financing. In many cases insurance makes sense, but in others it’s ridiculous. How do you insure someone with spina bifida? You don’t. You find a way to finance it in the same sense that we find a way to finance roads and research stations in Antarctica.
You can scream socialism and perhaps you’d be right, but I don’t see the point in defending insurance companies or even the idea of insurance in many cases.
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Let us leave aside for the moment the propensity of insurance companies to define “pre-existing conditions” so broadly that they end up not covering ailments after the fact that are only remotely related to such conditions, and leave people who expected coverage unable to pay for critical health care. The reality is that, yes, insurance companies would like to charge premiums only to those who will not need their services. That is the problem with a totally profit-oriented system. Why you assume that this is a positive, and that a public option is “not to be welcomed,” is totally beyond me. I’m all for private enterprise, but what function is being performed by private insurers that adds any value beyond what a public option would offer? Private insurers are not more efficient (the VA and Medicare provide care much more cheaply). And they devote huge resources to promotion and to systems and personnel set up to deny care in order to improve their bottom lines. Are their services better in any way? Ask your doctors – seriously – who they would rather deal with, Medicare or the variety of insurers who require endless forms and hassles. It sounds like you would be surprised by their answer.
Medical insurance differs from auto insurance in one important respect: Just about everyone needs expensive medical care sooner or later, and most people frequently incur routine medical expenses; but most people never file an auto insurance claim of any significance. Home insurance is even less likely to be tapped – most people’s homes don’t burn down. In such cases, the shared risk of private insurance makes more sense. Medical care is in an entirely different category, precisely for the reason hinted at in your question: The expense of such care is potentially bankrupting or, even worse, condemns the patient to an unnecessarily diminished, crippled, or even truncated life. Perhaps you would like to live in a society where such outcomes are considered acceptable. I don’t. To this observer some base of care is best handled by a public option, with private insurance reserved for supplementary or elective care.
If Medical insurance would cover all health care for the rest of your life based on a diagnosis that you received while covered, then it would make sense to exclude pre-existing conditions.
To paraphrase Churchill, a public option (whether flatly acknowledge or obfuscated by layers of nonsense) is the worst possible system, except for all the others.
Society does not want to allow suffering and death based on ability to pay. Period. Once you accept that truism, it becomes less than obvious that “the public option [is} not a solution to be welcomed.” Channeling socialized medical coverage through for-profit enterprises seems to invite MORE waste and MORE abuse than even government can manage.
Sometimes you just have deal with the “facts on the ground”, as opposed to dogma.
I haven’t been following this health care thing at all, but isn’t the complaint about pre-existing conditions tied to the fact that if you leave your job for whatever reason, you lose your current health insurance? It’s that tie-in of health coverage to your current job that makes the pre-existing condition thing such a problem. That’s why Heather Mac Donald’s fire-insurance analogy doesn’t really apply.
Re HMD’s “it’s not real insurance” point, people today are so risk-averse that they regularly pay insurance against costs that they’d have no trouble paying on the spot (so maybe “risk-averse” isn’t even the right word for it). Health insurance is just one example of many. I guess that’s all part of that bourgeois ethos celebrated at Secular Right.
Ploni has it right. It’s not as though people sit around waiting to get sick and then buy insurance. People have insurance, they get sick, then they switch jobs and switch insurance and lose coverage. They’re screwed. It’s not fair because they were paying for insurance before they got sick.
It’s the first insurer who’s getting a free ride here. Not the patient.
Although I’m basically in favor of a true free-market health system, two things strike me as significant about this debate:
1) insurance companies are not free-market oriented, but rather, do what they can to stifle competitions (like lobbying to get my state to forbid me from seeking health plans in other states).
2) insurance companies define “pre-existing conditions” in way that has many Americans dreaming of Canadian citizenship. An adopted, Chinese baby is denied a minor heart operations because such an operation would require blood (duh) and “blood is technically an organ and we don’t cover organ transplants.” There are thousands of these stories.
My own daughter has a (surgically-repaired) cleft pallet. Were I to start working at home (and therefore be off my employer’s group plan) she would not be eligible for insurance AT ALL. Why? She needs one more minor, corrective surgery when she’s in her early teens. Pre-existing condition! I offered to simply pay for this out of my pocket, to agree in advance (and in writing) to this future procedure being my responsibility, but the answer from everyone was “she is un-insurable.” Everyone agrees that she is an extremely healthy child.
Where the hell is the free market? I can’t make a deal for even minimal coverage outside of an employer-backed group plan, and I can’t seek health options outside of my state.
I fear Obama-care like any guvment-shy, red-blooded American. But seriously: screw the insurance companies.
Just as a follow-up to my previous post, there’s a new study out on how doctors feel about the public option. You can find it here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112818960
Just to give you the headline, close to 75% of doctors support it. Obviously, they know something, Heather, you don’t. If only the word “public” didn’t suddenly cause conservatives to start waving their copies of Ayn Rand; then they too might approach this issue based on experience instead of ideology.
There’s another problem with Heather’s analysis, besides the problem I mentioned above. Future health care costs are not typically determined by pre-existing medical conditions. If you have cancer, you might need prolonged expensive treatment, or you might be cured, or you might die quickly and cheaply. Many pre-existing medical condition are therefore risk factors: they increase the expected value (and also the variance) of future costs. This is what insurance was meant for.
Of course that doesn’t mean that insurance companies should be obligated to cover pre-existing conditions. It just means that covering pre-existing conditions fits into the classic paradigm of insurance: insuring serious future risks (uncertain costs). This case is nothing at all like trying to buy fire insurance to cover the costs to rebuild your house which just burned down. It might be more like buying fire insurance for to cover your rebuilt house, which is built next to chapparal.
Pingback: Politicized health insurance
Note that with all the other insurance categories mentioned:
1) Auto insurance: if you can’t afford to operate and insure a vehicle, there is the option of public transit. It’s not optimal, and may involve waiting, but people still need to get to work and the grocery store.
2) Fire insurance: the fire department doesn’t determine your ability to pay prior to extinguishing your house, and you’re not charged for this (aside from the “big pool of risk” created through taxes).
3) Home insurance: assuming that you can’t afford a home and insurance, nearly anyone can rent an apartment. Assuming that for some strange reason no one is willing to rent to you, there is the option of public housing. Again, not ideal, but it exists.
It’s only with health insurance that many people seem to see bankruptcy or death for others as preferable to reform.
Heather, I really think you need to rethink your premises about “preexisting conditions.” Perhaps you’ll be so persuaded by this lovely little item from today’s Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/14/when-getting-beaten-by-yo_n_286029.html):
“With the White House zeroing in on the insurance-industry practice of discriminating against clients based on pre-existing conditions, administration allies are calling attention to how broadly insurers interpret the term to maximize profits.
It turns out that in eight states, plus the District of Columbia, getting beaten up by your spouse is a pre-existing condition.
Under the cold logic of the insurance industry, it makes perfect sense: If you are in a marriage with someone who has beaten you in the past, you’re more likely to get beaten again than the average person and are therefore more expensive to insure.
In human terms, it’s a second punishment for a victim of domestic violence.
In 2006, Democrats tried to end the practice. An amendment introduced by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), now a member of leadership, split the Health Education Labor & Pensions Committee 10-10. The tie meant that the measure failed.
All ten no votes were Republicans, including Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming), a member of the “Gang of Six” on the Finance Committee who are hashing out a bipartisan bill. A spokesman for Enzi didn’t immediately return a call from Huffington Post. . . .”
Mr. Czapnik:
What you’ve said is true. What you’ve left unsaid renders the totality of your representation misleading.
The subject we’re discussing is not merely health-care insurance but some comprehensive regime by means of which people can cooperate in pooling funds against untoward health care costs. Governments get involved, basically, in two separate activities: first, as supervisors or regulators intent primarily on assuring the existence, stability, and liquidity of the insurance-money fund itself; and, secondly, as arbiters of the kinds and complexities of the “deals” offered a consuming public.
You have observed correctly that insurance companies are inclined to treat funds in their care as “theirs” and to regard almost every claim against such funds much as most would regard a street mugging. They erect as many barriers to claim as possible and even, on occasion, may “stonewall” perfectly legitimate claims on one or another technicality merely to intimidate a claimant toward a lesser settlement.
There is even evidence to believe that some discriminate against their best, most honest clientele, threatening protracted court action, while paying off suspected frauds falling below some attention-worthy threshold (“nothing personal–it’s just business”).
The answer most usually heard for these insufficiencies is regulation (or, more usually, “more–and more effective–regulation.”). My own idea is that what is lacking is competition. If entrepreneurial profits are to be expected from doing a better job than the existing universe of providers, there are no lack of people intent on reaping such profit. Typically, however, the “door is barred” to newcomers by the very complexity of compliance with existing regulations, such that the regulations supposedly intended to protect the consumer against mistreatment by the regulated companies instead act to shield those regulated against the competition of upstarts seeking to profit by providing better service. (And this is generally true throughout the universe of regulation and licensing, whether of insurance companies or of barbers).
At the heart of all such arguments are two inescapable truths: the first is the general (though not necessarily universal) tendency for all interferences with the free market to fail in their object and to eventuate in situations more objectionable (to those proposing the regulations in the first place) tha had led to the original interference, demanding either abandonment of the regulation or, more usually, extension of regulation toward the entirety of the market (all-round socialization); the second is the socialist director’s inability to “calculate economically” (due to utter absence of any market for the determination of the value of the socialist “assets” being deployed in pursuit of the regulatory goals). Despite all efforts over more than a hundred years, no other alternative has ever been discovered which would permit any other choice than more freedom or more compulsion; nor is the choice new or the outcomes any less stark than at any time in the past.
I’ve responded to your argument here:
Human Factor and Healthcare Economics
Mr. Berman, I confess that it astonishes me that you can start off your response with quite concrete examples of the reality of the insurance business, but then shift to a completely abstract discussion of the benefits of free markets unrelated to the actual lived experience of human beings in the US and Western Europe. Do you really believe that ALL regulation leads to all around “socialization”? Child labor laws? Fire safety codes? Drug testing requirements? Speed limits? Safety belts? The Civil Rights Act? I very much believe in free markets – I was a top executive at a major corporation. But your argument, as far as the life and death issues of health care are concerned, is precisely equivalent to the following: “We need have no food safety laws for restaurants. After all, restaurants that served contaminated food that sickens or kills customers will eventually go out of business, replaced by restaurants that serve sanitary food.” Assuming no collusion among restaurants or other PRIVATE distortions of the “free market” – quite common in real life – that may be true. But at what cost? Is regulation really the worse alternative here?
Morevoer, Mr. Berman speaks for almost no one. Only foolish ideologues are going to remain 100% pure on this issue. The truth is that the far more common reasons for disdaining MORE government involvement at this time (after all, we do have Medicare, Medicare, etc.) are these:
1. Knee-jerk fear of anything where the government is involved in what has been formerly a “private” industry. Frankly, although the evidence is scant, Ms. Mac Donald may be in this camp, because, as I said before, it is far from obvious that some public option is not to be welcomed. The fact that she threw it out as some self-evident truism is somewhat telling. Some of the GOP opposition arises here.
2. The details of some proposed governmental involvement are fuzzy, disgusting or otherwise unacceptable–in short, a particular proposal may be offensive (perhaps “Obamacare”, whatever that is or turns out to be), but the overall concept is not offensive. Some of the GOP falls into here.
3. Knee-jerk opposition because you don’t want your adversary some enormous political win. There is some of this in the GOP, too.
4. You are the payroll of the insurance companies, who are among the most (justifiably) despised (quasi) private companies in America. Alas, there is a LOT of this in the GOP, and amongst the Blue Dog Dems (e.g. Baucus).
5. Some combination of the above–pols seem more inclined to get genuinely indigent about government involvement in health care when their back pocket is loaded with insurance company cash. Sartre might have called it “bad faith” (something he knew a lot about).
Well there are other reasons to be against government regulation of health care.
1. Regulation = less choice. This is true by definition. If the government says “An insurance company cannot do X”, then that means I no longer have to choice to buy insurance from a company that does X. Maybe I don’t care if my insurance company considers a battered spouse a pre-existing condition. My spouse and I don’t beat each other, so we would save money by buying such a policy.
2. Government takeover = no competition. Yes, we all have stories about incompetent insurance company workers, companies denying care to save money, ect. Do you really think all of this would go away if the government ran it all? Socialists have a very bad habit of comparing how free markets work in the real world with how socialism would work if everyone were perfect, then proclaiming socialism the winner. There is a very clear, historical pattern that nations with free markets are more prosperous than nations without.
3. It is just plain wrong to steal. It is also just plain wrong to use force to intervene in a private transaction. If someone wants to sell me insurance, and I want to buy it, and we can agree on a price and a policy, nobody else should have any say in the matter. Period.
Mr. Czapnik – You wrote that you were a corporate executive. And you also wrote “Under the cold logic of the insurance industry, it makes perfect sense: If you are in a marriage with someone who has beaten you in the past, you’re more likely to get beaten again than the average person and are therefore more expensive to insure.”
Presumably as a former corporate executive you know that forcing insurance companies to cover people “more expensive to ensure” at the same rates as people who are less expensive to ensure will result in the necessity of charging higher rates to those who are less expensive to ensure.
Do you place any “human cost” on that shifting of the financial burden to women whose only “fault” is that they do not remain married to or in cohabitation with men who have abused them significantly enough to have require medical care?
Sully, I didn’t say what you said I said – the quote you cited is from the Huffington piece. But let us restate your premise this way: “If you stay married to someone who has beaten you in the past, and you get beaten again, you have to pay for your own medical treatment, because it’s your fault that you stayed in the relationship.” What a massive oversimplification of human relationships. And how interesting that only Republicans see it your way.
John, you are arguing against a straw man. We already have a public option–if you are over 65. And none of your scary voodoo (no competition! no choice!) has come to fruition. Sure, you could have some Stalinist system that raises the prospect of what concerns you, but you know as well as I that isn’t going to happen. It is not like the US is the first country in the world to deal with these issues, although you couldn’t tell that from the scaremongers you parrot–and there are many different paths we could choose. But this much is certain: the path we are on now is unjust, inefficient and unsustainable. Doctors despise it. Patients despise it. And, in ever increasing amounts, it is unaffordable.
As far being “stolen” from, all I can say is that argument was lost, conclusively, about 80-100 years ago, worldwide. Good luck to you and your resentment, I am sure you’ll be very happy together.
Sheldon,
I made no comment about “fault,” and I doubt insurance companies have any interest in “fault” in the sense you used it. The only question is how expensive it is to insure cohorts based on claims experience.
If you advantage one group by ignoring a predictor of expense you necessarily disadvantage all other policy holders.
How interesting that only Democrats are too dense to understand that. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself from reflexively responding to your contentious ending. Surely as a Democrat you fully understand that I’m not in any way responsible for my inclinations, actions and decisions.
Mark: Since you correctly point out that the government already decides what care it will fund for over 65s, I am hardly arguing against a straw man. Not only that, but all of the health plans being offered now will prohibit actions that are now legal. Heck, under Hillary’s 1993 plan, it would have been illegal to purchase health care privately. Under Obamacare, it will be legal to have private insurance, but there will be so many restrictions that it almost might as well be a one-size-fits-all government plan.
As for me losing the argument 80 years ago, all I can say is that I’m a patient man. It took two millennia for democracy to return after classical Greece fell. I think it will take less time than that for a society to arise that values individual freedom over equality of outcome. The path we are on won’t end at a socialist paradise.
Sully, leaving snark aside, you’re right: We should require a woman who is assessing her marriage to weigh the possibility that she won’t be able to pay her medical bills against the possibility of losing her marriage and, possibly, her means of support. These are the kinds of cost/benefit calculations extreme free marketers would have us perform for everything. But we really have come to the end of the argument: 1) By definition everyone who doesn’t ever file a claim is subsidizing those who do; and, more important, 2) The kind of calculation private insurance require is perfectly legitimate, in general, just as you suggest. The issue is whether it has any place in medical care. I don’t think it does. And I say that not as a Democrat, but as a human being.
Sully, a Q.E.D. coda:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/17/insurance-company-must-pa_n_289841.html
You may argue that in this particular case the company technically violated its contract (though this kind of thing happens all too frequently). My point would be these are inevitably the imperatives and behaviors that result from a profit-oriented health insurance system.
Sure but it will never settle for long in either state.
Before arguing pro or con what about asking a “meta-question”: Is the system amenable to any equilibrium?
I think not and I deem that partisans of either choice are demeaning themselves as just “cogs in the political meat grinder”.
P.S. BTW, Greece “democracy” may be wasn’t what you think, same for the Venice Republic.
At the risk of overkill – my use of that word is quite deliberate – and accusations that I’m not being “polite,” anyone who still believes that the current profit-oriented system is the way to go after reading the following, from Andrew Sullivan’s blog, is a moral cretin:
“I just learned yesterday of the death of a friend’s 33 year-old daughter. She was married with two young daughters. The cause of death was listed as a Tylenol overdose, but she had lupus and that was considered to be a contributing factor since her liver was very compromised. After ingesting an unknown (to me at least) quantity of Tylenol, she slipped into a coma. She was rushed to the hospital, and while the doctors and nurses worked on her, her stepfather tried several times to give the staff her insurance card. Rightfully so, the staff was less interested in getting the insurance information than they were in saving this young woman, so he proceeded to simply wait.
After several hours, the doctor came out and told the family that she was in dire need of a liver transplant, but unfortunately he told them, her insurance did not cover liver transplants.
Turns out during the treatment one of the staff did look up her name in the hospital files and got what they thought was her current insurance information. Unfortunately, the information was old. It was from a few years earlier, and since then, the woman’s family had changed insurance when she changed jobs. Not realizing the information being accessed was old, the family asked how long she would last without the transplant and were told….2 days at most.
They frantically tried to find alternatives, but to no avail. She died 3 hours later. No one thought to double check the information being used, and it wasn’t until after her death it was discovered that her current insurance did in fact fully cover liver transplants. Yes, in this case it was a matter of several critical mistakes being made. By the staff, and the frantic family who didn’t realize the insurance information was old. The hospital could have checked to make sure the information was current. The family could have insisted they use the card for reference. The hospital or the family could have confirmed with the old insurance company whether or not the woman was still enrolled in the same plan.
But, if there was a universal healthcare plan in place, all of that would have been unnecessary. This woman’s condition and treatment wouldn’t have been contingent on just what was and was not covered by her particular plan, and the simple fact she had recently changed jobs would not have confused what options were available, and a bureaucracy would not have come between her and her doctor.
She would have simply been treated by whatever means were necessary to save her life.”
Somebody screws up, and that makes me a “moral cretin”? Same to you, buddy. I forgot that nobody has ever died at the hands of government.
Sheldon,
You’ve convinced me. All medical care regardless of cost, complexity, time, effort and feasibility should be free to all. And I don’t mean just Americans.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, can stand in the way of achieving unlimited state of the art medical care for all, everywhere. An EMT by every bedside, a nurse by every home, a doctor and medevac helicopter on standby in every neighborhood.
Lobster, Wagyu beef and truffles should also be free for all. And don’t forget Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee.
Well it’s probably becuase every state and municipality out there thinks it can mandate health insurance companies to provide certain services, that is why there is no “catastrophic coverage” or any other streamlined individual services, as for their coverage, read your contract that is why it’s there.
Snark is the final indication people on the other side of this issue really can’t win this argument. I stand fully behind my characterizations and comments. Go ahead and argue with today’s Washington Post:
Acne, Pregnancy Among Disqualifying Conditions
By David S. Hilzenrath
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 19, 2009
A proposal to make preexisting health conditions irrelevant in the sale of insurance policies could help not just the seriously ill but also people who might consider themselves healthy, documents released Friday by a California-based advocacy group illustrate.
Health insurers have issued guidelines saying they could deny coverage to people suffering from such conditions as acne, hemorrhoids and bunions.
One big insurer refused to issue individual policies to police officers and firefighters, along with people in other hazardous occupations.
Some treated pregnancy or the intention to adopt as a reason for rejection.
As Congress and President Obama work on legislation to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, one of their main objectives is to stop insurers from denying coverage on the basis of health status. Proposed legislation would prohibit insurers from denying coverage to individuals with preexisting conditions or charging them higher premiums because of their medical history — practices known as medical underwriting.
Even the insurance lobby has endorsed that goal as part of a larger reform package in which the government would extend coverage to the uninsured, greatly expanding the market for insurance.
Guidelines that insurance companies have written for professionals involved in selling policies offer a glimpse inside the underwriting process.
“What these documents show is the lengths to which insurance companies are willing to go to make a profit,” said Jerry Flanagan, health-care policy director of the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, which distributed the documents Friday. “What it shows is that insurance companies want premiums without any risk.”
Consumer Watchdog argues that consumers should be given the option of enrolling in a government-run health plan. It obtained the documents from a California insurance broker, Flanagan said.
A PacifiCare “Medical Underwriting Guidelines” document from 2003 lists under “Ineligible Occupations” such risk-takers as stunt people, test pilots and circus workers — along with police officers, firefighters and migrant workers.
Uninsurable conditions included pregnancy, and being an “expectant father” was grounds for “automatic rejection.” So was having received “therapy/counseling” within six months of the application. There was also this more general disqualifier: “currently experiencing/experienced within the last 12 months symptoms for which a physician has not been consulted.”
The PacifiCare document “is completely outdated and predates the acquisition of PacifiCare by United Healthcare,” Cheryl J. Randolph, a spokeswoman for the parent company, said by e-mail. She declined to provide current underwriting documents.
“Underwriting enables insurers to adequately assess risks, keeping premium costs lower for more consumers,” she added.
Health Net guidelines for 2006 say that people could be denied coverage or charged higher premiums if they were taking certain medications, including Zyrtec, an allergy remedy, and Lamisil, which is widely advertised as a treatment for toenail fungus.
Pregnant women could be rejected, as could expectant fathers, the document said.
A Health Net spokeswoman did not respond to requests to comment.
Blue Cross of California guidelines for 2004 said potential disqualifiers included chronic tonsillitis and, under certain circumstances, varicose veins.
Kristin E. Binns, a spokeswoman for parent company WellPoint, said by e-mail that she could not comment on the guidelines because they are from years ago.
I get it Sheldon. You don’t want an insurance based system paid for by individuals, you want a single payer system paid for by government since the notion of insurance loses all meaning if pre-existing conditions cannot be considered when writing a policy.
I think the history of governmental systems of that nature is arguably worse than our current messy system even for the poor, so we have no common ground.
Since we now know that President Obama blatantly misrepresented the sob story case he presented before congress and on national TV I would need much more effort than I’m willing to expend before I will take seriously any of your horror stories, especially since at a quick read the writer you just quoted presents the fact that “pregnant women could be rejected” as an argument against the use of preexisting conditions in writing coverage.
And I would remind you that you were the one who started with the snark.
Sully, this will be my last response – the argument is no longer even remotely productive. But how you can suggest that Medicare is worse than our current private system – which a new study suggests leads to 45,000 unnecessary deaths a year just due to the lack of insurance coverage, and when combined public/private systems in, say, France and other countries by any objective measure do better than our own – is totally beyond my comprehension. So, I will stop here.
Sheldon,
Given that France warehoused elderly people suffering from heat exhaustion in un-airconditioned hospital rooms during a major heat wave within the past few years I’m a bit skeptical about your contention that its system does better than ours “by any objective measure.”
And, Medicare rides on the private system. Perhaps better to look at the VA hospitals, a perfect example of a government run health care system, which got a bit of bad publicity a couple of years back when an attack point was wanted by some against the Bush Administration.