Or in other words, if you wreck your car* then call Geico, are they bound by government to accept you and to repair your wrecked car?

*National health care fans seem to love the car analogy, so lets continue in the vein.

Under what reasoning should Geico, or any other company, be required to make these repairs? What Constitutional clause makes such a mandate a power of the fed?

No.

They do not.

It will only work if the people allow it.

None

are you trying to imply that people with pre-existing conditions are at fault for having those conditions?

Yes. And No.

Play with that, as you will.

No more than I'm trying to imply that a person with a wrecked car is at fault. After all they may have been hit by an uninsured driver!

Fault is irrelevant.

What is relevant is that an insurance company agrees to pay for costs based on an assessment of risk.

If you go to Geico and say "Hey my car is TOTALLED, I want to sign up so you can fix it" (regardless of fault) then they should not be mandated to accept you and cover it, IMO.

Similarly, if you go to BCBS and say "Hey I've got terminal cancer, I want to sign up so you can fix it" (regardless of fault) then they should not be mandated to accept you and cover it, IMO.

Just an FYI, the argument that I don't care for those with preexisting conditions is not a valid one. My plan supports a catastrophic/last chance option provided by government as much as it is against my libertarian orthodoxy. It just does NOT support any mandate that a private organization should be forced to make a losing bet.

More like, if you drive up to the insurance agency with an oil leak, a flat tire, no seatbelts, and a broken headlight, should they be forced to insure your car?

Geico IS required to make these repairs. Or whatever car insurance company you have. If your car is totaled instead of damaged slightly because it has a weak bumper, they are not allowed to say the weak bumper was a pre-existing condition and deny coverage.

Plus, the pre-existing conditions restriction comes with a MANDATE THAT PEOPLE ALWAYS CARRY INSURANCE. The law is only saying you can't remove people from this pool once they get a condition. The analogy you are making is a strawman, no one is suggesting this to be the case.

Fault is entirely relevant with car insurance.

A more accurate analogy would be insuring a car that isn't absolutely brand, shining new. Any car which has been used can have a "pre-existing condition" in the form of parts functioning less-than-perfectly. Geico should indeed by obligated to insure used vehicles, as if the only insured vehicles were the very most recent, we'd have a rather serious transportation problem on our hands.



I was unaware that human beings are casino chips.

If you want to compaire a human body with cars then think of it more like this.

Why you are born you get 1 car and that is the only car you will ever have. However you don't get to pick it out, your parents don't get to pick it out either, instead the dealer picks it out based on your parents cars. Now you can fix your car all you want but you will never get a new one and sometime the dealer picks out a car that is a lemon and your stuck with it forever. And of course while you can get insurance for your car most companies won't take it because its a lemon or will charge you insanely high rates.

Your analogy is flawed. A person can easily have multiple cars, it is only a matter of cryogenic freezing.

The rates are not "insanely high," they are rates at which your policy would profitable at 3%, just like everyone else's insurance. You get lots of resources, you pay lots of money.

Insanely high price are Apple products. Insanely high price is Campbell's soup. Insanely high price is Lamborghini. Insanely high price are men's razor blades.

For a health care bill that wants to lower costs, forcing the coverage of preexisting conditions will do quite the opposite.

Edit: nvm.

I have an approach guaranteed to lower costs. But if I proposed it, you would cry foul because it adds rules to your beloved insurance companies.

The government should provide it.

Go for it. I may be a libertarian, but I'm also a pragmatist. If it makes sense, I may disagree with it in an ideological sense, but for the real world, it may work.

Its been posted. And its been proven to work.

Then stay in Europe, damnit.

Where "Europe" is defined as being "every western/industrial nation other than the USA."

No, they are not required to make repairs to damage that pre-existed at the time you asked them if they would cover you.



Then you aren't aware of the underlying principle of insurance. The company that insures you is making a bet that the costs of covering their you will be less than the combination of your premiums + what they can do with those premiums through investment.

If they know that is not the case, then they for obvious reasons don't want to insure you.

Just as Geico is making the same bet regarding your car, and they should not be mandated to give you insurance to repair the damage that existed before you asked them for coverage.

I know what insurance is, it's just that my sense of morality is incompatible with the business model used by health insurance companies.

To be quite honest, Health insurance is more similar to a service contract (which covers maintenance on the car) rather than auto insurance (which only covers things done to your car). Or rather, it's like a combination of insurance and warranty. And a warranty does cover damage that existed prior to the warranty began, most of the time.

I have insurance on my house. It covers me against fire, theft, and damage such as a tree falling on the property. I also have a home warranty that covers the repair and upkeep of all appliances in the property.

it doesn't matter that the air conditioning got a slow leak before I got my warranty coverage, the warranty will still pay to top it up with freon, providing I pay the call out fee.

To put this back into an auto analogy, let's say I got a service contract on my car, providing me with tires for life for $5 a month (I'm making these figures up, by the way). My car has a problem with its suspension, so the way it rides on the road means that tires wear out faster than tires do on other cars. My tires for life deal still covers me for tires whenever I need them, even if the suspension had problems before I got the deal.

Ultimately, though, it has to be recognized that with healthcare we are talking about something more important than cars, more important than tires and (and I know some people aren't going to like this one) more important than profits. But then, I'm one of those crazy socialists who thinks that health is a human right.

Your analogy is deeply flawed, due to the fact that having an auto accident is an acute occurrence, whereas pre-existing conditions are chronic problems with one's health. Analogies that would actually make sense would be either comparing an auto accident to breaking one's leg, or comparing unreliable cars to pre-existing conditions. In the first scenario, I wouldn't think it fair for an uninsured person to demand that BCBS repair their leg when they haven't previously been paying any premiums. In the second scenario, auto insurance companies are already mandated to provide affordable coverage to anyone, including those with cars that are prone to mechanical problems, and I think the same general principles should apply to health insurance as well.

Another problem with your analogy is that in the world of auto insurance such an eventuality is purposely prevented from occurring, due to the way the laws are written. Auto insurance is mandatory in most states, which means that if you are coming to Geico asking them to repair damage to your uninsured car, you have already done something illegal and put both you and them in a situation that was not meant to occur. If the proposed health care reform is enacted, health insurance will also be mandatory, and such an eventuality as the one your analogy hinted at will similarly be prevented from occurring. I won't be knocking on BCBS's door asking them to cure my cancer when I haven't been paying any premiums, because I will have already been insured by Wellpoint, and they will be the ones paying for my treatments.

How is health a human right? Why is it someone's right to demand someone else take care of them?

why is it someone's right to demand someone else find the person who broke into their house?
why is it someone's right to demand someone else put out the fire in their building?
why is it someone's right to overlabor this analogy long after you've probably got the picture?

Of course no private company should be forced to cover people, that's what a public insurance option is for, to cover all people who are "unprofitable" for private insurance. It's why we have things like Medicare in the U.S. simply because it is not profitable for insurance to cover the elderly, similarly it is not profitable to cover people with pre-existing conditions. Or another example that I used in another thread a bit earlier, flood insurance caused by hurricanes is a public insurance as well, simply because it is not profitable (or even affordable) for private insurance to cover places like Houston because hurricanes come far too often and cause a hell of a lot of damage. As a result we have a public insurance to cover flood damages and as a result we should have the same public option to cover people with pre-existing conditions and all other people who are refused by private insurance.

Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

People are happier and more alive when they are healthy. Incidentally, they're also more productive, i.e., less of a drain on society, when they are healthy.

I agree on this -- in fact, was tempted to change my analogy from the more common insurance one to this.

In which case, the analogy holds.

If a company offers extended warranties, then should that company be mandated by government to provide coverage to a lemon?



If the warranty provider does an inspection and shows this to be an issue, should they not be allowed to exempt coverage or charge more for that?



Agreed, but shouldn't the company offering to sell you a tires for life warranty be able to make an inspection and base the premium or even their decision to cover you on the basis of the results of that inspection?



I think this is incorrect.

LIABILITY auto insurance is mandatory in most states. COLLISION insuirance is not.

It's not their right for any of those things.

It's someone's right to not have to house soldiers against their will. It's a right to not be locked away in prison with no explanation and no trial.

And I suppose it's someone's right to not truly understand what a "right" is. Right to freedom of speech and all.

So wait.. you don't believe in a volunteer firefighter service and that if someone's house burns it should just be left to burn?

What? How did anything you say follow from what I said?

That's like me saying "I don't believe it's someone's right to have Krispy Kreme donuts", and you responding with "WHY DON'T YOU THINK PEOPLE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO HAVE KRISPY KREME?".

Lam said "why is it someone's right to demand someone else put out the fire in their building?"

You said that they don't have that right. As a result they don't have the right to a firefighter service that will put out the fire in their house.

And they don't have a right to it. And in many rural places in this country there is no firefighter service that will come in and save your stuff. But in many places, there are volunteers that will do it for free because they're nice guys. And in metropolitan areas, citizens decided that it is worth their public budget to pay for a professional firefighting force.

Firefighting service is not a basic right. It is a service.

so are you suggesting there isn't a right to a police service?

so why do we have one?

Of course there isn't. What rights do you have under a police service? They all have to do with what happens when you're arrested.

You say "right to find who broke into your house". What happens if the police decide it's not important enough? It happens all the time. They're busier with other crimes. You !@#$%* and moan, and get over it.

It honestly bugs me how "right" starts to mean something that people feel they should be entitled to from others. We have one because it is a useful service to the public. Kind of like unemployment coverage. And food stamps.

Universal health care could be useful to the public, but make honest arguments for it, don't dress it up under "we're violating people's human rights by not giving them stuff!".

If you say so... I would say it is a basic right to have your home protected against disasters but I guess we'll have to disagree on that.

It's not. You can take whatever measures you please to protect your property from nature. It's not inherently someone else's responsibility.

As I said, we'll have to agree to disagree because I do believe that it is a right to have your home protected from fire and that it is common decency to help someone else out in such an event if you can help out. Sure it may not be someone's responsibility to be forced to help out but there should definitely be people who are specialized and paid to take out fires for other people, without a need for profit involved anywhere there. You may not then see it as a right to have your home protected but I would say that it is a de-facto right in many ways. Besides, if you have no home how are you going to pursue happiness?


True, knowing the police it's probably more important to eat donuts and arrest people for marijuana usage than to actually take down criminals.

I honestly don't understand how you can make this argument with a working understanding of what a "right" is.


Yeah, it's common decency. And it's nice to have a firefighting service if the community can afford it. This is the difference between a right and a privilege, or a luxury. It wouldn't just be nice if the police would only search my house if they have a warrant. They better have a god damned warrant or else. It's not just courtesy that the government ask my permission to house soldiers in my home. They must, and that's the way it's gonna be.


I'm not sure what this has to do with anything.

My line is the healthcare bill. And/or, the trade and cap bill (the global warming bill)

Either would do immense damage to our economy. Either would force the closure of many businesses. And destroy lives.


If either passes both the house and the senate? Then I guess I am an enemy of the state. ((shrugs))

jesus, if that's all it takes to make you an enemy of the state, you're kind of a fairweather patriot.

I was thinking along similar lines....

These are those high risk pools, a key element of the bill that people were deriding in that other thread.

It would impose a pretty sizable burden on government finances, unfortunately.

Isn't Europe pretty much properly defined as every Western country other than the USA? I'm not sure what you're going for? You're upset he's neglecting Canada?



The fire department thing has be dealt with, but I thought I'd point out that you don't have a right to demand someone find the person who broke into your home. The police owe no duty to any individual (i.e. if they never find the person, or never even look, you'll have a tough time claiming that your rights have been violated). Indeed, in many states, you cannot sue the government for failing to provide police (or fire) protection. So, strictly speaking, you don't have a right to either of the things in your analogy.

Canada and Japan, I suppose. Australia, New Zealand, too.

And South Korea and Taiwan, atleast. If we're counting developed countries.

Those are not western countries.

They are considered part of "The West": the developed, industrialized countries.