Health Insurance Co. makes record profits

Jury's out, Health Insurance industry used "Obamacare" as an excuse to raise premiums, when, financially, they had no need to. Funny, maybe if there had been a public option there'd be someone to compete against these outrageous premium hikes.

This is what happens when you let an Oligopoly have free reign in the market.

Thanks for gutting the HCR Act Republicans (And 'Blue Dogs'). I'm sure your benefactors are very happy.

[1]

edited 11th Nov '10 8:26:13 PM by CommandoDude

I honestly find it remarkable the lengths self-professed Christians will go to defend greed.

Yes, how very unchrist like.

-Face Desk- Fucking Big Corps.

Give up on religion anyway, it does more harm than good @ Linhasxoc

As for the topic at hand, I did not watch the video, but I am not surprised that blocking public healthcare yielded such results. The reasons against it were founded mostly on ignorance and preconceptions; that alone should be an indicator of who was on the right side here.

Well that's why they supported the legislation in the background. They wanted to can the public option to increase profits further via the requirement to have healthcare.

^^At the risk of derailing, religion does and HAS done a lot of good in the world, and MOST Christians, rather like most Muslims, are decent, humble folk who just happened to be represented in the public forum by a loud, obnoxious minority. By the standard most people suggest we ought to "abandon" religion, we also ought to abandon every philosophy, belief system, or moral construct ever conceived in the history of man, because almost every one of them has resulted in either violence or oppression at the hands of an outspokenly fanatical minority, and that includes not only Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, but communism, capitalism, taoism, partisanship, you name it.

Now, more on topic: this hypocritical brand of "Christianity" is one of the things that severely soured me on the Republican party and the right-wing in general. I myself am a practicing Christian, and I used to consider myself more or less moderately conservative, but the more I listened to the rhetoric of the fundamentalists who dominate the right in this country, the more I realized the tenets of their philosophy were deeply at odds with any sort of genuine morality — particularly CHRISTIAN morality. It's naked self-interest parading as classical liberalism while simultaneously demonizing it, and their behavior with regards to the recent healthcare initiative is only the latest example of a long history of regressive policy and hypocritical behavior.

The only reason to abandon a religion or philosophy is if it is intellectually bankrupt and built on a mound of lies and contradictions!

Otherwise, go for it.

Now: Are we back on topic yet?

edited 12th Nov '10 6:24:00 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

(Sigh)

Problem is it only takes one corrupt company to force everyone else down the same path. Got to compete, you see?

^ And the ironic thing is, government intervention is what prompted the rate increase and thus profits.

Nobody ever seems to realize that businesses are more often than not two steps ahead of the morons in government.

That's mostly true due to imperfect information and transaction costs, really.

Aka "the real world."

Yes, go on, tell us about how it's the government's fault that the insurance companies gouge their customers.

It's the government's fault for not doing more about it, basically.

Its not the governments fault for corrupt companies. It IS the governments fault for making their bill so pathetically weak that the companies could run circles round it like that!

If they had made a public option and ensured it was competitive and comprehensive, then the companies would have been sunk. The Medicare bill was a good idea, it was the weakness of the people driving it through that led to all those corporations filling their pockets!

edited 13th Nov '10 10:53:10 AM by GameChainsaw

Weak? The companies wanted the mandate! Just so they could pull these kinds of things! It's a paradise for those kinds of idiotic companies. A mandate to buy private insurance you cannot avoid leads to a shackled customer base they can price gouge and raise rates on all they want and the customer effectively has no way out.

And the government went along with it thinking the reverse would happen. Now do you see why so many don't trust the government to get into such things?

Thats why I said they should have gone further. Its why I specified a public health service.

Isn't the government supposed to buy up a whole bunch of policies, and then sell them back to the people, so that it's not really socialism, but it's collective buying power?

A public health service would be nice if it wasn't for the national debt.

A public option would have reduced the amount spent on healthcare costs, thus lowering the debt.

edited 13th Nov '10 11:18:06 AM by EnglishIvy

Well, I mean, the real idea is that the government gets to be a consumer of health insurance, and they have a lot of buying power.

It's like how Texas sets the bar for textbooks, because they're the ones that make the purchases.

At least, that was the theory. Who knows if it'll work in practice. I don't know if that even got into the bill.

A public option would have reduced the amount spent on healthcare costs, thus lowering the debt.

The last 45 years of Medicare/Medicaid have shot that meme down when it comes to practical manners. Government never operates anywhere near their projections or estimates.

Medicare/Medicaid was projected to cost only 3 billion dollars total by 1990. Over 40 billion were being spent each year by 1990.

Do you honestly think anything resembling the public health care systems in Europe would be anywhere near budget neutral or actually reducing of deficits given that track record? If you do, I have a fancy bridge in San Francisco I would like to sell you.

A public option would have reduced the amount spent on healthcare costs, thus lowering the debt.

Lol, no.

Medicare: healthcare for old people, whose bodies are falling apart due to age!

Medicaid: healthcare for poor people, whose bodies are falling apart due to toxic environments, bad nutrition, and not being able to afford preventative care!

Public option/single-payer/NHS-style healthcare: healthcare for everyone, including preventative care for the (mostly) healthy so that they don't have humongous bills later in life!

You'll notice that every time that cuts are made to healthcare programs in countries that have universal programs, the savings are only short-term, because people start getting sicker and requiring more expensive care later than if they'd been able to go to the doctor or dentist regularly.

Also? You fail at dogwhistling.

edited 13th Nov '10 11:35:33 AM by EnglishIvy

^The point is its also expensive to set up and maintain. But I reckon, at least personally, that it is worth it for the security it brings to a population.

EDIT: Britain, France, Germany and others have been doing this for years. So have Canada and Australia. And they're not exactly wanting for money. Germany has a GDP per head rivalling America.

edited 13th Nov '10 11:37:33 AM by GameChainsaw

A lot of countries spend less then us on healthcare and still get better results.