Jade Queen

Health Insurance Industry's Profit Margins Rank #86

I read this with great interest.

Letting insurance companies grow bigger than a particular state also would have risk, it seems to me. I see this as one of the things wrong with Fannie and Freddie--too far away from collateral.

A prime issue in health insurance that I don't see addressed is that culture and values affect how people heal or not. What a person believes matters.

I would designate my accupuncture practice as my primary care. It costs me $15 per hour to go there if I sprain or pull something, my usual issue from exercise or garden work.

I have catastrophic insurance and out-of-pocket with a plan for HSA to cover deductible work up to $5,000.

In the accupuncture intake, they asked for an emergency contact (I consider this the simple version of a death panel). Here is where my trust is in the gatekeeper function.

They work with M.D.'s and assorted other health people that they refer out to, and I would trust the ones they work with not to take out something to finance a trip somewhere. In fact, the medical profession as a whole could get more people earlier with this sort of gatekeeping because acupuncture believers are often very wary about traditional Western medicine (efficacy tested over 100 or so years rather than 1,000 or so).

If people like me can be lumped together, we would not require massive government intervention and expense.

If states required catastrophic plans or if states issued their own catastrophic plans for this subgroup, savings could be harvested to go after other savings, in particular among people on Medicare and Medicaid.

People on government-subsidized plans should be asked to change risky lifestyles in methodical ways. Taxpayers should not have to finance self-harm or medical practice designed to enable harmful lifestyles.

Obama could push back against some of the protesters by putting this sort of thing on the table. I wish he would. I might even start watching TV a little if he did that.

A prime issue in the discussion is where people put their trust. I don't want an M.D. as my gatekeeper, though I have one who is good at sewing if I need that, but he knows acupuncture himself and plays well with others.

It's the monopoly issue that is so frightening. To deal with it requires dealing with entrenched traditional interests to overcome the polarity of people shouting across a great divide.

Obama is smart enough to do this. I felt a ray of hope when he expressed frustration at softball questions at the town hall organized for him.

Everybody is going to have to give something up to get something done about this hairball of an issue.

If people want M.D. gatekeepers, that's fine with me, I just don't want to be in their plan.

Cracking open this market for new players could let everybody get on the bus they want to get on, as premium-payers, investors, and citizens. My bus sort of goes to China and India.

Until then, the market is too screwed up to mess with, for me anyway. Anybody see the iatrogenic statistics recently? It we let people assume their own risk by choosing their own team, at least they could go out their own ways, having assumed the risks they liked best.