Friday, July 10, 2009

Hot Summer

Interested in making your summer fun in a different way? Call and leave your favorite summer activity.


Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Car and Health Insurance?

Sit down and buckle up because I want to take you through the briefest of essays about car and health insurance. In a very few words I will describe some characteristics of our nation’s car insurance situation and then suggest that some of those might become principles of our health insurance approach. I do not have all the answers to our health insurance problems and questions; I do have thoughts that might help clarify the situation.

When everyday folks began getting cars, there was quickly a problem with someone having a wreck that caused damage they could not afford to fix. If this situation persisted, then those that could afford to fix their own car would be the only ones that could afford to drive. Average people would rebel at the thought of paying for roads for the ‘rich folks cars’ – in a word things would not be as we are used to now.

Insurance companies decided to offer liability insurance so that the risk of an accident by one is spread across the masses. This allowed more people to drive as there was less personal risk than driving without insurance.

However, there were still people that could not afford insurance – or chose to simply save the expense and not purchase insurance. Now, however, a very many people were paying the expense of crashes caused by uninsured drivers that could be sued for their civil liability – but had no funds to cover the damages.

Now, the wealthy, as well as the insured average folks, got laws passed that made auto liability insurance mandatory. This would relieve everyone of carrying the burden of crash damages generated by uninsured motorists.

One last problem arose, and this was the uninsurable. There were some people that had to drive, but were bad risks – really bad risks. No insurance company wanted to cover them because they drove the insurance costs to good drivers so high that competition was affected. To avoid this situation, states essentially mandated two things: first, if you want to sell insurance in this state, you must not turn down drivers except for (two) the very highest-risk drivers could be turned down if the insurance companies pooled together to create a high-risk insurance pool that anyone was eligible for.

Now what if I ask questions related to the previous, but applied to health care?

Do not some people get so sick that the necessary health care bills drive them to financial ruin? When that happens, do not many declare bankruptcy? Does bankruptcy not generate losses which hospitals, doctors, pharmacies, and others pass back to the folks that are paying their own bills and helping cover those losses generated by the health challenges of others? [The number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States is medical expenses.]

So having health insurance does help some people maintain health care costs at a more acceptable level. But there are many that desire health care and are turned down. So, all of us pay for healthcare that is given to others, as well as the health care we actually consume.

Could states mandate that insurers wanting to do business in a state must offer insurance to all and only turn down the highest risk folks if they participate in a high-risk pool? They could. Yes, some people would see their premiums rise because the insurer is covering more risk – but they would also see their taxes (for instance) reduced because of fewer bad debts and there prescriptions become cheaper because of fewer unpaid pharmacy bills. But society, as a whole, should be improved by experiencing fewer bankruptcies, fewer people placed on welfare roles, fewer foreclosed houses, etc.

It is a fact that a person with health insurance is statistically likely to live longer than that same person without health insurance. Society is essentially telling some people, “You must die.”

The number one cause of bankruptcy is health care bills. We are telling many people that their financial future is in jeopardy because they cannot acquire health insurance. Their retirement will be hell.

We have two definitions for health care. For those that can afford it, “Health care is the ability to work with the medical community to establish, maintain, and improve the state of one’s health”; for those that can not afford it, “Health care is guaranteed access to Emergency Room treatment.”

Driving is not a right. Driving is a privilege. Access to driving is essentially universal.

Health care may or may not be a basic human right but to many, it may not even be a possibility. Reasonable Health Care can be accessible to all.