Posted on 04/11/2010 1:56:17 PM PDT by PreviouslyA-Lurker
That’s what happened in Hawaii and Mass. Once it was law, everyone dropped their insurance and wanted the ‘free’ healthcare. It imploded the Insurance companies.
Who says the Congress wasn’t smart enough to figure this out? It may have been the intent all along.
AND OUR CONGRESS was not smart enough to figure this out.
I believe that is likely a designed-in feature. There is then instant "necessity" for government "insurance" and i.e. single-payer, and total socialization. All the Congressmen and Senators will vote for it because of the "emergency," except possibly for Paul and one or two others who understand something about Economics.
Insurance companies make most of their money from their investments, not from premiums. The majority of their portfolio is held in bonds of other companies, due to being heavily regulated in what they are allowed to invest in as well as government mandated reserve requirements. Has anybody thought about what will happen to our economy when all of the insurance companies go out of business?
And when that is the case there will be a terrific shortage of doctors because all the competent ones will retire, go into another line of work, or move offshore as the British doctors have done. The government will have to compensate for that by drafting students into medical studies and maybe reducing the course to AA status. For those of us near the coasts a plane ticket and treatment in Costa Rica or Grand Cayman will be the choice. I expect insurance companies will also arise offshore and the more discerning young people will get that insurance as "catastrophic coverage" to guarantee the ability to get major work done and will go offshore annually for physicals out-of-pocket. The actual cost of treatment in an offshore clinic or hospital will be quite a bit less than it is now in Georgia or Wisconsin because it will be actual free-market medicine and will not have to support hordes of bureaucrats and Medicare-caid patients. I am too old to be eligible for such insurance when it becomes available but, hell, my government is going to kill me off anyway when I retire and am no longer sufficiently "productive." I suspect herbs and "alternative" medicine will be banned and will have to go underground or I will have to get my glucosamine and saw palmetto also offshore. Then again by the time this all kicks in I expect there to be a progressive closing of the borders to people trying to exit.
Medical tourism is already a reality and growing in Britain and Canada.
Alas, you still get your place in line with your insurance policy. People who aren’t signed on who wait until they’re lying there with a heart attack may well not get treated ~ or, the company they sign up with may not have a deal with a nearby hospital ~ with nationwide insurance probably coming up sooner than expected (due to this Fall’s Republican landslide), your hospital might well be in American Samoa!
There should be a name for this logically fallacy. I expect it fits into one of the philosophical error categories known since the Ancient Greeks, but I can't pin it down.
Just because I can afford my own insurance, doesn't mean that I can also afford to pay for insurance for deadbeats. As long as those parents are paying for the party via taxes (state insurance), why should they not expect to eat at the party buffet? Especially if the food is better than they can afford on their own.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.