The Car Insurance Analogy That Puts Health Insurance Into Perspective

Glenn Beck Show ^ | March 15, 2017 | Glenn Beck and Friends

[TBP]

Should you be able to drive without car insurance? Yes, in some states you can. If you have a major car wreck — without insurance — should you be able to call the insurance company from the crash site to buy it then and there?

GLENN: Look, the best way to explain this — the best way to explain what’s happening to our insurance companies is this: Would anyone think it’s fair to say to an auto insurance company, I’m not going to buy any auto insurance unless I’m in a wreck.

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: So when the police comes up and your car has been totaled and the other guy is being taken to the hospital —

PAT: Now you call Allstate and say, hey, I need a policy.

GLENN: I need a policy. And they can’t turn you down for the wreck you’ve just had.

PAT: Okay. And they pay for it. That’s exactly what’s happening with medical insurance.

GLENN: Exactly. How does Allstate survive if everyone gets to do that?

PAT: They don’t. They don’t.

STU: Well, I don’t know, if you have a law that mandates everyone use Allstate —

JEFFY: Thank you. You have to have auto insurance though. I do have to have auto insurance.

STU: Well, and it’s funny. That’s what the left says. You have to have auto insurance. First of all, it’s not true in every state. But still, the bottom line, you’re right. It makes no sense if you can get it after the fact. And while you have incredible compassion for people in those positions, you have to find a different way to handle it and deal with that issue, rather than forcing it on everybody.

[TBP]

Health insurance and other fringe benefits became commonplace during the Depression as a way to evade King Franklin’s wage controls.

[TBP]

Wht if your employer contributed to your MSA?

[Wuli]

“Large groups” is just another way segmenting and segregating the revenue stream and reserves behind the “health insurance”. But the surest way to reduce the cost of insurance risk is with the largest possible insured base, not segregated groups each vying to negotiate for themselves. NONE of those negotiations have been keeping the primary factor of cost down - medical care itself. What the medical institutions have shaved off of what they otherwise would have charged some negotiating group(s) they just add to the costs they get from everyone else. Even the “competition” between the current segmented large groups has not been reducing the inflation rate in medical costs. It all has been robbing Peter to pay Paul - shifting the over-priced costs the medical-care industrial complex wants between those who can “negotiate” and those left out because they are themselves unable to join in huge nationwide plans covering maybe a million people each.

If health insurance to individuals was open across all state lines, without restrictions and everyone only obtained health insurance &/or MSA’s as individuals, the prospects for insurers to have huge numbers in single plans would be much higher than all the current employer-by-employer state-by-state segregation of ALL health insurance holders.

However, why should insurers be negotiating “cost of service”? Does your homeowners insurer negotiate with the roofing companies and give you only “in network” and “out of network” options as to who can do your roof repair? No. They tell you how much they will cover and you find the best deal you can among roofing companies you chose. Car insurers don’t pick your auto repair shop, you do. They tell you what they’ll pay and you get the best deal you can.

If health insurance was that way, the consumers not the insurers would be in the drivers seat on what the health care providers were charging. They too would have to accept any insurer and any amount the insurer was going to pay, acknowledging you’d be picking up the difference. There too the consumer would have more negotiating room on their own out-of-pocket because it would not be by prearrangement with the insurer.

[Wuli]

The big employers wanted to pay higher wages. The progressive-fascist FDR claimed (an intellectual lie) that letting the big employers raise wages would hurt the smaller employers, but he had an alternative he got the big employers to take - cover the employee insured benefits. The lie? That was no less “bad” for small employers. Just like higher wages it was compensation they could not afford to pay out. The carrot? The carrot was the compensation paid as benefits would not be taxed as part of income taxes. Big employers really got a heads of over the little guy, paying out tax free benefits.

So what did the progressive fascist FDR’s plan have to do with the “little guy”? Zip, zilch, nada. It was all for the big companies with big unions.

That was how our whole national market place for health insurance got segregated up, segregating the individual out unless he could afford to pay more than any big companies were paying on a per-person basis. Was any of this more insurance instrumental in keeping any rise in medical costs down? No. That was never a goal. Like “free college” is about INSURING the educational industrial complex gets every dime they want “health insurance for all” is about insuring the medical industrial complex gets what it wants. Notice in both of those areas, for decades, their costs have far exceeded the inflation rates in every other sector.

[Wuli]

If it is an employer plan now, with an MSA, is not the employer possibly contributing to an MSA? Yes, some employers already do. In most cases I know of an MSA is one of the options on a whole health benefit plan, with some items “insured” and the balance of the premium going into an MSA.

Maybe what you are asking is what is the “tax” difference on after tax money (out of wages paid) an individual could pay into an MSA and “not yet taxed” money an employer could contribute on top of wages to an MSA. I am not sure how present law tries to treat MSAs.

As to the employer’s contributions to a plan, it should not matter that it is a plan the individual chose. 3rd party part-payment arrangements in today’s banking/financial systems is not a problem. Any employer’s payroll system ought to be able to handle it.