Posted: Jun 21, 2013 4:32 am
Warren Dew wrote:Nicko wrote:Take the US health "insurance" racket industry. All it would really take is one company to actually provide something somewhat resembling real insurance and they'd wipe the floor with their competition. It doesn't happen because - in the short term - they'd post less profits, their stock price would fall and they'd get taken over by their competition. Catch-22.
To the contrary, the reason it doesn't happen is because of government regulation, specifically tax law. U.S. tax law strongly privileges employer purchase of health insurance over individual purchase of health insurance, by providing tax deductions for the former but not the latter. As a result, the health insurance caters to the needs of the employer rather than to the needs of the individual, for example by favoring solutions that avoid finding long term problems until the employee has moved on to the next employer or retired, over solutions that find and fix the problems early.
Any company providing real insurance would have to sell directly to the individual, and because of tax law would have to price the product at two thirds of the competing products to provide the same effective price after taxes. That's too huge a tax disadvantage to overcome.
Tell ya what, though, living under a singlepayer healthcare system such as we operate in Canada is light years better than having to deal with an endless parade of insurance company ripoffs.
I just had a bronoscopy two days ago in a very modern and up tempo hospital, didn't cost me a dime out of pocket and this procedure runs more than $5,000 in most US medical settings today. The Doc that did this procedure on me was thoroughly experienced as were his two assistants, and totally competent.
Americans have no idea what they're missing, just flat no idea at all. I've lived under both kinds of systems, 30 years in the US and more than 40 in Canada, and I can and do attest there's just no comparison.