Uninsured people issue-- interview question

[etsuprinthead]

Step 1: Monopolize the market with a government program yielding no other options.

Step 2: Already eliminated by Step 1 since there isn't an option.

Step 3: Worst idea yet! It's completely unfair to have all people pay the same thing! If I don't use the service as much as the morbidly obese diabetic, why do I pay the same?!?!?

Here, you're assuming that everyone who is disqualified from health insurance is fat, poor, and responsible for their illness. what would you do if you were diagnosed with an illness that made it darn near impossible to get health insurance? i was really sick last fall and the doc thought i had crohn's (now i know i don't), and i was terrified of getting tested because then i would be un-insurable.

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[OncoCaP]

Here is some additional info about Texas specifically (Thanks to Students for Policy Awareness @ Rice for providing this and other info):

Texas Research
http://www.coderedtexas.org (Code Red)
http://www.texashealthinstitute.org (Texas Health Institute)
http://www.cppp.org (Center for Public Policy Priorities)
http://www.cfpa.org (Center for Policy Alternatives + links)
http://www.cpa.state.tx.us/specialrpt/uninsured05 (fantastic)
http://www.accessproject.org/medicaid.html (bottom of page)

Code Red is pretty interesting. Here is the intro:

Texas faces an impending crisis regarding the health of its population, which will profoundly influence the state’s competitive position nationally and globally. The health of Texas, economically, educationally, culturally and socially depends on the physical and mental health of its population. Quality of life for individual Texans and the communities in which they live depends critically upon health status. In the state, 25.1 percent of the population is without health insurance, the highest in the nation and growing. The increasing discrepancy between growing health needs and access to affordable health insurance coverage creates the conditions for a “perfect storm.”

http://www.coderedtexas.org

http://www.window.state.tx.us/specialrpt/uninsured05/
The Uninsured:
A Hidden Burden on Texas Employers and Communities
April 2005

...

Texans living in urban areas are less likely than the average U.S. citizen to have health insurance. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, almost one in six Americans is uninsured; in Texas, the ratio is one in four. While there is substantial variation among Texas cities, every major city has an uninsured rate higher than the national average.

The U.S. Census March 2004 survey reports that an average of about 5.4 million Texans, or 24.6 percent of the state’s population, were uninsured.[1] Based on a Comptroller analysis of Census data, Laredo, Brownsville and El Paso had the highest rates of uninsured—one in three residents of these cities lacked health insurance. Houston’s uninsured rate was almost 28 percent.[2] Austin has the lowest ratio of uninsured for this period, at 18 percent.

...
The sheer number of uninsured Texans makes healthcare less affordable for Texas employers and individuals. Much of the cost of providing health care for the uninsured ultimately is transferred to those who have health insurance through higher health insurance premium costs—and to Texas taxpayers who pay for uncompensated care in public hospitals and other programs.

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This is a crisis which health insurance companies have helped create. I'm not sure that health insurance companies can be part of the solution. The only systems I am aware of that actually provide world-class healthcare to its citizens are single-payer systems run by the gov't. That's the only proven solution.

 

[Ryo-Ohki]

Not really. Your employer picks your insurer to get the cheapest coverage. Have you ever tried getting individual coverage -- $$$$$$ if you can even qualify.

Step 1: Provide a gov't plan for all Americans. Pay for it with income taxes (progressive). This would provide everyone with at least basic care.

Step 2: Eliminate employer's option to choose health insurance plans. They have no business mucking with our health insurance.

Step 3: Make it illegal for insurance companies to discriminate against any applicants for anything or to charge different rates, drop people. It's probably fair to require all people to pay a standard rate.

Without the above, insurance companies will continue to ruin our healthcare system.

Some years ago, I came across a study by Max Gammon, a British physician who also researches medical care, comparing input and output in the British socialized hospital system. He took the number of employees as his measure of input and the number of hospital beds as his measure of output. He found that input had increased sharply, while output had actually fallen. He was led to enunciate what he called "the theory of bureaucratic displacement." In his words, in "a bureaucratic system . . . increase in expenditure will be matched by fall in production. . . . Such systems will act rather like `black holes,' in the economic universe, simultaneously sucking in resources, and shrinking in terms of `emitted production.'"

I have long been impressed by the operation of Gammon's law in the U.S. schooling system: Input, however measured, has been going up for decades, and output, whether measured by number of students, number of schools, or even more clearly, quality, has been going down.

The recent surge of concern about the rising cost of medical care, and of proposals to do something about it -- most involving a further move toward the complete socialization of medicine -- reminded me of the Gammon study and led me to investigate whether his law applied to U.S. health care.....

http://hspm.sph.sc.edu/Courses/ECON/CLASSES/Friedman.html

 

[DrBowtie]

Here, you're assuming that everyone who is disqualified from health insurance is fat, poor, and responsible for their illness. what would you do if you were diagnosed with an illness that made it darn near impossible to get health insurance? i was really sick last fall and the doc thought i had crohn's (now i know i don't), and i was terrified of getting tested because then i would be un-insurable.

You're assuming that I assumed it. I just gave an example of a reason why this shouldn't be the case. You gave a reason why it should.