Archive: Business & Technology

Click to purchaseMany of us can remember back to the days when a doctor’s visit was to the first floor of his home… and a house call was when the doctor actually showed up at your place.  Doctors didn’t always have medical groups.  And back in those days, you actually paid your doctor for the visit.  You knew what it cost.  You went to the pharmacy and knew what the prescription cost.  If you practiced Planned Parenthood, you paid for birth control or abstained.  And heaven forbid that you had an accident or major medical catastrophe with life saving expenses… having health insurance could help avoid financial ruins or bankruptcy.

Kind of like your cars.  You pay for it at creation (new car), or adoption (used car), at check-up time (maintenance), and at end of life (disposal).  You have car insurance to help avoid financial ruin if heaven forbid you had an accident.  You know what you pay for the vehicle, its maintenance, its registration, and its insurance.
One of the most successful, long running auto insurance companies is USAA.  It started as a mutual hedge.  Chances are someone will wreck their car.  It’s probably not you.  But if it is, can you afford to fix or replace it?  Or would it be better to pool the risk with others?  The cost of this hedge is risk sharing, paid out as an insurance premium.

What some today call major medical coverage is essentially an insurance policy.  If something major happens to a policyholder, they’re covered. 

HMOs, PPOs, and Health plans are not insurance.  They’re maintenance plans.  If someone wants to pay to maintain himself, their family, and live longer… then they make maintaining themselves a financial priority.  If they want to prevent having a car, but take a ride…   they pay the transportation fair.  They budget for it… but most importantly they know what it costs.

Somewhere along the way, a combination of the labor movement and businesses thought it would be convenient to offer insurance as a recruitment and retention incentive.  Socially conscious individuals with good intentions wanted more people to be ‘covered’.  And politicians, conservative and liberal alike, thought the idea of a healthy nation was a constructive thing.  Workers liked the idea of getting a group discount. 

Now one can argue that today healthcare is considered an entitlement (more to come on that four syllable word).  Or one can argue that it is necessary to both economics and national defense.  We’re not arguing against either of these issues.  However, from a free market perspective we no longer have insurance and health care.  We have a built a socialistic system in which

• Patients don’t need to pay for costs…   and therefore don’t understand them
• Consumers don’t need to pay for costs …   and therefore there’s no free  market feedback
• Service providers (actual services, not so called insurance companies) make money bundling customers.  It’s like bundling high revenue business with low cost providers…   … Compare this to business models which create no value but extract monetary advantages by trading at differential prices. This is called arbitrage … not insurance.  If risk is involved it’s called gambling.
• Are patients to believe they aren’t knowledgeable enough to choose their services wisely?
• Are doctors too unethical to provide meaningful, effective health maintenance services at levels customers (patients) can afford?
• Should part of healthcare’s value be extracted in monetary terms become profit of an insurance bureaucracy that you’re forced to use?
• Are we as a nation so blind we can’t see that our ‘insurance system’ is already a socialist system?

Want to know how we really feel about this topic?

Do you know…?

• The percentage of medical claims that are processed correctly the first time through?
• The percentage of all incorrectly processed claims which are actually for significantly expensive non-routine services?
• That nothing prevents your employer from asking a doctor or medical group to provide a discount to its employees in turn for collective loyalty…   unless the insurance lobby has closed that loop hole…
• Do you know that statistically an insurance company has to always win their bets in order to be a profitable, viable business?
• Whether a public or private hospital has to stabilize patients with life threatening injuries or illnesses before release whether or not the patients have insurance?  (Does that mean they have free major medical anyway??)
• The logic that everyone should have to carry insurance is meant to offset today’s reality.
• Insurance companies have the right to deny claims for services they feel are unnecessary despite your doctor’s education, knowledge, and the trust you place in them?
• That if you disagree with the insurance company’s decision that you can switch to a doctor you trust?  (Assuming you have money left over after buying health insurance.)
• Do you truly believe a government employee is less neutral or less capable of making a fair call on a claim or authorization?
• Better than an insurance company employee whose income is derived (sometimes incented) from the difference in what they collect from the patient and pay the doctor?

(Patient question) …
Would you rather have your doctor (nurse, or hospital) be rewarded for taking care of you?
Or have some of your wealth (even if it’s redirected by your employer) transferred to an insurance company profit line?

(If not, did you read & understand the part about the insurance companies winning odds?)

(Doctor Question) …
Would you rather see insurance companies take their winnings than compensate you
Or provide a less expensive service to your patient?

Do you know …?
That nothing stops us as a nation from forming non-profit, mutual aid associations for the purpose of insuring with each other?

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