06.24.09
Do insurance companies, like grocery stores, deserve profit?
What a curious question this was, part of a comment on an article that was posted to digg.com.
patosanpatosan
7 hr 16 min ago
“Want a level playing field? How about getting rid of private health insurer’s immunity to the sort of antitrust laws that prevent collusion and price-fixing.”The government is a monopoly who cannot be sued in any case unless they say it’s ok and under specific circumstances (i.e. sovereign immunity).
“We’ve got an entire industry who is providing an essential service but their primary motive is profit.”
The same could be said of your local grocery store. Do you object to your local grocer?
How do you feel about this? Of course, you know I’m going to tell you how I feel…
The grocery store, what a curious analogy. I”m trying to picture a system where you pay premiums to a few big distributors that permit you to get partial reimbursements for the food you buy. You must pay your deductible before it kicks in, and there are co-payments that are so expensive that you often decide to go without in spite of your “food insurance policy”.
Food stores are required by the “food insurance industry” to maintain massive billing departments that examine each purchase to make sure it qualifies for reimbursement with the shopper’s “food insurance company” before deciding whether to bill the company or the customer. Often they need to make a great many phone calls to get approval for the customer’s purchase of some item.
People often go bankrupt because of food they must have despite the fact that they have policies, and policies are canceled simply because the companies decide people are getting too much food.
At the same time, people who have no “food policy” must pay 3-100 times as much for the same food. Sometimes when they are shopping the store will decide they must pay in advance before even allowing them to shop, and at other times the food stores will just round them up, put them in vans, and dump them on the street in another part of town in front of a competitor.
Sure, that analogy works.
So what do you think?
