>Doesnt Medicaid cover people who can't afford insurance? And that is why something in the order of 50% of the bankruptcies in this country are health care related.
>How can you ask an insurance company to cover a pre-existing condition? That
:doesnt seem to be the definition of insurance. So we should let insurance companies just cherry pick who they wish to insure, i.e. only the healthiest. Insurance is shared risk, by definition. We are not talking about someone getting lung cancer and then saying OK now insure me. It is being rejected for insurance because you had some diagnosis 10 years ago. Or losing your insurance due to layoffs or what else, and finding there is nothing of practical cost available in the market. You can't turn 40 or 50 without pre-existing conditions. We are all going to die. Health insurance companies should not have the right to cherry pick customers.
>Would it be fair to require life insurance companies to provide a low cost
:insurance to terminally ill people? Life insurance is a pretty different animal than health insurance.
>Do the 47 million (americans and illegal aliens) that are always talked about
:really lack health care or just health insurance? For a lot, it is both.
>Why cant the government create a system that would provide people with a pre
:existing conditions basic health care? Sure, that way the health insurance companies could take all the profitable customers and the unprofitable customers would be covered by the goverenment -- isn't that the American way. Sounds like another big biz subsidy.
>What percentage of health care costs are directly attriutable to corporate >profits, vs human resource/payroll vs malpractice insurance and defensive
:medicine? Not sure of the answer, but my understanding that something like 1/3 of the costs are from administrative costs. You may like the system as it is, but ask yourself why does it costs so much more per citizen than any other country, yet delivers less.
>I am all for indivduals having health care and I am all for individuals who
:want to insure themselfs agains the risk of heavy health care cost as long as
:they are willing to pay a reasonable cost to offset that liabilty. What I am
:not for is the re-distibution of wealth. OK, no argument here.
Paul L