(01-30-2019, 12:11 PM)TJBender Wrote:

(01-30-2019, 08:03 AM)flsprtsgod Wrote: Hey, my house burned down yesterday, so I need some home owners insurance.

Hey, I was diagnosed with cancer yesterday, I need to add a rider to my health insurance policy.

Hey, I died yesterday, I need some term life insurance.

The subject doesn't change the logic and it's not personal.

The point of insurance is to protect against future losses, not to remedy past ones. No idiot is going to put a homeowners policy on your house the day after grandma's old toaster blows up and burns it down, because the fire you're seeking a recovery for has already happened. But after you've built a new house, don't you think that same insurance company is going to happily let you pay them to protect you against future losses? Barring gross negligence or foul play on your part, of course.

The diagnosis of cancer happened previously, and no insurance company is going to cover you against the costs associated with diagnosing it, or any treatment costs before it was diagnosed, but shouldn't you be able to get protection against some of your future costs?

If you died yesterday, well, sorry. You're already dead. Nothing we can do about that.

Point being, insurance is to guard against future losses, not past. I know my condition will cost lots and lots of money over the course of my lifetime. It's not going to shorten it any if I take care of myself, but taking care of myself involves some pretty steep costs. When I was self-medicating and trying to find insurance, it wasn't to try and get someone to pay me out for what I'd already lost. It was to get some kind of protection against letting the costs of the condition become prohibitive and causing me to keep self-medicating forever, which would definitely have shortened my life by a lot. Maybe that means inventing a new class of insurance. Maybe that means riders attached to new policies that specify that costs associated with the pre-existing condition are covered at a different rate. Maybe people with qualifying pre-existing conditions get standard insurance for standard and unforeseen health costs, and anything associated with the known pre-existing conditions gets handled separately by some sort of Medicare/Medicaid deal. It's easy to disassociate and take the strictly libertarian "businesses can do what they want" position on healthcare, like you and I both do when it comes to cake, but there are two key differences. One, when you're talking about healthcare, you're talking about people's lives. When you're talking about cake, you're talking about cake. Two, if a cake shop doesn't want to make me a cake with (for example) a rainbow flag on it, I can just go to another cake shop. Because of how insurance is regulated, that isn't always possible in healthcare, and when all of the major providers are engaged in what amounts to collusion anyway when it comes to pre-existing conditions, the many are harmed. That's the point at which it slides away from the libertarian interpretation for me. If it were open market competition, you'd see insurance companies trying to find a way to include pre-existing conditions and capitalize on them. But it's not. The health insurance companies have agreed, either implicitly or complicitly, not to extend coverage to people who actually need it. That's collusion, and when competition turns into collusion that causes harm, it's the responsibility of the government to step in.

I'm not saying the system doesn't need changing. I'm saying that going towards are more regulated, more controlled environment is moving the wrong direction. As you said, if the market were free to work then we would have market-based solutions. Yes, the government has a responsibility to enforce contracts, but beyond that it has no responsibility to provide services. And cake and healthcare are have zero differences, both are the government mandating that a free person conform to someone else's desire.

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(01-30-2019, 12:11 PM)TJBender Wrote:

(01-30-2019, 08:03 AM)flsprtsgod Wrote: Hey, my house burned down yesterday, so I need some home owners insurance.

Hey, I was diagnosed with cancer yesterday, I need to add a rider to my health insurance policy.

Hey, I died yesterday, I need some term life insurance.

The subject doesn't change the logic and it's not personal.

The point of insurance is to protect against future losses, not to remedy past ones. No idiot is going to put a homeowners policy on your house the day after grandma's old toaster blows up and burns it down, because the fire you're seeking a recovery for has already happened. But after you've built a new house, don't you think that same insurance company is going to happily let you pay them to protect you against future losses? Barring gross negligence or foul play on your part, of course.

The diagnosis of cancer happened previously, and no insurance company is going to cover you against the costs associated with diagnosing it, or any treatment costs before it was diagnosed, but shouldn't you be able to get protection against some of your future costs?

If you died yesterday, well, sorry. You're already dead. Nothing we can do about that.

Point being, insurance is to guard against future losses, not past. I know my condition will cost lots and lots of money over the course of my lifetime. It's not going to shorten it any if I take care of myself, but taking care of myself involves some pretty steep costs. When I was self-medicating and trying to find insurance, it wasn't to try and get someone to pay me out for what I'd already lost. It was to get some kind of protection against letting the costs of the condition become prohibitive and causing me to keep self-medicating forever, which would definitely have shortened my life by a lot. Maybe that means inventing a new class of insurance. Maybe that means riders attached to new policies that specify that costs associated with the pre-existing condition are covered at a different rate. Maybe people with qualifying pre-existing conditions get standard insurance for standard and unforeseen health costs, and anything associated with the known pre-existing conditions gets handled separately by some sort of Medicare/Medicaid deal. It's easy to disassociate and take the strictly libertarian "businesses can do what they want" position on healthcare, like you and I both do when it comes to cake, but there are two key differences. One, when you're talking about healthcare, you're talking about people's lives. When you're talking about cake, you're talking about cake. Two, if a cake shop doesn't want to make me a cake with (for example) a rainbow flag on it, I can just go to another cake shop. Because of how insurance is regulated, that isn't always possible in healthcare, and when all of the major providers are engaged in what amounts to collusion anyway when it comes to pre-existing conditions, the many are harmed. That's the point at which it slides away from the libertarian interpretation for me. If it were open market competition, you'd see insurance companies trying to find a way to include pre-existing conditions and capitalize on them. But it's not. The health insurance companies have agreed, either implicitly or complicitly, not to extend coverage to people who actually need it. That's collusion, and when competition turns into collusion that causes harm, it's the responsibility of the government to step in.

I'm not saying the system doesn't need changing. I'm saying that going towards are more regulated, more controlled environment is moving the wrong direction. As you said, if the market were free to work then we would have market-based solutions. Yes, the government has a responsibility to enforce contracts, but beyond that it has no responsibility to provide services. And cake and healthcare are have zero differences, both are the government mandating that a free person conform to someone else's desire.

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