JohnSawyer's Comments (376)

“Since it's a mandated ratio, and not a confiscation of all amounts paid as increases to a premium rate that exists at a given starting point, some percentage of any premium increase WOULD go to the insurance company as profit. A mandated ratio would initially cut into an insurance company's profits, but if they raised their premiums enough, they'd be able to recoup their "losses".”

“I think the attitude is something like this: Once you're born, it means your spirit has decided to come into the material world and be part of its sinfulness--you've agreed to be judged by the concept of original sin, which says that you are sinful by virtue of birth, and so you're immediately not worth much.

And hence we're still affected by the original cults of death and material-l­ife-as-evi­l, thousands of years later, subject to all the methods of beating that sinfulness out of you that the religionists can muster. Weird.”

“Lionsden also says:

"I don't get mad at those who have more than I do. And I refuse to construct a plan to take it from them even if they are constructing a plan to take from me. Why would I want to behave as badly as a wicked corporation that steals from others?"

I don't get mad at those who have more than I do either, except the ones who get more via ways that harm others. But why do you consider it wrong for people, using the free will that your God is supposed to have given them, to work to prevent human corporations from extracting excessive, damaging amounts of money from people, deny coverage, etc? Trying to prevent that is not trying to be as wicked as a corporation, nor is it trying to steal from a corporation, nor is it immoral or irreligious--I suggest that your stance is. There are a number of references in the Bible to money, and none of them state that people who steal it from others are the same as the good guys, nor that you're supposed to let it happen or else you're as bad as the bad guys. Insurance companies aren't a force of nature, nor are they representatives of God's will--ones that gouge are exactly the kind of thing your God would want us to do something about.”

“Many choices in life don't have a perfect set of options. In this instance, the alternative is to let the poor neighbor remain sick, or get sicker, or die. Which is the greater good, and which is the greater evil? And how much do you think is being "stolen" from your grumpy, wealthy neighbor if he were taxed a tiny bit higher for the greater good?

I understand what you're saying--that it should be the grumpy, wealthy neighbor's decision, that it's on his head if he decides uncharitably, and it's God's job to judge that person. But I don't think relying on this principle, in this instance, is entirely justified--the Bible, as far as I know, doesn't contain rules on how to run an insurance company, which by its very nature is designed to pay out more to some people than they put in.

Besides, under the legislation before Congress, anyone who doesn't like the idea of any of their insurance premiums going to help someone who can't pay the full premiums, can get a policy with a private insurer.

I might agree with you that a mandate requiring everyone to buy insurance might not be right, or necessary, but whatever system is put in place, people who can't afford to pay full or even partial premiums are still worthwhile human beings, whom your God has told you to protect. Most churches require tithing from all churchgoers--do you consider that to be God stealing from the churchgoers?”

“That's what I'd call a lucid dream.”

“Can you be more clear on what you mean by "usurping"?

In my opinion, the health of everyone in the US, and their ability to afford medical measures beyond low or non-cost preventative ones, is a national concern, and therefore falls under the "general welfare" clause of the Constitution. The fact that private insurers have botched their responsibility to address this, due to their ever-expanding profit motive, is a national concern, and so it seems reasonable to institute a Federal-level mechanism to fix the situation. You've stated that you believe the proper approach is Federal regulations to control private insurers, instead of taking over their job (which is not being proposed in Congress anyway), but I'm not sure this is nearly as guaranteed a fix, considering their track record and continued profit motive. Besides, if only Federal regulations imposed on private insurers were enough to do the job, why would you believe that the private insurers wouldn't try to run our lives as much as you fear the Federal government would, in order to meet those Federal regulations?”

“Lionsden says:

"If I cannot afford whatever I NEED in any area of my life, and it brings me to the end of my life, that is part of God's plan. If I receive a blessing that extends it, that is God's plan."

But we're talking about insurance companies, run by people, not acts of God--insurance companies which contrive to raise prices, deny coverage, etc. even after a client has paid what was demanded of them. If someone gets or remains ill, or dies, as a result of these human decisions, that's not part of God's plan, unless you take the bizarre, non-Christian stance that everything is God's will. You say you're a Christian, but one of Christianity's main pillars is that God gave humans free will. If you're a Christian, you have to accept the whole package that goes along with it, instead of some private interpreta­tion--bein­g part of a large denomination that has its own interpretations, or even operating according to your own interpretations, doesn't make deviation right. Your attitude seems more like a subset of Buddhism. The Bible states that we should take care of one another; right now, Congress is trying to expand and protect our ability to do that for each other. This isn't an attempt to muscle in on God's delivery or denial of blessings.”

“None of the legislation being debated in Congress has a provision to make health care free for all, whether via a public option or some other approach. Not even single payer would be free for all. I'm still stumped where some people get this idea. It would be paid via taxes, etc., with varying subsidies going to people who can't afford to pay some or all of it, since we should have the humanity to help the relatively small number of people who would fall into that category if health insurance/health care were reasonably priced. Nor would the next conservative fear come about, if that happened: vast numbers of people deciding to stop working, or work far less, in order to take advantage of health care subsidies, because that wouldn't pay all their other bills, etc. The vast majority of people want to work, for a variety of reasons: they just want to work, be worthwhile, have money for other things, support their family, etc.”

“The question isn't whether a 3% net profit is reasonable. If the average MLR for private insurers is about 81%, and their net profit is about 3%, that means 16% is being used up in ways that Medicare doesn't.”

“Have you considered going to a sleep clinic, where they can monitor you through a night's sleep to see if they can find anything that might help?”

“Thanks for the recommendation. Fountainhead is also 389 pages shorter (695 vs 1084), and in slightly larger font size in my editions (paperback Signets). I always wonder why Rand couldn't figure out how to say what she wanted, in fewer words.”

“Conspiracies (or large parts of them) can be committed without being done in secret. We see evidence of that every day. They can do these things in public because they have "protectio­n"--others in positions to support most of them with few repercussions, laws (like no anti-trust regulations for the health insurance industry, corporate "personhood" which supposedly endows companies with the ability to lobby and lie and influence, since it's been twisted to mean, as a "person", these are protected by the right to free speech; etc.), public ignorance or fear, etc. Collusion which is made possible by these factors can still be considered conspiracy--a transparent conspiracy, or transparent despotism as you call it--but I think we're probably quibbling over semantics about what to call the same thing.

That said, I really don't believe the current attempt to reform health insurance/health care, in itself, is a move merely to limit people's lives, but instead to accomplish the opposite. There are many people involved in this process who ARE trying to inject a lot of life-controlling measures into it, but I think that junk will eventually be stripped out, if not soon, then later. It will be of great benefit to have a system in place in the US that ensures as many people as possible get affordable medical care, but you're right that it's also necessary to make sure it doesn't turn into some overbearing fiasco.”

“Yes, it might be a tough decision for her--what to make of do-nothing people who make incredible amounts of money, which she so adored, by extracting it from others for no purpose other than to make themselves richer at someone else's expense? The supposed answer might be that she would revile them, since they don't really produce anything, and cause harm to others, by gaming the economic system, destroying its ability to create real wealth, but maybe not--she might flip a coin and decide that the sheer amount of money they grab, absolves them of their shortcomings. Maybe the answer is in one of her books or other writings. I have a pile of her books by my bed, since I've intended on reading one or more of them for some time. I've read only a bit of some of them, and have never finished any of them because they're pretty goofy, but I've read enough of her shorter pieces, etc. to know what she was about. Maybe someday I'll finish reading one of her books, but I'm not looking forward to it.”

“I can see promoting more tourism to real locations since it can broaden a person's outlook, but I don't think much of the idea of promoting more escapism via creation and consumption of an excess of fictional productions.”

“You make a good point that waste and fraud committed by some (much?) of the health care provider industry is also an big factor that increases health care and health insurance costs. Hopefully a significant amount of this will be addressed by the legislation before Congress, and further addressed as time goes on.

But the insurance companies' denial of coverage for many people and procedures isn't a very good way to try to keep insurance costs, and maybe even some medical costs, lower--at best, it's a clumsy method, not properly (if at all) designed for that purpose, since the insurance companies, like many health care providers, try to milk the system for as much money as they can, so the results of their actions don't really lower medical and insurance costs by any real degree--the issue of waste and fraud doesn't really get fixed, nor does the issue of the insurance company desire for profits.”

“The Federalist Papers quotes you cite, don't apply to the overall attempt to adopt health insurance reform. I agree that requiring people to buy health insurance may be the wrong thing to do, but the rest of it certainly isn't some conspiracy to enslave Americans. Health insurance reform isn't some kind of liberty/fr­eedom-robb­ing scheme, but rather an attempt to free us from the pointless control of the for-profit health insurance industry--if you want to see an example of an entity that robs us of our freedom, etc., look there. Just about anything can be seen in a way opposite to what it really is, if one wants to try, but it doesn't make for a valid point of view.”

“Now for the psychology:

Many Americans (not the majority, but many things aren't decided by majority) who consider themselves "conservatives" believe that helping anyone, beyond personal charity that amounts to giving them a turkey at Thanksgiving or Christmas, is bad, because they're believers in a twisted form of "rugged individualism". They see as lazy anyone who, for whatever reason, doesn't earn enough money to keep up with the criminal price increases imposed by many businesses--lazy for not being able to "keep up" and feed the machine all it wants (many of these "conservatives" own or work for these businesses), and so this group wants as little of its taxes as possible going to help people who don't make a lot of money.

Many of these "conservatives" also buy into Ayn Rand's Objectivism, which reveres money and "enlightened self-interest" (though they leave out most of the "enlightened" part), and rejects lending a hand to just about anyone.

Many in this group also believe in a perverted form of social Darwinism, a simplistic boiling down of Darwinian theory into "survival of the fittest", even though Darwin himself was concerned that this would be how many people would misinterpret his theory--he felt, or hoped, that evolution included the development of moral principles in which people would have compassion for people and creatures who weren't as well-off or "powerful".”

“I may be able to explain some of the psychology and political reasoning of many Americans and members of Congress, and the approach the Obama adminstration took to try to deal with it:

First, the politics. Single payer was rejected early on by the Obama administration because they knew that with the "conservatives" in Congress, and the industry lobbyists who easily buy off many or most members of Congress (on both sides) and other people in the government, plus the large percentage of paranoid, duped voters who believe just about anything their "conservative" mentors tell them, that single payer would be portrayed as socialism and "government-run health care" even more than the legislation currently being debated. Single payer was seen as impossible to get past this group, and the administration thought that the public option stood a greater chance of being adopted. I don't think they realized how much the same phony arguments against single payer would be used against the public option, or ANY change in health insurance at all that covered the uninsured, and helped pay part of the insurance bill for people who were going broke paying their premiums.”

“Nixon approved the nationwide adoption of the for-profit HMO model, after talking with Ehrlichman in a conversation recorded in 1971 in the Oval Office:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Transcript_of_taped_conversation_between_President_Richard_Nixon_and_John_D._Ehrlichman_(1971)_that_led_to_the_HMO_act_of_1973:

Key part:

Ehrlichman: “Edgar Kaiser is running his Permanente deal for profit. And the reason that he can … the reason he can do it … I had Edgar Kaiser come in … talk to me about this and I went into it in some depth. All the incentives are toward less medical care, because …”

President Nixon: [Unclear.]

Ehrlichman: “… the less care they give them, the more money they make.”
President Nixon: “Fine.” [Unclear.]

Ehrlichman: [Unclear] “… and the incentives run the right way.”

President Nixon: “Not bad.”

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However, I don't yet know how this ties in with (if it even does) Nixon's 1974 proposal for universal health care coverage, which resembled both Hillary Clinton's later proposal, and what Congress is debating now--it included Federal subsidies for individuals and businesses, etc.--but maybe it was a last pang of conscience before he left office, or a way was worked out for the new HMOs to profit from his proposal:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/22163.html”

“I'm not sure the article says the provisions for setting a minimum MLR will compensate for increases in premiums charged to customers by insurance companies. As Grumpy says, they can raise premiums to compensate for being required to pay more of their "earnings" (hah) to health care providers, but the extra that insurers would have to pay to health care providers, wouldn't be seen by customers in the form of lower premiums.”

“Nice idea about not granting Congress health care for life. If they had to choose between the same health plans as the rest of us when they left Congress, maybe they'd REALLY work together to create affordable plans for everyone else, since they'd be "everyone else" when they left office.”

“Your wish shall be granted.”

“They think the proper model for citizen involvement in government, is to hide in the woods when the revenooers come, and take potshots at them.”

“Hulu.com has already announced their intention of charging viewers in the near future. Their free opening stage was to hook people, like a pusher does, with a "free sample".”

“As to not wanting government intervention into people's rights--that's not what blocking these mergers is about. It's the opposite--it's about government trying to prevent media giants from interfering in the rights of people like you and me.
Also, contrary to what many people believe, the US wasn't founded on the idea that people can, or should, "make as much money as they want", regardless of how, and regardless of the consequences. Read some of Thomas Jefferson's writings to see what he had to say on this.”