Why should pre-existing conditions be covered by INSURANCE.

[Stormspark]

Health care is not a "business". Making it a for profit business is morally wrong, and makes the people who put that system in place murderers.

[VooDsXo]

If I had to guess, it's because health issues can get worse... thus, something is happening to you while you have the insurance.

Your example doesn't fit, at least to me, because you are trying to describe a one and done situation. Your house can only burn down once, it doesn't get worse as you live in it. If that makes sense.

We have a winner, they insure you don't get worse requiring a lot more cost in medical services. Now someone also mentioned it is a business, and if no company is offering coverage of pre-existing medical conditions than you can assume that the first company that innovates by doing so will make more money than any other company, and thus all the other companies will follow suit.

Take your pick, all it takes is influence.

[urasim]

Lets take a look at your examples and see if we can get you looking at it a different way.

You totaled your first car. You buy a new car. You go to get insurance for the new car. Nope, you have previously totaled a car therefore you cannot have more insurance.

You buy a new house. You want insurance - sorry your previous house burned down therefore no insurance for you.

This has nothing to do with what he posted. This is nothing but a strawman.

Or maybe you shouldn't have to worry about being able to ever get insurance again if for some reason you loose your coverage and it lapses for even 1 day. You might currently live in a situation where this isn't a concern or maybe the threat of this happening to you hasn't come to pass but try to think outside your bubble.

He's not saying you can't ever get insurance. Just that insurance shouldn't cover pre-existing conditions. He's going by the definition of the word insurance "a thing providing protection against a possible eventuality."

[delus]

It makes no sense to me, and defeats the whole purpose of insurance.

Insurance is there to help you AFTER something happens. You buy insurance hoping that you don't have to use it, but if something happens and you do have to use it, its there.

For instance, if you have a car with no insurance on it, and you crash it, you don't call up an insurance company and ask for coverage on the car after its already been totaled

If you have a house with no home insurance on it, and your house burns down, you don't call up an insurance company and ask them for coverage since your house burned down.

If insurance is there to help you when something happens, why should an insurance company give you insurance for something thats already happened to you.

Can someone explain it to me?

Well, if you're a person who only gives a damn about yourself, they shouldn't. People will die but why should you care if you're covered for your needs? The way insurance works is that everyone pays into a pool and those who are at less risk absorb the cost for those at higher risk for incidents.

[urasim]

Health care is not a "business". Making it a for profit business is morally wrong, and makes the people who put that system in place murderers.

On the other side of the spectrum you have people who pick and choose who get's treatment. Because not everyone on the planet can be treated. So they're also murderers.

[Brubear]

It makes no sense to me, and defeats the whole purpose of insurance.

Insurance is there to help you AFTER something happens. You buy insurance hoping that you don't have to use it, but if something happens and you do have to use it, its there.

For instance, if you have a car with no insurance on it, and you crash it, you don't call up an insurance company and ask for coverage on the car after its already been totaled

If you have a house with no home insurance on it, and your house burns down, you don't call up an insurance company and ask them for coverage since your house burned down.

If insurance is there to help you when something happens, why should an insurance company give you insurance for something thats already happened to you.

Can someone explain it to me?

Do insurers refuse to cover cars that have been in prior accidents, or had their engine replaced, or any other number of major repairs? No?

There you go, that's why insurers should cover pre-existing conditions that flows with your analogy.

[unbound]

It makes no sense to me, and defeats the whole purpose of insurance.

Insurance is there to help you AFTER something happens. You buy insurance hoping that you don't have to use it, but if something happens and you do have to use it, its there.

For instance, if you have a car with no insurance on it, and you crash it, you don't call up an insurance company and ask for coverage on the car after its already been totaled

If you have a house with no home insurance on it, and your house burns down, you don't call up an insurance company and ask them for coverage since your house burned down.

If insurance is there to help you when something happens, why should an insurance company give you insurance for something thats already happened to you.

Can someone explain it to me?

Well, from a moral standpoint, are you kidding?

From an insurance standpoint, of course they cover pre-existing conditions, and they do it at reasonable rates.

Think of your car insurance. If you are like me, I pay for car insurance even though I haven't caused an accident in about 30 years. I'm not getting an appropriate rate of return for that money. That money basically goes into a pool to cover people that do cause accidents and, in return, if I actually cause an accident, I will be covered.

For people that cause accidents every now and then (moderately bad drivers...really a pre-existing condition), their rates go up, but they don't go up nearly enough to really cover the damage they cause. Those rates are tempered by people like me who pay into the system getting very little out of it. This means that good drivers are paying for the bad drivers. Where are those complaints?

For people that cause accidents often (really bad drivers...again, really a pre-existing condition), generally they lose their license so they don't become an insurance issue. But those people still have relatively affordable options...get a ride with a friend, public transportation, taxis, uber, etc.

So the real major difference for health insurance is that we don't have good alternatives for people with pre-existing conditions. We are talking about becoming highly immoral (very sad since so many claim that we live in a Christian nation) and basically killing many people in the name of saving the rich money. Another significant difference here is that we are hesitant to mandate that the healthy (the good drivers) contribute just like for pretty much all other insurance. There is simply no reason for that.

And health insurance that is offered by working for a corporation is no different. Their negotiated rates are based on the overall health pool of the employees. Yes, the older ones pay a bit more, but not nearly enough to cover the costs...those insurance programs rely on the younger workers who contribute to the funding but get less out of it on average.

It's time that we become moral and support our citizens.

[urasim]

Do insurers refuse to cover cars that have been in prior accidents, or had their engine replaced, or any other number of major repairs? No?

They can refuse to insure the driver, though.

[Deleted]

It makes no sense to me, and defeats the whole purpose of insurance.

Insurance is there to help you AFTER something happens. You buy insurance hoping that you don't have to use it, but if something happens and you do have to use it, its there.

For instance, if you have a car with no insurance on it, and you crash it, you don't call up an insurance company and ask for coverage on the car after its already been totaled

If you have a house with no home insurance on it, and your house burns down, you don't call up an insurance company and ask them for coverage since your house burned down.

If insurance is there to help you when something happens, why should an insurance company give you insurance for something thats already happened to you.

Can someone explain it to me?

just be are aware that you are almost guaranteed to run into a issue like this yourself in your own life and/or direct families lifes, particularly when you get older. insurance laws change, insurance companies merge, go bankrupt, contracts end, etc. There are a myriad of reasons why one has to change insurance provider outside ones control throughout ones life, and everybody develops medical conditions over their lifetime which will then be pre-existing.
add op top of that all the times in your life you will want to change insurance provider or expand coverage by choice due to changes in your life (e.g. moving out of state, getting married/divorced/children, becoming an adult, changing job if they cover you, etc)

[Kolbjorn]

It makes no sense to me, and defeats the whole purpose of insurance.

Insurance is there to help you AFTER something happens. You buy insurance hoping that you don't have to use it, but if something happens and you do have to use it, its there.

For instance, if you have a car with no insurance on it, and you crash it, you don't call up an insurance company and ask for coverage on the car after its already been totaled

If you have a house with no home insurance on it, and your house burns down, you don't call up an insurance company and ask them for coverage since your house burned down.

If insurance is there to help you when something happens, why should an insurance company give you insurance for something thats already happened to you.

Can someone explain it to me?

You realize that if you're right... that the argument you're making suggests eliminating health insurance and nationalizing it right? Or if you're absolutely glued to an 'insurance' model, mandating it like car insurance... which is what the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think tank) intended when they wrote Obamacare...

[Endus]

On the other side of the spectrum you have people who pick and choose who get's treatment. Because not everyone on the planet can be treated. So they're also murderers.

No, this is nonsense. Most health systems in the developed world operate off what is essentially triage principles in allocating care; those who needs treatment the most urgently receive priority. This means less-urgent issues get delayed before they receive treatment, generally, but they DO get treatment.

The American system explicitly involves denying people care they can't afford, either personally or via insurance. If you go to a hospital with a failing heart and needing a transplant, if you don't have insurance and can't afford to pay out of pocket and don't qualify for government assistance, they'll keep you comfortable as long as they can, but they won't give you the transplant, even if they have a donor heart available.

[McFuu]

Stop using the car or house analogies, because you are floating over a major point. If you are a high risk driver, you pay more, if your car is expensive to repair, you pay more, if your house is on a flood plain, you pay more.

So why with health insurance do you pay the same? Why no premium. Arguably this analogy doesn't work either, because if you are a high risk driver or if you are living in a flood area, it doesn't mean you are going to be in an accident/flood. Hell in NJ if you live in certain areas you have to elevate your house, or you can't insure it at all, and basically are forced to sell. With health issues, you will be using the system. So why not cap a premium for preexisting conditions, say 10% over the medium you would pay without?

[petej0]

This is false.

The purpose of insurance is to spread the high costs of the few over many others, so those few aren't left destitute. If the average insurance payee got out as much as he put in, then insurance wouldn't be working properly.

And it cant work properly when dealing with health. Because eventually nearly EVERYONE has health issues, even if its end of life care.

If you pay $300 a month for health coverage for 50 years you only paid $180k into the system, you will draw well above that in just one ambulance ride. Kidding, but you will draw well above that, probably in a single surgery.

This is also complicated by the fact that car and house insurance are fundamentally about financial protection, whereas health insurance is about protecting one's life. That there's a profit motive behind protecting people's health is, frankly, more than a little gross. The USA is basically the only developed nation still operating with this kind of 19th Century approach to health care funding.

I will agree, but you will never get rid of it. It is very easy to get rid of, all you need to do is expand Medicare for all Americans. The reason why it wont be done is millions of jobs will be lost in the health insurance industry. No politician, has to guts to vote for that.

- - - Updated - - -

Because your stupid fucking system requires you to have insurance or you will be fucked seven ways to Sunday by hospital bills.

Funny, Congress had the United CEO to grill him on the practices of overbooking and passenger rights. Yet nobody says shit about the rising costs of health care from hospitals.

[Moralgy]

I wish I had been on an insurance plan when my parents accidentally conceived me and for the first 15 years of my life. Oooppsss, guess I'm dead.

[Kolbjorn]

Funny, Congress had the United CEO to grill him on the practices of overbooking and passenger rights. Yet nobody says shit about the rising costs of health care from hospitals.

This is because we frame the problem incorrectly in the U.S.

Instead of "We pay 2-3x more than the rest of the world for similar (often worse) levels of care, how can we fix that? By killing all the lawyers perhaps?"

We frame it as:

"Poor people don't deserve care! Even though they'll get some level of care anyways if they show up at the ER, because doctors aren't monsters like Congress people, and we have to pay for it anyways through our insurance and/or taxes. But we can pretend those people get nothing if we deny insurance!"

Obviously one of these framings is better for solving real issues...

[PACOX]

Loaded question.Healthcare shouldn't be profit based in the first place.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Because said conditions a lot of the time aren't exactly controllable or hell even convenient and with how expensive hospital bills and such are. Even a random event can put you in financial trouble.

[Stormspark]

Because your stupid fucking system requires you to have insurance or you will be fucked seven ways to Sunday by hospital bills.

Insurance doesn't really help either unless you have a really really expensive no or low deductible plan. These are well out of the range of most people.

Otherwise, WITH insurance, you get appendicitis. Collapse at work, you don't know what's wrong. Get taken to the hospital by ambulance (no choice on your part since you're unconscious). Wake up later after an emergency operation. They can basically just make up an amount and say you owe it. "You now owe us 30k, btw that's after your insurance paid 80% of it". If something like that happens to me they will never see a cent of that money. Even if I have to quit my job and go broke to make sure they never see a cent of it. As is, if I find out I'm going to die I'm going to deliberately run up as many bills as I possibly can, just so they can get stuck with it when I die and there's nothing to take. I have plans for everything I have to be liquidated to cash and donated to a cat shelter in the event of my death.

Compare Canada. Someone gets appendicitis. 3 day hospital stay. Bill: $35. Why $35? Because they paid extra to get cable TV in their room.

[petej0]

This is because we frame the problem incorrectly in the U.S.

Instead of "We pay 2-3x more than the rest of the world for similar (often worse) levels of care, how can we fix that? By killing all the lawyers perhaps?"

We frame it as:

"Poor people don't deserve care! Even though they'll get some level of care anyways if they show up at the ER, because doctors aren't monsters like Congress people, and we have to pay for it anyways through our insurance and/or taxes. But we can pretend those people get nothing if we deny insurance!"

Obviously one of these framings is better for solving real issues...

And I say, it is framed that way because they dont want to fix it. It isnt about fixing the system, it is about kicking the can down the road for someone else to deal with.

[Krigaren]

if no company is offering coverage of pre-existing medical conditions than you can assume that the first company that innovates by doing so will make more money than any other company, and thus all the other companies will follow suit.

That's not likely, though. Pre-existing conditions is a very expensive thing to cover for insurance companies. What they want are healthy people who pay into the system, but don't take back out. People with pre-existing conditions are constant expenses, and depending on the level of care they require, may cost the insurance company far more than they'll ever recover from that person.

It's basically the 3rd rail of insurance. These companies do not want sick people at all, that's why private insurance got to where it was prior to the ACA; they were coming up with all kinds of bullshit metrics (like BMI) in order to refuse coverage to people. The free market isn't the answer in this situation.