4 ms·

Can you really call it 'insurance' when it's a pre-existing condition? I realize we can call insurance whatever we want, but when I think of insurance I think

Can you really call it 'insurance' when it's a pre-existing condition? I realize we can call insurance whatever we want, but when I think of insurance I think of it a way to pool for mitigating risk of the unknown. No one would sell insurance that would fix your already destroyed roof.

giaour 5y ago
> No one would sell insurance that would fix your already destroyed roof. But they will sell you homeowners insurance in areas prone to wildfires or hurricanes. The difference is that you are expected to know the amortized cost of disasters for your property and either insure against it or simply accept the risk. Either way, you as a homeowner are supposed to make an informed decision. If disaster is too likely to occur in a certain area, you can either move or not purchase a property in the first place. Science still hasn't figured out how to let us move into healthier bodies or choose our bodies prior to birth, so, alas, we are forced to seek fairness through other means.
- com2kid 5y ago
  > But they will sell you homeowners insurance in areas prone to wildfires And in areas with wild fires, tar roofs aren't legal for new construction! Roofs have to be built out of something non-flammable. Lessons to be learned perhaps.
  - max599 5y ago
    Most of the building code is written with the blood of victims who died in a horrific accident. If you want to know why doors in public places have to open toward the outside in modern countries and why "panic bars" are often mandatory, the answer is large piles of dead children (literally). Depending on who you ask and the country they live in, they will refer to a different disaster, but the common element in all of them is 70 - 600 people stuck in hallways unable to escape due to bad exit designs (eg. people piling up against doors that open towards the inside).
    - notch656a 5y ago
      The unseen deaths are those who are unhoused or unsheltered due to building codes causing elevated building prices. Secondary effects (for those who can afford up-to-code) include less money to spend on healthy foods, good health insurance, quality child education, and other victimized children at the hand of building codes and other regulation. You can virtually ramp up building codes ad-infinitum, until the house is as safe as can humanly be built, if your expense is to hurt a lot of children by bankrupting families of expenses to take care of other necessities in life.
munk-a 5y ago
Well, whatever we call it we as a society need to choose whether we want to keep people with expensive preexisting conditions alive. I don't think it's really necessary to debate the point since almost every western country has decided that their ethics fall in the camp of "Yes, we support those people and give them the best life possible" whenever they're actually pressed on the matter. For a while the US skated by on budgetary excuses but all the while I think society still idealistically held on to that standard - I think this point is fairly debatable though. I think it's more a question of whether we'd be willing to install and maintain a roof on a building that had been designed without a roof in mind or whether we'd tear down the building to make room for a new one. You'd probably rationally lean in the second direction for a house - but when we're talking about a human life the math changes for a lot of people. Either way, a return to an insurance-less situation would leave people with preexisting situations out in the cold, unless your definition of insuranceless involves government subsidies for all preexisting conditions and at that point you're basically talking about medicare for all.
- notch656a 5y ago
  I think as a society if we can't discuss this in an honest manner without deceptive terminology, we're doomed to be stuck in a bad spot. Perhaps phrasing it as charity of the healthy towards the less healthy would lead towards a more productive and honest starting point. It's something many, including myself, would be much more supportive of than feeling like I'm deceived by misrepresentation of a product. I'd feel like I'm taking part of a noble charity rather than this sort of deceptive 'insurance' product.
  - RHSeeger 5y ago
    I don't see it as a charity so much as we, as a group, are pooling our money so that those that need health care get health care. That can be people with pre-existing conditions, people with a new condition, people that are in an accident, preventative maintenance, or even just normal life situations (pregnancy, etc). In my mind, it's not charity because it's - For everyone. Maybe not for you today, but maybe tomorrow - For the benefit of society as a whole. If we let everyone who got sick just die, our society would be worse for it.
pyuser583 5y ago
If you health insurance only covered “insurance events” in the normal definition of the phrase, much of medical care would not be insurable.

giaour 5y ago

> No one would sell insurance that would fix your already destroyed roof. But they will sell you homeowners insurance in areas prone to wildfires or hurricanes. The difference is that you are expected to know the amortized cost of disasters for your property and either insure against it or simply accept the risk. Either way, you as a homeowner are supposed to make an informed decision. If disaster is too likely to occur in a certain area, you can either move or not purchase a property in the first place. Science still hasn't figured out how to let us move into healthier bodies or choose our bodies prior to birth, so, alas, we are forced to seek fairness through other means.

com2kid 5y ago
> But they will sell you homeowners insurance in areas prone to wildfires And in areas with wild fires, tar roofs aren't legal for new construction! Roofs have to be built out of something non-flammable. Lessons to be learned perhaps.
- max599 5y ago
  Most of the building code is written with the blood of victims who died in a horrific accident. If you want to know why doors in public places have to open toward the outside in modern countries and why "panic bars" are often mandatory, the answer is large piles of dead children (literally). Depending on who you ask and the country they live in, they will refer to a different disaster, but the common element in all of them is 70 - 600 people stuck in hallways unable to escape due to bad exit designs (eg. people piling up against doors that open towards the inside).
  - notch656a 5y ago
    The unseen deaths are those who are unhoused or unsheltered due to building codes causing elevated building prices. Secondary effects (for those who can afford up-to-code) include less money to spend on healthy foods, good health insurance, quality child education, and other victimized children at the hand of building codes and other regulation. You can virtually ramp up building codes ad-infinitum, until the house is as safe as can humanly be built, if your expense is to hurt a lot of children by bankrupting families of expenses to take care of other necessities in life.

munk-a 5y ago

Well, whatever we call it we as a society need to choose whether we want to keep people with expensive preexisting conditions alive. I don't think it's really necessary to debate the point since almost every western country has decided that their ethics fall in the camp of "Yes, we support those people and give them the best life possible" whenever they're actually pressed on the matter. For a while the US skated by on budgetary excuses but all the while I think society still idealistically held on to that standard - I think this point is fairly debatable though. I think it's more a question of whether we'd be willing to install and maintain a roof on a building that had been designed without a roof in mind or whether we'd tear down the building to make room for a new one. You'd probably rationally lean in the second direction for a house - but when we're talking about a human life the math changes for a lot of people. Either way, a return to an insurance-less situation would leave people with preexisting situations out in the cold, unless your definition of insuranceless involves government subsidies for all preexisting conditions and at that point you're basically talking about medicare for all.

notch656a 5y ago
I think as a society if we can't discuss this in an honest manner without deceptive terminology, we're doomed to be stuck in a bad spot. Perhaps phrasing it as charity of the healthy towards the less healthy would lead towards a more productive and honest starting point. It's something many, including myself, would be much more supportive of than feeling like I'm deceived by misrepresentation of a product. I'd feel like I'm taking part of a noble charity rather than this sort of deceptive 'insurance' product.
- RHSeeger 5y ago
  I don't see it as a charity so much as we, as a group, are pooling our money so that those that need health care get health care. That can be people with pre-existing conditions, people with a new condition, people that are in an accident, preventative maintenance, or even just normal life situations (pregnancy, etc). In my mind, it's not charity because it's - For everyone. Maybe not for you today, but maybe tomorrow - For the benefit of society as a whole. If we let everyone who got sick just die, our society would be worse for it.

pyuser583 5y ago

If you health insurance only covered “insurance events” in the normal definition of the phrase, much of medical care would not be insurable.