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So insurance pays for 100% of the cost? Where do I find such insurance? Or suppose I need chemo and insurance will only cover 80% of the $100k cost? Do I hav

So insurance pays for 100% of the cost? Where do I find such insurance? Or suppose I need chemo and insurance will only cover 80% of the $100k cost? Do I have to keep $20k under my pillow?

pdonis 14y ago
> So insurance pays for 100% of the cost? Where do I find such insurance? Remember we're talking about a very different world from the one we actually live in, a world where banks aren't allowed to lend at longer terms than they borrow. In such a world health insurance would presumably also be very different from what we're used to, since it would only be expected to insure against things that should be insurable, i.e., unforeseen circumstances. What we now call "health insurance" is something like auto insurance that would also be expected to pay for oil changes, replacing tires, checking your air cleaner and wiper blades, etc., etc. If we had health insurance that worked more like the way our actual auto insurance works, we would cleanly separate predictable health expenses from unpredictable ones, and only expect insurance for the latter. That would change things a lot. > Or suppose I need chemo and insurance will only cover 80% of the $100k cost? The big question here is, why do you need chemo? We're probably getting off topic, but I can see at least three distinct possibilities: (1) You need chemo because of something accidental and unforeseen that gave you cancer--say you were in an airplane that got irradiated with a burst of cosmic rays. This would be insurable, and these sorts of conditions are rare enough that I would expect an insurance company to pay the claim, with a reasonable deductible (you would trade off the deductible against the premiums, just as you do now with auto insurance--again, this is all in the light of the general comments I made above). (2) You need chemo because someone else's deliberate act or negligence caused your cancer--say your city water was contaminated by a factory's effluent. In this case the party responsible should be paying for your chemo, just as if someone else hits your car they are responsible for paying to get it fixed. (3) You need chemo because you didn't take care of yourself very well, didn't get regular checkups, and got a form of cancer that could have been diagnosed and prevented but wasn't. In this case your insurance company would still be obligated to pay, but your premiums would probably have been quite a bit higher, just as people with bad driving records have to pay more for auto insurance. Of course I understand that this kind of analysis is a lot more unpalatable when applied to health insurance vs. auto insurance. Our bodies are much more important to us than our cars. But that doesn't change the economics involved.
- einhverfr 14y ago
  I suppose building a different world is one way to solve the problems of the present. Maybe by version 7 or 8 we will get something liveable.....
- philwelch 14y ago
  > Remember we're talking about a very different world from the one we actually live in, a world where banks aren't allowed to lend at longer terms than they borrow. In such a world health insurance would presumably also be very different.... So that's your solution, throw away the world and start over again? This kind of thinking gets very unappealing when you realize that for all its flaws, the world seems to work fairly well as it is--and that empirically-based, stepwise improvement on the status quo is a safer and more reliable way to go than hoping some ideology is going to work better.
  - pdonis 14y ago
    It's not my "solution", it's my description of what a hypothetical world might be like in which we didn't expect the difficulties of things like finance and health care to be hidden from us by schemes like banks borrowing short and lending long, and governments hiding from us the real costs of the health care we receive. I agree completely that the actual world we live in is nowhere near that hypothetical world, and that we aren't going to get to that hypothetical world in one giant transition. However, I would also observe that what we are doing now is not a "stepwise improvement" towards that hypothetical world or anything like it. Instead we move in the other direction--more of the real costs of financial tricks and health care are hidden from us.
    - philwelch 14y ago
      I said empirically based stepwise improvement, not stepwise transition towards some ideologically driven fantasy world.
      - pdonis 14y ago
        Then how do you define "improvement"?

So insurance pays for 100% of the cost? Where do I find such insurance? Or suppose I need chemo and insurance will only cover 80% of the $100k cost? Do I have to keep $20k under my pillow?

pdonis 14y ago

> So insurance pays for 100% of the cost? Where do I find such insurance? Remember we're talking about a very different world from the one we actually live in, a world where banks aren't allowed to lend at longer terms than they borrow. In such a world health insurance would presumably also be very different from what we're used to, since it would only be expected to insure against things that should be insurable, i.e., unforeseen circumstances. What we now call "health insurance" is something like auto insurance that would also be expected to pay for oil changes, replacing tires, checking your air cleaner and wiper blades, etc., etc. If we had health insurance that worked more like the way our actual auto insurance works, we would cleanly separate predictable health expenses from unpredictable ones, and only expect insurance for the latter. That would change things a lot. > Or suppose I need chemo and insurance will only cover 80% of the $100k cost? The big question here is, why do you need chemo? We're probably getting off topic, but I can see at least three distinct possibilities: (1) You need chemo because of something accidental and unforeseen that gave you cancer--say you were in an airplane that got irradiated with a burst of cosmic rays. This would be insurable, and these sorts of conditions are rare enough that I would expect an insurance company to pay the claim, with a reasonable deductible (you would trade off the deductible against the premiums, just as you do now with auto insurance--again, this is all in the light of the general comments I made above). (2) You need chemo because someone else's deliberate act or negligence caused your cancer--say your city water was contaminated by a factory's effluent. In this case the party responsible should be paying for your chemo, just as if someone else hits your car they are responsible for paying to get it fixed. (3) You need chemo because you didn't take care of yourself very well, didn't get regular checkups, and got a form of cancer that could have been diagnosed and prevented but wasn't. In this case your insurance company would still be obligated to pay, but your premiums would probably have been quite a bit higher, just as people with bad driving records have to pay more for auto insurance. Of course I understand that this kind of analysis is a lot more unpalatable when applied to health insurance vs. auto insurance. Our bodies are much more important to us than our cars. But that doesn't change the economics involved.

einhverfr 14y ago
I suppose building a different world is one way to solve the problems of the present. Maybe by version 7 or 8 we will get something liveable.....
philwelch 14y ago
> Remember we're talking about a very different world from the one we actually live in, a world where banks aren't allowed to lend at longer terms than they borrow. In such a world health insurance would presumably also be very different.... So that's your solution, throw away the world and start over again? This kind of thinking gets very unappealing when you realize that for all its flaws, the world seems to work fairly well as it is--and that empirically-based, stepwise improvement on the status quo is a safer and more reliable way to go than hoping some ideology is going to work better.
- pdonis 14y ago
  It's not my "solution", it's my description of what a hypothetical world might be like in which we didn't expect the difficulties of things like finance and health care to be hidden from us by schemes like banks borrowing short and lending long, and governments hiding from us the real costs of the health care we receive. I agree completely that the actual world we live in is nowhere near that hypothetical world, and that we aren't going to get to that hypothetical world in one giant transition. However, I would also observe that what we are doing now is not a "stepwise improvement" towards that hypothetical world or anything like it. Instead we move in the other direction--more of the real costs of financial tricks and health care are hidden from us.
  - philwelch 14y ago
    I said empirically based stepwise improvement, not stepwise transition towards some ideologically driven fantasy world.
    - pdonis 14y ago
      Then how do you define "improvement"?