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You missed the part where he has to keep on fighting to keep the coverage and says that he expects to lose his coverage eventually. And it sounds like you don't

by olefoo 17y ago

You missed the part where he has to keep on fighting to keep the coverage and says that he expects to lose his coverage eventually. And it sounds like you don't have enough experience of being on the wrong end of an insurance companies attempts to kill you to be less credulous about their nature. The problem is that in the US at this time, health insurance companies are structurally evil. Evil in that they are the source of unnecessary pain, suffering and death. That they cause this suffering in the name of their 'fiduciary responsibility' to their shareholders only compounds the evil.

dschobel 17y ago
Insurance companies are neither Good nor Evil. That's absurd. They're simply in the unenviable position of having to be the decision makers in the distribution of a scarce resource (health care). Saying the insurance companies are evil is no more informed than the people who railed at the Obama administration for suggesting that end of life care should be rationed. The most fundamental issue is that health-care is so damned expensive in the US. That's why we get in the degenerate situation we're in now where it seems like insurance companies are the arbiters of who shall live and who shall die.
- olefoo 17y ago
  I have to disagree with you. I used the term evil in a considered fashion to describe the moral situation in which anyone who is running a health insurance company in the US at this time finds themselves. To anyone who has bothered to investigate the actual functioning of the system at this time the idea of the current form of health insurance as the rational rationing of scarce resources is laughable. The structure of health insurance protection in the US at this time extracts almost a third of every dollar spent on health care. And those administrative costs do not contribute towards better health care, chronic or acute. And that is why I am not afraid to make a moral judgment; an industry that steals the third part of the money entrusted to it's care at the expense of the sick and dying is evil. How can we remedy this evil?
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
tlb 17y ago
I don't think you can say the companies themselves are evil. Evil implies a deliberate choice to hurt people instead of helping them. I don't think insurance companies have that choice. They're in the business of collecting modest premiums in return for being on the hook to pay out large amounts of money for the few most sick patients. Of course they're going to drag their feet on paying and try to get the sick ones off the books. If they paid all the claims, they'd be out of business. They don't have a choice, so you can't call them evil. The unfortunate second-order effect is that it attracts the wrong kinds of people. They need software to find people most likely to cost them money, and jack up their premiums until they switch. Would you want to write that software? Like, the line of code that says, if policy.expected_payout > policy.current_premium*0.6: policy.schedule_increase()
- olefoo 17y ago
  > They don't have a choice, so you can't call them evil. See my response below for an elaboration of why I use the term evil in this context. And all of the human beings involved in this system have choices as to how they can react. The fact that some of those choices have costs does not automatically remove the element of choice. The executive who chooses to perpetuate the system in it's current form is making a moral choice and should be held to account for it.

by olefoo 17y ago

dschobel 17y ago

Insurance companies are neither Good nor Evil. That's absurd. They're simply in the unenviable position of having to be the decision makers in the distribution of a scarce resource (health care). Saying the insurance companies are evil is no more informed than the people who railed at the Obama administration for suggesting that end of life care should be rationed. The most fundamental issue is that health-care is so damned expensive in the US. That's why we get in the degenerate situation we're in now where it seems like insurance companies are the arbiters of who shall live and who shall die.

olefoo 17y ago
I have to disagree with you. I used the term evil in a considered fashion to describe the moral situation in which anyone who is running a health insurance company in the US at this time finds themselves. To anyone who has bothered to investigate the actual functioning of the system at this time the idea of the current form of health insurance as the rational rationing of scarce resources is laughable. The structure of health insurance protection in the US at this time extracts almost a third of every dollar spent on health care. And those administrative costs do not contribute towards better health care, chronic or acute. And that is why I am not afraid to make a moral judgment; an industry that steals the third part of the money entrusted to it's care at the expense of the sick and dying is evil. How can we remedy this evil?

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

tlb 17y ago

I don't think you can say the companies themselves are evil. Evil implies a deliberate choice to hurt people instead of helping them. I don't think insurance companies have that choice. They're in the business of collecting modest premiums in return for being on the hook to pay out large amounts of money for the few most sick patients. Of course they're going to drag their feet on paying and try to get the sick ones off the books. If they paid all the claims, they'd be out of business. They don't have a choice, so you can't call them evil. The unfortunate second-order effect is that it attracts the wrong kinds of people. They need software to find people most likely to cost them money, and jack up their premiums until they switch. Would you want to write that software? Like, the line of code that says, if policy.expected_payout > policy.current_premium*0.6: policy.schedule_increase()

olefoo 17y ago
> They don't have a choice, so you can't call them evil. See my response below for an elaboration of why I use the term evil in this context. And all of the human beings involved in this system have choices as to how they can react. The fact that some of those choices have costs does not automatically remove the element of choice. The executive who chooses to perpetuate the system in it's current form is making a moral choice and should be held to account for it.