http://channel-surfing.blogspot.com/2008/08/questions-of-life-and-death.html
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Questions of life and death
Hank Kalet
managing editor of the South Brunswick Post
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And who pays? Should the answers to these questions depend on a patient’s financial situation, as they do now? (The wealthy can by medical services not available to the poor, meaning that the same $4,000 life-extender that was out of reach for Ms. Wagner might be easily obtainable for someone else — and not necessarily Donald Trump.)
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Well, at one time, insurance was not in the business of rationing health care. Thanks to the gooferment, it has been throughst into arse over hear.
Insurance was, at one time, a pooling of risks. A largee pool of people, who all had a similar risk profile, were ‘pooled’. If “an unaviodable tragedy” would strike one out of a million and the million put in a dollar ahead of time, the “winner” would get a million bucks. You know the idea. But it’s been morphed into something else.
You can insure a new car against transmission failure pretty cheaply; you can’t insure the cost of an oil change.
In gooferment-regulated health insurance, we’re insuring “oil changes” and complaining when the operator of the swimming pool tried to keep it from being drained.
Perhaps, we need to return to the old fashioned free market version of insurance. I remember my Mom sitting at the kitchen table with all her hospital and doctor bills from my apendix operation. She had her receipts attached to the bills. She filled out the form. And we sent it in registered mail. About six weeks later, she got a check back for 80% of what she put in. No reasonable and customary. No “not covered”. Just a check.
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