Free Association: George Orwell, Call Your Office

Monday, July 20, 2009

If someone is already sick, a plan to pay his doctor bills can’t be insurance! Can we at least get that much straight?

Robert Arvanitis said...: Even before the event, insurance does not pay losses. Insurance merely performs a pooling service.

If you face a one-in-hundred risk of a $100,000 illness, insurance allows you to trade that for a $1,000 cost-certain, as the premium.

We only feel insurance pays for healthcare because of a blunder in the 1940s, which made employer-paid premiums a pre-tax benefit.

No defense of insurers here, only a note that the only social purpose of insurance is price discovery for risk, NOT wealth transfer.

we must break the association of insurance and healtcare, with examples like "food insurance" or "car maintenance insurance," so that the populace understands they only get what they pay for.; July 21, 2009 at 8:06 PM

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