On Tue, 23 Mar 2010 01:50:22 -0700 (PDT), DaveS wrote:

On Mar 22, 11:39*pm, "John B" wrote:
What would be the problem with limiting the profit a Health Insurer could
make?

Assuming that you mean "limiting" in the form of "government controlled
limitation," rather than the natural "limiting" placed by the marketplace:

OK - what would be the problem with telling folks named "John" that they had to
live in cold climates because society has decided to evenly distribute people
across the land, and those whose names begin with J, K and L are assigned to
Indiana, Michigan and Ohio?

IMO, and even as big a mess as Freddie and Fannie were allowed to become, the
answer for "Government-provided health care" is for the Fed to set up what
amounts to a "health insurance GSE" and keep _all_ pork, etc. out of it. Yeah,
I know, good luck with that. If it could be set up and run like a true,
_properly-run_ mutual company (generally and simply, mutuals are owned by the
insureds, stocks are owned by stockholders, and the trend, guess what, has moved
_dramatically_ toward demut'ing mutuals or stock-from-the-start)and that alone
would cause enough market competition to deal with some, even many, of the
issues. Allow those who can to purchase from it, subsidize those who truly need
the help, and let those who choose to, um, "go commando" insurance-wise suffer
the consequences.

And as a personal aside, why in the ****, pardon the pun, is the Fed getting
involved, in any manner, shape, form or fashion, with abortion-as-birth-control
yet AGAIN? If it is illegal for someone to smoke a joint, bet on a game or buy
some nookie, even it is with money they went out and (legally) earned and
willingly spent, why isn't it illegal for someone to negligently get pregnant
when they cannot afford to support a child? If a given society - let's assume
for this discussion, the US - is going to allow "government control," it might
serve it better to demand that that control at least be rational and provide
some benefit to society in general and as a whole body.

IAC, the problem as I see it is that the Fed has set up all sorts of rules and
regs, but little or no actual control AND provided a safety net. Let business
entities stretch out and run for the big lick if they want, but when they hit a
wall doing it, let 'em fail - no bailouts. And if there was anything actually
criminal involved (and poor business practice/sense _by any party_ shouldn't be
criminalized, ala much of Enron and its shareholders), put those found guilty in
real jail.

john

Why that would stifle private enterprise. Be better if a big insurance
corp, yeah like AIG, yeah. Hold on, isn't AIG owned by Uncle Sam (Not
the Walton, the other one.)???

So let's see: that would be like if one manufacturer XYZ, negotiated a
supply chain contract with another company PDQ, to produce sub-
assemblies for XYZ's product. Or maybe more like if ABC company
contracts with a Temp help business, to collect and sell admission
tickets at ABC's trade shows. Both contracts based on a negotiated
cost, plus negotiated profit, business proposition.

Yeah, the insurers right now play their role in the system as
controlling MIDDLEMEN. The STANDARD OF PAY for "middlemen" is
"whatever the traffic will bear,"(sometimes known as "the market"). I
want their role to be changed into that of a bookkeeping
SUBcontractor, kind of like the PAYROLL services most medium sized
employers contract with. For example, actually as I recall ole Ross
Perot had the contract for years to write the social security checks.
And he didn't get to decide on how much profit the taxpayers had to
give him.

Oops, nope. "He" (I suspect that Ross hisownself wasn't actually bidding or
doing the work, it was EDS, but maybe he had something on the side in the guest
bedroom or something...) had an absolute choice. He could either figure what
the job was worth _to him_ and bid on the contract (let's assume it was a bid
contract - I don't know if it was or not), and if he won, be paid what he asked
or he could not bid, and therefore, not do the work, not have a duty to do any
of the work and receive no money - the choice was his. It would appear that the
choice he made was to do the work for the profit offered.

We

Uh-oh - there's the good ol' "we" again - so, OK, Kemosabe, what's this "we"
****...?

should negotiate a deal with the insurers at least as good as the
paper processing subcontractors, public and private, sell to the
health-care schemes in other Western countries.

And if the US Government wants to private-source health insurance, it absolutely
should have the right to put out specs that say "we'll pay X for Y - any
takers?" They would not even have the duty to negotiate in such a case.

HTH,
R