HMO's are strictly private agencies, extremely profitable, and are the perfect example of unrestrained corporate control of health care.
To clarify, I don't advocate first dollar coverage. But I do see a great benefit from affordable and accessible preventative medicine as good beginning to reducing the cost of our health care.
The conservative mantra has been that anything governmental must be bad. Well, corporate America hasn't done so well either…this is why we have the escalating cost of health care far and above anyone else in the industrial west. There is very little actual competitive force to drive down the costs.
Try shopping around for insurance if you are losing earlier coverage. Try shopping for rates among doctors when you are sick (or even healthy).
Regulation of certain markets is necessary to provide services that are essential to our population. More and more comp

The last thing I want is government provided health care. Look at the hospitals where they put our war wounded! Thats government health care for you. And what happened to insurance anyway? Used to be insurance was for big problems,not to pay to see the Doc when you have a cold or a sprain. Government invented the HMO's etc, thats when health care got expensive and the quality got worse.

Nobody expects someone elso to pay for anything. Most reasonable people realize that you have to pay either through a universal system or via the system we have now. We are already paying exorbitant premiums for marginal coverage. Even if you take away the tax advantage, you still have a system based on profitability for excessive treatment and denial of coverage.
Tinkering with the present system will still leave us with huge numbers either uninsured or grossly under insured.
The efficiency of the medical dollars is eaten up by the inefficiency of the private insurance companies…approaching 20%-30%. To cover overhead, sales, marketing, profits, etc. only about 70-80% of the money goes to healthcare.
Europe hovers around 5-8%, Taiwan about 2%. And those healthcare systems are not primitive.
And we still have the problem of even getting insurance for those who need it most. Private

"I still think we are side stepping the issue: can a marketplace approach to healthcare, the approach we have now, contain costs and provide for a healthier population?"

Refer to the first post I wrote in this thread. Our tax system has interrupted the free market in health care, disconnecting price signals from demand. Our problem is to much government already, turning the whole thing over to a government agency is not going to increase efficiency.

The fallacy most people fall into is to expect to have the quality of our current system but have someone else pay for it. That can't happen. You might succeed in hiding the costs, but they will be there, or the quality will not. That is not to say that we can't have quality at a lower cost, but that entrusting it to a government monopoly is not the way to do it, only the competition and imagination of the market can bring down cost.

I still think we are side stepping the issue: can a marketplace approach to healthcare, the approach we have now, contain costs and provide for a healthier population? We have the highest cost and some of the worst results in the industrialized world. Our costs are unrestrained and the incentives for profit lie in excessive treatment and denial of coverage…not in quality care for a reasonable, affordable fee that doesn't put people into bankruptcy.
Germans pay 8% of their salary to highly regulated but private insurance companies for universal coverage. On a median income of around $50,000, that would be $4,000/year, or about 1/2 to 1/3 of what an individual family policy costs here in the US. You can be self-employed and don't need to join a club. And no pre-existing conditions to cull out those who actually need care.
Also, doctors make housecalls.
We are not Germans (although that is t

It is very difficult to get individual dental insurance. There are well designed group plans, but there is often a problem with their execution.

A typical dental plan pays 100% of the UCR (Usual Customary and Reasonable) fee on preventive services, 80% on restorative and 50% on major services. They are great for maintaining health, though catching up from prior neglect can be costly. Overall, dental insurance has been very good for dental health, making it much easier for people to afford preventive care.

All in all, dental insurance has been a good thing, but there are some things that get lost in the bureaucracy.

Failing to recognize the value of early treatment of malocclusion is one of them.

Certainly health insurance needs to be group based. Individual policies are expensive, as are small groups. But there is no reason, other than our tax code, that we can't choose between a number of groups we could belong to.

For example, a person might be able to choose between group plans offered by his employer, his trade organization, Alma Mater, his church, a civic organization, and a sports league. Any group large enough to spread the risk would do.

The only reason we are trapped in employer sponsored group plans is the tax advantage they have, being deductible to the employer, but not taxable to the employee. If the premium you paid to any group plan was with pre-tax money, like an IRA, then other groups could compete, and since the individual would choose which group to join, there would an incentive for the insurer to provide good service.

Doc Tabor, I find that the coverage of any dental insurance plan that I know of pays half or less for any procedure. Hardly a bargain unles you have serious dental problems which have limited coverage until you have paid into the policy for a couple years.

Are you proposing that our system would be better off with everyone picking their own insurance carrier, i.e. no groups plans? Because your previous commentary seem to point that direction. If so, that is a road paved with potholes. Imagine a system where the individual has to negoatiate prices; where the individual could be dropped at the first sign of major illness; where insurers could refuse to insure "bad risks" like those who have been cancelled; etc. Group programs are a necessity to keep costs down and guarantee coverage. Otherwise the industry will divide and conquer powerless individuals. Yes someone could go to another insurer but what if that insurer practices the industry norm-which is likely to be what is most advantageous for its wallet? Your solution seems to cause as many problems as it might solve.

The technical term for the refusal of your insurer to cover preventive care is 'stupidity.'

As a dentist, I see it every day. Patients with bite problems grind their teeth and as they reach middle age, invariably crack multiple teeth which then need crowns at $700+ each. The cost of a bite adjustment that would have prevented the 4 to 8 crowns needed later in those bruxers (grinders) would have been less than half the cost of a single crown, but insurers rarely cover the preventive adjustment.

Again, you would not tolerate such stupidity if you could freely choose your insurer free of market distortions due to our tax system.

I think that the idea that you have to join a company, club, league etc. to get reasonable health insurance is not the way to go. All residents in the US already are part of a 300 million member club.
As an individual business owner, I pay over $12,000 year for family health, with huge deductibles…and I am a pretty healthy. If my taxes went up by even $8,000/year, but I got a reasonable health insurance program that couldn't cut me off from claims or raise my rates if I actually used the policy, I would be way ahead.
Remember this: if you are currently employed, but have filed for some serious health related illness (heart, cancer, diabetes, etc.), then you get laid off or decide to go on your own, you will never get coverage for those disease as they are now "pre-existing conditions". Some fine system, don't you think? And wait until you get your first COBRA bill…it is a shocker.
Private enterprise ha

I recently had to make a trip overseas. It cost over $1200 for all the shots and immunizations. When I filed with Anthem BC&BS it was sent back as not covered. What are they telling me? Would it have been better for me to go and get all manner of diseases and come back and see if they could fix them? I am not sure, is this the same kind of thing the editorial is talking about?

Apathy defined:

"Someday, when I have sufficient time, I will take on that immoral company and others like it from a lobbyist position."

Today is the day. Carpe diem?

When I first left active duty in 1993, I soon had an incident with my four-year-old son suffering croup so badly that CHKD hospitalized him for 24 hours and said he would have died without medical attention. Like many moms with a child fighting for every breath, I put him in the car and drove to the nearest medical facility. Bayside Hospital. They stabilized him, then put him in an ambulance for the trip to CHKD. My civilian health insurance company, which my military auto insurance company had partnered with and recommended for people leaving the military, decided from Milwaukee, Wisconsin that my son had not been critically ill enough to be taken to the nearest facility and denied all coverage for the Bayside visit. Oddly, they covered an ambulance ride . . .
Someday, when I have sufficient time, I will take on that immoral company and others like it from a lobbyist position. Cheers, MGM

Because of the insurmountable tax advantage of employer group plans over voluntary group plans, nearly everyone has their insurance chosen by their employer, but makes their own choices about how to use it. This distorts the market forces that ensure good service while limiting fraud.

Think about it, would you put up with this sort of thing from your auto insurer? Of course not, you would simply change insurers at next renewal. But you have no choice on your health insurance, so they need not please you, only your employer, who looks for the lowest cost without service so bad you will change jobs to escape it.

The answer is to make changes in state and Federal law to allow voluntary groups, like churches, civic or trade associations, bowling leagues, neighborhoods, or whatever, to have the same tax treatment as employer plans. With each of us members of multiple groups whose plans we could f