Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Ya-ta Boy]

"The White House Forum on Health Reform brought together more than 100 participants, including advocates for physicians, patients, business and insurance companies. Iowa Sens. Charles Grassley and Tom Harkin also came. Attendees split into five groups to hash out two main ideas: holding down costs and expanding coverage. The sessions were carried on the White House Web site. Additional meetings, including one planned in Iowa, will be held around the country in upcoming weeks."

[Ya-ta Boy]

One of the ideas floating around is to have an optional Government Health Insurance Program that would compete with the private health plans. I like this idea so far. Details aren't known yet, but it starts in the right direction for my preferences.

As it is now, it's the insurance companies that decide what treatments doctors can administer. About the only freedom a patient has is when they choose insurance company A or B. Since insurance is a rather socialistic concept in the first place, I reject the fear tactics that were used before to squelch reforms on the basis of socialized medicine.

I also like the idea of developing some way for a person to sign up for whatever kind of insurance they want and then 'carry' that policy to whatever jobs they go to in the course of their life. It would take some negotiations to work out how much different employers would contribute, if anything. Ideally, health insurance would become a national thing rather than an employer thing, but that needs to be worked out.

I hope someone works out a solution to the cost of medicine. That's one of the biggest problems in the whole area of health care.

[mises]

[ontheway]

Insurance is NOT a socialistic idea at all. But, to understand that, you have to first understand what insurance IS:

Insurance is really a private club, very exclusive, that admits like members to a group in a kind of reverse gambling association to "insure" against large risks. It was never intended to be what the socialists in government have made it into.

Take fire insurance as it's simpler to understand. A group of homeowners with similar type houses in construction, age and other significant factors set up a pool of funds to insure against loss in case of fire. Professional mathematicians called Actuaries set up a plan based on experience to share the risk where each participant pays a fee equal to the percentage chance of an occurance (plus operational costs).


Example: if 1 house in 20,000 will burn down, and if some other houses in 20,000 will experience some other partial fire loss equal to 3 houses in total, then each participant will pay 1/5,000 of the value of his house per year (plus costs).

[ontheway]

So, insurance was born as a way to pool risks.


Health insurance is much more complicated as there are so many possible accidents and illnesses to be included and covered. However, the actuaries can create reasonable pools that cover major events if they are allowed to build homogeneous groups and define coverages. They can arrange to make policies available, far cheaper than today AND portable if the government stays out of the equation.


But, the socialists DID step in. They required coverage for those who were not fit to be in a pool. They required payments for extra coverages. They required payment for small items where the paperwork cost exceeds the covered item. They made the cost in insurance rise more than 10 fold.

Worse for most of us, the Income Tax ended portability.

All of our systemic social problems are created by socialism, and often it's one program that creates a mess for the next. The socialists compound the direct pain of their evil with indirect pain.

To restore full portability of health insurance, we would have to repeal the income tax.


You see, health insurance is a deductible expense for tax purposes. As the income tax (federal, state and local) rose from the oringinal 3% on the rich to 30% and more on almost all working families, people pushed for non taxable income from their employers.

So, rather than buy portable "whole-life health" insurance plans with after tax dollars, (just as we buy "whole life" insurance plans that are paid with after tax dollars), individuals demanded and businesses offered insurance as a corporate benefit. It was tax deductible to the business and tax free to the worker. The business was able to provide a benefit that was worth more to the worker than it cost.

This meant, however, that individuals would lose their insurance when changing jobs or unemployed. This social cost would have never come into existence without the income tax.


In a free market, it is quite easy and reasonable to have "whole-life health" insurance that would begin at the birth of a child and last a lifetime. Individuals would opt for savings options and choose larger individual visit deductibles and forego coverage for required routine expenses that every insured must actually undergo and are not actually insurable incidents.

To cure the health insurance crisis, we must repeal the income tax and the laws regulating insurance companies. This will allow the creation of cheap "whole-life health insurance" that will have greater coverage than today for major illnesses and accidents, be non-cancellable, portable, and will be controlled by the needs of individual consumers and not socialist governments.

[Pluto]

So who wasn't invited to the The White House Forum on Health Reform?
1.No one from the American Enterprise Institute (ranked the #5 think tank in the world for health policy)
2. No one from the Cato Institute (ranked #7)
3. No one from the National Center for Policy Analysis (ranked #10)
4. No one from the Manhattan Institute
5. No one from the Pacific Research Institute
6. No one from the Galen Institute
7. No one from the Heritage Foundation

I thought Obama campaigned on a new era of post partisanship and inclusiveness? Seems he's only invited ideologues and yes-men. Oh well, the more things change...

The aforementioned rankings are according to Foreign Policy Magazine. OTW, I thought you would be a regular reader of Cato. I'm surprised you missed this post.

[Kuros]

[Gopher]

[Kuros]

[Pluto]

[mises]

It is the state and regulation that has made HC so expensive. 16% of GDP isno joke. Cato et al do have good ideas to bring to the table.

Does anybody know how the ROK's system works? I remember when I got my first of many colds in Seoul I went to the dr. and had a 3,000won co-pay. But one of my students at a uni said that her grandma (who was ill) wanted to die to release the family from the fiscal burden of caring for her. Those two things always seemed contradictory to me. Or was my employee provided health care really good?

[Kuros]

[Pluto]

[Kuros]

[Ya-ta Boy]