Healthy people driving insurance rates up?
Okay, so insurance companies are claiming that healthy people who don't buy insurance are driving up the insurance costs, because they are mostly servicing sick people.
Now as a sick person, I'd love to have everything cheaper. The cost of just my medicine every month is often more than I can afford. It's completely out of control in every aspect.
But do I blame a healthy person who doesn't need medicine or expensive insurance? No, of course not. I find that imbecillic.
I get where they are coming from in a sense. As a business concerned entirely by the bottom line and not about people - and I think they've shown us this attitude time and again - they do have to pay more out when more of their customer are getting sick and have significant medical costs. However, what insurance companies charge is far more than most people will ever use - especially people with private insurance.
A typical healthy person (or their employer) pays $500-$1000 per month for their health insurance. This is for people who aren't chronically ill - who go to their checkups or occassionally see the doctor for an ear infection or such. So how much is the insurance company REALLY shelling out for them? I'm willing to bet it's not half of what they're paying per year.
For a sick person, you can almost forget it. You're easily going to pay over a thousand dollars a month IF you can even find an insurance willing to take you. The monthly rates are unbelievable. So, yeah, they're going to be paying doctors' fees, medicine fees, and possibly specialist or hospital fees. I'm still willing to bet as an individual you're still usually paying more than you use.
Someone who's healthy should not feel like they have to put thousands of dollars into an insurance plan they're only get a few hundred dollars worth of care back out of. It's a waste of money. And it's not their fault that insurance companies are greedy and that outside factors keep driving the price of everything up. They shouldn't have to take the blame. Insurance companies should be satisfied with the profit that they're making instead of falsely crying poor.
I don't know why that statement made me so angry when I heard it. Maybe I just don't like the insurance system. Forcing people to pay for "in case" scenarios, getting upset and tight-fisted when the "in case" scenario becomes reality, driving prices impossibly high, which then forces a need for their services.
Mostly I just hate that people can find a way to pass blame for anything at all. Insurance companies share a good bit of responsibility for the cost of health care right now. Healthy people just don't. They don't need the service, they don't pay for it. Simple as that. Trying to pass the blame onto them for not buying a useless service is like a parent who shakes a baby to death, then tries to blame the baby for crying.
And it makes me angry.
/rant
Now as a sick person, I'd love to have everything cheaper. The cost of just my medicine every month is often more than I can afford. It's completely out of control in every aspect.
But do I blame a healthy person who doesn't need medicine or expensive insurance? No, of course not. I find that imbecillic.
I get where they are coming from in a sense. As a business concerned entirely by the bottom line and not about people - and I think they've shown us this attitude time and again - they do have to pay more out when more of their customer are getting sick and have significant medical costs. However, what insurance companies charge is far more than most people will ever use - especially people with private insurance.
A typical healthy person (or their employer) pays $500-$1000 per month for their health insurance. This is for people who aren't chronically ill - who go to their checkups or occassionally see the doctor for an ear infection or such. So how much is the insurance company REALLY shelling out for them? I'm willing to bet it's not half of what they're paying per year.
For a sick person, you can almost forget it. You're easily going to pay over a thousand dollars a month IF you can even find an insurance willing to take you. The monthly rates are unbelievable. So, yeah, they're going to be paying doctors' fees, medicine fees, and possibly specialist or hospital fees. I'm still willing to bet as an individual you're still usually paying more than you use.
Someone who's healthy should not feel like they have to put thousands of dollars into an insurance plan they're only get a few hundred dollars worth of care back out of. It's a waste of money. And it's not their fault that insurance companies are greedy and that outside factors keep driving the price of everything up. They shouldn't have to take the blame. Insurance companies should be satisfied with the profit that they're making instead of falsely crying poor.
I don't know why that statement made me so angry when I heard it. Maybe I just don't like the insurance system. Forcing people to pay for "in case" scenarios, getting upset and tight-fisted when the "in case" scenario becomes reality, driving prices impossibly high, which then forces a need for their services.
Mostly I just hate that people can find a way to pass blame for anything at all. Insurance companies share a good bit of responsibility for the cost of health care right now. Healthy people just don't. They don't need the service, they don't pay for it. Simple as that. Trying to pass the blame onto them for not buying a useless service is like a parent who shakes a baby to death, then tries to blame the baby for crying.
And it makes me angry.
/rant