What would happen if the health insurance economy collapsed

[Playball40]

I keep hearing from the right that if this or that doesn't happen..blah blah that the health insurance industry will collapse. Given I think we need a health care industry not a health insurance one, I really don't care. But of course I'm being knee jerk to some degree.

What would happen to our overall economy if the health insurance economy/industry collapsed abruptly? Would it ultimately spread through the whole economy and hurt the GDP? Would our system be able to replace it with health care rapidly enough to not cause a major economic disruption?

And if so, what is the best way to wean our country off one and into another? What exactly would need to happen to make that happen?

 

[dismal]

Obamacare collapsing - presumably due to adverse selection death spiral - not equal "health insurance economy" collapsing.

 

[untermensche]

Keeping these health insurance corporation dinosaurs alive is like keeping the horse shoeing industry alive after the advent of the automobile.

Health insurance is something that should be removed from profit seeking organizations.

That is how you reduce costs and control costs.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Um, they throw buckets of money at the insurers?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Collapse of the health insurance system? For starters, double the fatality rate from cancer. (Overall, cancer has about a 50% mortality rate. This would be close to 100% of we had no health insurance as few people could afford to fight it out of their own pocket.)

 

[SimpleDon]

I don't think that the health care insurance companies are at risk of collapse. They never before ObamaCare had a large number of private, at risk, individual health care policies. Their main business was to administer the self-insurance of businesses who employ more than 50 people. ObamaCare put them into the single person at risk policy business by offering them federal subsidies.

ObamaCare can't survive long with the Republicans in power, no matter what happened today with the TrumpCare fiasco. They can subject ObamaCare to a death of a thousand cuts. They dealt ObamaCare a serious blow by burying a single sentence in an otherwise unrelated bill when they weren't in power that killed the risk channel of ObamaCare, the reason that the premiums jumped and insurers dropped out of some of the exchanges in 2016, before the election.

 

[SimpleDon]

Hopefully Trump has now learned that he can't work with the Tea Party. There is no way that the Tea Party will sign on to the rest of Trump's agenda. The Tea Party are deficit hawks. They will not sign on for a 20 billion dollar wall, for a trillion dollar infrastructure bill, for a 4 trillion dollar tax cut for the rich, a 56 billion dollar increase in defense, etc.

As Paul Ryan said today, it is very different business when you are in charge of the government then when you are only opposing the other party when they are in charge of the government.

And I think that Trump has now discovered that not only is health care more complicated than he thought, that the job of being president is a lot more complicated than he thought.

 

[Bronzeage]

If the health insurance industry collapsed, it would be caused by over extension and lack of capital reserves. The most likely scenario is a government bailout and a restructuring, similar to the Wall Street bail out.

An more sensible solution, but unlikely, would be a conversion of healthcare into a public utility, where competition would be limited and rates would be regulated.

 

[SimpleDon]

I don't think that what happened today is going to teach anybody anything. Conservatives have talked themselves so far out of touch with reality over the last eight years that I see little hope that they can reconnect with it now.

The Democrats had a little victory today but they will ultimately see ObamaCare sink out of sight because Trump will do everything to sink it. Trump won't defend ObamaCare in the many lawsuits winding their way through the courts.

But the biggest loser is Trump himself. He may not yet even understand it yet, but today marked the effective end of his presidency.

It is now obvious to everyone in Washington that he is in over his head. He is incompetent. He did everything completely wrong. He backed a loser bill that made no one happy. Doctors were against it. Hospitals were against it. The insurance companies were against it. The AARP was against it. He had no visible understanding of what was in the bill. His attention span was what, three weeks on health care. The ACA took Obama about eighteen months.

 

[SimpleDon]

If the health insurance industry collapsed, it would be caused by over extension and lack of capital reserves. The most likely scenario is a government bailout and a restructuring, similar to the Wall Street bail out.

An more sensible solution, but unlikely, would be a conversion of healthcare into a public utility, where competition would be limited and rates would be regulated.

Agreed. But I don't think that the health care insurance companies will risk their companies in the way that Wall Street hung themselves out, in 2000 to 2007. Wall Street knew that they were selling junk. But they got caught in their own rhetoric and sell's pitches, that they ended up buying a substantial amount of their own junk. I think that the insurance companies are a breed apart from Wall Street. They make their livings by accessing risk. At least I hope that they are.

The intrinsic truth about health care is that it will never lend itself to the market. It never has in any country in the world. There is considerable amount of evidence that the opposite is true, that the countries with the greatest amount of for profit in the health care industry are the countries with the highest health care costs.

The driving force behind any Republican health care bill will be to loose the free market on it. The power of decades of supporting a fantasy. I don't know where we can go from here.

 

[Underseer]

Obamacare collapsing - presumably due to adverse selection death spiral - not equal "health insurance economy" collapsing.

Yes, the problem is that insurance companies can no longer deny coverage to sick people. We have to bring back the "pre-existing condition" thing and bring back lifetime caps or else the insurance industry will collapse!

Sorry, but your excuses just make it clear what a failure for-profit health care is.

Every other industrialized nations is able to provide health care (yes, even to sick people) without while industries collapsing. Heck, even some pretty poor countries are able to do what is -- by your own admission -- impossible under the American style for-profit health system.

Or system doesn't produce health. It produces bankruptcy, death, and more profits for certain corporations.

If you think the American people have too much money and live too long, why not just give all your money away and kill yourself? Why are you so obsessed with harming others as well?

 

[TV and credit cards]

Perhaps like people living in a floodplain, the government will be the insurer of last resort.

 

[whichphilosophy]

Keeping these health insurance corporation dinosaurs alive is like keeping the horse shoeing industry alive after the advent of the automobile.

Health insurance is something that should be removed from profit seeking organizations.

That is how you reduce costs and control costs.

At best there is a conflict of interest in the pharma industry between providing cost effective medicines and making huge profits.

 

[Underseer]

Obamacare collapsing - presumably due to adverse selection death spiral - not equal "health insurance economy" collapsing.

Yes, the problem is that insurance companies can no longer deny coverage to sick people. We have to bring back the "pre-existing condition" thing and bring back lifetime caps or else the insurance industry will collapse!

Sorry, but your excuses just make it clear what a failure for-profit health care is.

Every other industrialized nations is able to provide health care (yes, even to sick people) without whole industries collapsing. Heck, even some pretty poor countries are able to do what is [ent]mdash[/ent] by your own admission [ent]mdash[/ent] impossible under the American style for-profit health system.

Our system doesn't produce health. It produces bankruptcy, death, and more profits for certain corporations.

If you think the American people have too much money and live too long, why not just give all your money away and kill yourself? Why are you so obsessed with harming others as well?

Bah. Sorry for the typos. Corrections offered.

 

[Elixir]

Keeping these health insurance corporation dinosaurs alive is like keeping the horse shoeing industry alive after the advent of the automobile.

Health insurance is something that should be removed from profit seeking organizations.

That is how you reduce costs and control costs.

At best there is a conflict of interest in the pharma industry between providing cost effective medicines and making huge profits.

Yup. It looks like both Republicans and Democrats are making every effort to turn a blind eye to the 800lb gorilla in the room: exhorbitant costs that are out of line with what other countries are charged. Only Sanders (that I'm aware of) has spoken of the need for a single payer entity to negotiate with Big Pharma for pricing that is commensurate with what other countries pay for drugs, DME etc. Without addressing the cost side of the equation, all the fancy rearranging of subsidies and tax credits can only effect the impact on certain people, and hang the bill on the rest - the net total cost goes up, regardless of who pays while they play that shell game.

 

[whichphilosophy]

At best there is a conflict of interest in the pharma industry between providing cost effective medicines and making huge profits.

Yup. It looks like both Republicans and Democrats are making every effort to turn a blind eye to the 800lb gorilla in the room: exhorbitant costs that are out of line with what other countries are charged. Only Sanders (that I'm aware of) has spoken of the need for a single payer entity to negotiate with Big Pharma for pricing that is commensurate with what other countries pay for drugs, DME etc. Without addressing the cost side of the equation, all the fancy rearranging of subsidies and tax credits can only effect the impact on certain people, and hang the bill on the rest - the net total cost goes up, regardless of who pays while they play that shell game.

Regardless of who or what is at the helm what you say is right. Can you see anyone going to Cuba which despite being a poor country managed to achieve universal healthcare.

In the West we are moving towards preventative measures such as healthier life styles but some of these regimes are extremely costly.

 

[Elixir]

Yup. It looks like both Republicans and Democrats are making every effort to turn a blind eye to the 800lb gorilla in the room: exhorbitant costs that are out of line with what other countries are charged. Only Sanders (that I'm aware of) has spoken of the need for a single payer entity to negotiate with Big Pharma for pricing that is commensurate with what other countries pay for drugs, DME etc. Without addressing the cost side of the equation, all the fancy rearranging of subsidies and tax credits can only effect the impact on certain people, and hang the bill on the rest - the net total cost goes up, regardless of who pays while they play that shell game.

Regardless of who or what is at the helm what you say is right. Can you see anyone going to Cuba which despite being a poor country managed to achieve universal healthcare.

In the West we are moving towards preventative measures such as healthier life styles but some of these regimes are extremely costly.

The old cliche "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" definitely applies.
As far as going to Cuba for care, yes - I can see that happening. I've actually been considering going to Mexico for dental work. Stateside, what I have in mind might cost >$50,000, vs less than $30,000 in Mexico. That leaves a pretty good nut to spend on an extended Mexican vacation...

 

[Derec]

They dealt ObamaCare a serious blow by burying a single sentence in an otherwise unrelated bill when they weren't in power that killed the risk channel of ObamaCare, the reason that the premiums jumped and insurers dropped out of some of the exchanges in 2016, before the election.

And why were the Dems asleep at the switch when that happened?

 

[Derec]

That leaves a pretty good nut to spend on an extended Mexican vacation...

Yup. $20k will buy a lot of tequila and hookers.

 

[Bronzeage]

If the health insurance industry collapsed, it would be caused by over extension and lack of capital reserves. The most likely scenario is a government bailout and a restructuring, similar to the Wall Street bail out.

An more sensible solution, but unlikely, would be a conversion of healthcare into a public utility, where competition would be limited and rates would be regulated.

Agreed. But I don't think that the health care insurance companies will risk their companies in the way that Wall Street hung themselves out, in 2000 to 2007. Wall Street knew that they were selling junk. But they got caught in their own rhetoric and sell's pitches, that they ended up buying a substantial amount of their own junk. I think that the insurance companies are a breed apart from Wall Street. They make their livings by accessing risk. At least I hope that they are.

The intrinsic truth about health care is that it will never lend itself to the market. It never has in any country in the world. There is considerable amount of evidence that the opposite is true, that the countries with the greatest amount of for profit in the health care industry are the countries with the highest health care costs.

The driving force behind any Republican health care bill will be to loose the free market on it. The power of decades of supporting a fantasy. I don't know where we can go from here.

The business model of health insurance is predicated on the premise that a person is entitled to all the health care they can afford. Health insurance simply expands this group of people, and it is a profitable model. The group contributes to the pot and takes out, as needed.

The problem arises when the premise shifts to, "all people are entitled to healthcare." A lot of people can't afford to contribute, but still need to take out. This really cuts into profits.

The GOP ideology of the free market health insurance, simply won't work, unless it restricts itself to those who can afford minimal payments. There is no way to "cover everybody" in the free market, because the profit margin drops to the point where some other opportunity will attract the capital.

If health insurance remains a private business and we have universal coverage, the only business model which works is the public utility. This means a government sanctioned and regulated monopoly, where service standards are set by law, a certain percent return on investment is allowed and efficiency is rewarded. Those who can't pay receive subsidies for their premiums. This is basically the Obamacare model, without the monopoly.