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Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz
Yes, absolutely you did. You're a lifeguard, that's your job/purpose.
So the question is, what is the role of a health insurance provider?
I think most people would answer that their role is to provide people with healthcare when they need it, which means when they deny life saving care, they are/should be culpable for that death.
Unfortunately, the system in the US is so messed up, the role of a health insurance provider is absolutely NOT to provide people with healthcare, it's a money making venture with the purpose of making money for their shareholders. It's actual purpose is 100% at odds with what it's purpose SHOULD be.
If any other kind of company made decisions that prioritized profit over peoples health/well being, the way health insurance providers do, their executives would be in jail. But that one industry gets a pass because they are only indirectly responsible for those people dying.
Health Insurance providers in the US should be looked at the same way cigarette companies are. They are both companies that take people's money knowing full well that the decisions made a that company will cause a lot of harm to a lot of people.
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This is the issue with all insurance. The expectation is that you pay money upfront for the potential use of services when needed. They will make more money if they deny the claim, regardless if it is health, life, auto, home,...
In a true market place people would not use a company that denies too many claims and they would lose business or go under if they didn't adapt. For some reason this doesn't seem to be the case with health insurance.
If you look at private versus public health care the issues are similar in that there is so much money allocated and someone is making a decision on who gets what and when, if at all.
So I don't know if the problem is so much which system, but more likely the escalating costs for health care. Procedures have gotten more complex, more "cures" found for illnesses that didn't have cures before.
Perhaps the answer lies in differentiating between standard health care and the extreme. If you have standard health issues you can go private, but the public takes over when you go outside those boundaries. This is backwards from the Canadian system, where we have public for standard health care and private for things outside standard.
In short I believe that the issue is increasing costs and that the solution is not likely to be all one way or the other, but more of a hybrid.