Insurance is a bet. It’s like Atlantic City or Las Vegas or Monte Carlo. Everyone has always known that — until today — when suddenly everyone has completely forgotten this most basic truth.
After your house burns down, you can’t get fire insurance for that house. The pile of cinders is considered a pre-existing condition that makes the insurace bet impossible or irrational for anyone to engage in. You can see that, right?
After you cause a 20 car pile-up on the freeway, you can’t get driver’s liability coverage for negligence. I wonder why not? Could it be that the huge pile of dead bodies and totalled cars is a "pre-existing condition" that would make it completely crazy for any auto liability insurance firm to offer you coverage that would compensate the victims of that accident which you have already caused and is in the newspapers.
So, now you arrive at the insurance company with a glioma in your brain and pancreatic cancer and you want to know, "Could I please have some health insurance?
They say no "You already have two pre-existing conditions that are mortal illnesses — to insure you would be suicide for our insurance company!"
You say, Oh how unfair, I’m shocked — shocked that rational decisions are being made in this office — I’m going to write my Congressman — and you do — and his innumerate, aphasic, illiterate staffer opens you letter and says "Oh yes, look at the big unfairness that’s been done to out poor dear darling constituent"
The staffer then takes an inflated pig’s badder into the Congressman’s office and strikes the Congressman on the lips with it, indicating that it’s time for the Congressman to speak.
Then the one minutes speech is given — Here’s the Congressman blathering on with high moral indignation about his dear constituent who didn’t get everything in this world they imagined they were entitled to.
E Pluribus Unum — we’ve all become the same idiot now. Sew us all together like parts of a flag, one big idiot — coast to coast — sea to shining sea.
I have a heart condition — which could result in a myocardial infarction, aka a heart attack (especially if people get me started, so don’t). When I applied for my Blue Cross/Blue Shield they told me heart attacks or any heart disease of any kind or any treatment or diagnostic procedures for any heart related problems would be completely and totally excluded from my coverage for one year. After that, at the discretion of the insuror, if I had no heart problems during my probationary year, they would withdraw the exclusion provided I was willing to pay a small extra on my premium for the unrestricted coverage.
I said, "Fine, that seems totally fair."
Am I the only one who can see this? What was it just those four years of math in college, plus two more in business school that made me able to understand the idea of risk, and bets, and insurance?
No insuror in their right mind would voluntarily insure somebody would is going to bring the insuror a net loss for sure. Sometimes they will aloow such a person to be included in group insurance, if the premium for the group is big enough, and if the payouts for the sick person are small, predictable, and controllable. But that’s group insurance. Obama Care is about individuals getting health insurance, many of whom will not arrive in groups, they will show up as individuals.
If they have pre-existing conditions, like I did, they should get a deal like mine, no better, no worse. Why do the specially pampered eyes on the prize people have to be carried through this world on extra soft pillows — free housing, free food, free clothing, free heat, free edcuation, free everything — and now the right to freely grab insurance that no regular person could claim a right to. Let them wait, like I did. You want Fraternity? How about some Equality? That means you don’t get special pillows to carry you through life, even if brother Barack wants you to have them, and ACORN screams they are your God-given right.
There is a large problem with that. Insurance policies are setup so that everyone gets a new one policy every dozen years or so. The price goes up every year as they encourage people to get new policies. If you have a life long preexisting condition that develops at 20 then you won’t have insurance by 32.
Then you are dead within a few years if you need regular treatment. It is not fair.
I have a life long heart condition. Your deal won’t work because I will never be without trouble. I had no choice but to drop my insurance that I had 4 year before my condition developed. It simply got too expensive after 13 years of paying it. I can’t get any private insurance policy now.
The problem isn’t the condition, or someone’s laziness. The problem is that insurance companies have arranged a guaranteed way to drop people with problems after a fixed number of years. If there wasn’t a time limit on private insurance, there wouldn’t be a large problem with preexisting conditions.