-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Wed, Oct 18, 2000 at 10:23:25PM -0700, Marshall Clow wrote:
At 10:07 PM -0700 10/18/00, Nathan Saper wrote:
On Wed, Oct 18, 2000 at 10:01:20PM -0700, Marshall Clow wrote:
At 9:27 PM -0700 10/18/00, Nathan Saper wrote:
On Wed, Oct 18, 2000 at 06:57:24PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
At 5:48 PM -0700 10/18/00, Nathan Saper wrote: In any case, whether Alice sells insurance to Bob is not a matter for the state to interfere with.
You, Nathan, may set up your own insurance company if you wish. Or you may offer to pay for the health care of those you think are not getting a fair deal.
But you may NOT tell me I must sell insurance if I choose not to.
Most insurance companies are worth millions, if not billions, of dollars, and they make huge profits. Insuring all of the people that they now deny based on genetic abnormalities would still allow them to make decent profits.
So? What authority gets to decide what "decent" profits are? Businesses _should_ always seek to maximize their profits in the long term.
My point is, it wouldn't be death for the business if they were forced to insure people with genetic abnormalities.
You'd have to do more than blindly assert that before I would agree.
Even if I was willing to concede that point, you still have skated around the "Who gets set up as arbiter of 'decent' profits" question.
Maybe "decent profits" was bad word choice. Perhaps I should have said "insuring people with genetic abnormalities would not drastically effect the insurance company's bottom line." "Drastically" is, of course, qualitative, but I think it's fairly obvious whether or not a certain action is doing a terrible amount of damage to a company's profits.
And many people are denied coverage outright, therefore removing the possibility of simply paying for their coverage.
What is preventing them from simply paying for their treatment?
Coverage is often cheaper than treatment.
So these people are entitled to something for nothing? (or in this case, $1500 of treatment for $1000 of premiums)?
That's the whole idea of insurance, isn't it?
Why?
- -- Nathan Saper (natedog@well.com) | http://www.well.com/user/natedog/ GnuPG (ElGamal/DSA): 0x9AD0F382 | PGP 2.x (RSA): 0x386C4B91 Standard PGP & PGP/MIME OK | AOL Instant Messenger: linuxfu -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE57oqu2FWyBZrQ84IRAik/AKCVu2z0tYgOQB4Ag2SLVEMPd5aUMQCgtZy1 KVWniyItZBLzJg8WxM3WycE= =QBM+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----