| Torillian said:
But insurance isn't for when life is going peachy and you just need to get contacts, it's for when shit hits the fan and you couldn't possibly afford the care that's necessary to live a comfortable life. Believe me, if you ever get diagnosed with anything like that you'll be glad that insurance companies aren't totally up to the free market or they'd drop you like a bad habbit the second they could. And for that system to work those that are healthy have to pay in as well as those of us that are less so. |
If insurance companies started dropping people in a free-market nobody would buy their insurance, because they would be paying for nothing. There is no trust in that relationship, and in all transactions there needs to be trust (in a free-market) to cement whether or not you wish to subscribe to a service. But in a free-market, costs would be so low you wouldn't even need "insurance" companies, anyway. It's interesting that you mentioned contacts, though. Eyecare is the freest market in the health-care industry and it has the least influence by insurance companies. Because of high competition in the eyecare industry we see treatments like lasik surgery decrease by about 50% (in cost) within 3-5 years. We see eye doctors charging within a penny of walmart for glasses and contacts and they wouldn't dare charge anymore, because they take prices and don't make them. It is only in highly regulated markets that the costs go up so high and it is only then that the need for insurance arises. Afterwards it is just a cycle. Because the insurance company is a third-party they have no incentive to negotiate with the doctor/hospital on prices, and consequently the doctor/hospital inflate prices as high as they can. This is not the behavior of a competitive market. In a competive market all of these parties would be price-takers not price-makers. And how do these doctors, insurance companies, etc, etc get this non-competitive market? Through regulation. That is why free-markets are most certainly the answer to the health-care problem. That is also why many health-insurance companies and hospitals lobbied for the Affordable Care Act (the uproar against it was by businesses not in these industries.)
Anyway, it isn't a concern to me. Eventually the market equilibrium will be met. Whether it happens when the government collapses on itself after it can't keep up with its finances, when the democratic process relinquishes its grip on the spontaneously organized free-market, or through counter-economics is the question to be asked.
