Also just because you have a pre-existing condition doesn't mean you will need it for that condition. You can easily die from an unrelated condition before it happens.

My mother had osteoporosis and couldn't get covered for broke bones. She went 20 years before she had one and that was when she was already on Medicare so she was covered.

I think I'd try to put out the fire, yeah...

No, I would not insure a house that is on fire, nor would I ensure pre-existing conditions.

Thus, as a decent human being, I am a proponent of single-payer so that insurance companies are not tasked with choosing who lives and dies under their own business ethics.

Putting out the fire is not the same as paying for the house after the fire is doused.
So, these people still have access to healthcare. They'd just have to pay out of pocket for care related to their pre-ex condition.

Thanks, phone. Insure, not ensure.

This analogy is really just a great argument for single-payer healthcare.

If you lived in a world where the fire department was funded by fire insurance and they'd only put out fires if you had fire insurance, we'd probably all rightly say it would nonetheless be cruel to just let people's houses burn down. But it would be really hard to stop this from happening if, for some crazy reason, we'd decided the way we should put out fires is always through insurance claims. We'd need to regulate and mandate and subsidize insurance, and come up with all sorts of rules and policies to deal with the cruelty of so many houses burning down - or we'd just accept the cruelty that some fires that could be avoided wouldn't be. It all sounds awful to me.

So maybe an easier way would be, instead of paying for insurance and making a claim whenever your house caught fire, you instead just paid taxes for fire department services to the fire department. And then if you had a fire, the fire department would come and provide the services your taxes paid for. That sounds like a much better system. It's how the fire department works where I live.

ofc single-payer is great but we're not there yet. But in this world, if you are covered and then you find out that you have a condition but decide to let your insurance lapse anyway, isn't it really on YOU at that point?

For example, Cobra gives you 18 months to stay covered until you find another job. It's one thing if your cobra runs out, but if you opt NOT to buy cobra you can't really complain about being screwed on a pre-existing condition.

What argument are you trying to make here, exactly? That sometimes people aren't forward-looking enough? I don't really see why anyone would be interested in debating that point. Sure, they aren't, and that can have massive public health consequences for everyone. Another good reason for single-payer. And if you can't get single-payer, support the closest thing your fellow countrymen will agree to.

The only drawback to single-opened, I'm, is that it could potentially unleash a huge, almost limitless cost burden onto the taxpayer, given the current state of the medical and pharmaceutical industries in our nation. Until I can be convinced it won't bankrupt our nation (or on the reverse side, bankrupt our pharma industries and disincentivize people from becoming doctors) then I would be hesitant. Anything that has the government setting the market I'm wary about. As it is, Medicare causes huge problems in the industry.

*drawback, imo

would be a fraction of the cost burden placed on us by the military industrial complex

Speaking as an insurer, it depends on what you are insuring them for...

y2k - That's completely irrelevant, and also false. The United States already spends more than 17% of GDP on healthcare. Total military spending is what, 4%?

If that figure is correct, gold, and I'm sure you've done your research, then it looks to me as if healthcare is already bankrupting us. $10,000 per year per person? That's outrageous.

This site has it 9k/yr per person in America:
http://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0006_health-care-oecd

https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nationalhealthaccountshistorical.html

I just looked up World Bank figures. That's on healthcare as a total - including Medicare, private health insurance, drug manufacturing, equipment manufacturing, etc. So the figure might be slightly overstated than what actual Americans pay out (because idk how exports are figured in) but it's not too far off. $10k is what, a hip surgery nowadays?

So, my fear is the impact on the US budget if a good chunk of the rest of that $3.2 trillion (minus all the programs the gov already has) is lopped onto the taxpayer.

It is already lopped onto the taxpayer, only disproportionately. Bringing the prices down for healthcare and medication (things insurance+pharma will never, EVER do) would lighten that burden fairly drastically - hence why other countries in Hauta's link pay so much less, even for better healthcare than we have here.

Yeah, except you have pharma companies now giving countries ultimatums to raise the prices of drugs, or else they'll stop selling the drugs there. The insurers aren't the principal drivers of cost here - there's so much more

@ Bo sox
Thus, as a decent human being, I am a proponent of single-payer so that insurance companies are not tasked with choosing who lives and dies under their own business ethics.

So we leave that up to the government? Do you trust the government to decide if you live or die? What if they have no money? What if they decide you are a burden and need to die?

@ Bo sox it looks to me as if healthcare is already bankrupting us. $10,000 per year per person? That's outrageous.

It is bankrupting us now as are the outrageous public employee pensions as well.

I feel like I'm being bankrupted by outsized corporate profits arising from lack of competition and excessive patent protection.

No, it's really neither of those, Hauta.

For example, I just read an article
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mylan-price-hikes-20160830-snap-story.html

Generic drug. Many competitors. Prices still skyrocketed. It's a larger problem than no market competition, it's an outright market failure.

A possible solution, I think, would be to cap US prices for drugs at a certain percentage - say, 25%, above the PPP price it is, on average, around the world

Bismarck, while Chancellor of Germany, got Legislation passed for nationwide health insurance. After the civility of the 19th Century, Germans faced WWI reparations, hyperinflation & the worldwide Great Depression.
The United Kingdom, with Clement Attlee as prime minister, surveyed their bombed-out hospitals after WWII, and put in National Health Service. You may omit looking up the rise and fall of the Pound Sterling, it is too sensational.
Suffice it to say, the USA stands alone among developed nations in not insuring citizens' (and resident aliens?) health. Is this due to a collapsed economy, inflation, stagflation, deflation of an NFL football, or the collapse and comeback of the US$ ?
If we were all Rockefeller family members, we'd get treatment/advice/prosthetics &c., and have enough left over to implement & improve Rockefeller University's biomedical research facilities & staff ... But PHILANTHROPY is surely lacking in some Congresspersons' ideological viewpoints - they do not love their fellow man, generically & in a good sense. And YET, the US Congress gets the benefits of those on Medicare plus much more. And they have emoluments as it were in the form of paid political donations for re-election. No wonder then, that Town Hall meetings with congressmen hear shout-outs about Germany's 19th C. health guarantees, the US Congress has something like the approval rating of a slightly shady used car salesman, & Attlee - Order of Merit, Companion of Honor, and an hereditary peerage - an earldom. QED ?

@Brad …

“So we leave that up to the government? Do you trust the government to decide if you live or die? What if they have no money? What if they decide you are a burden and need to die?”

a) Yes. The government should have more authority over issues of governance than insurance. At the very least, the government has to act like they’re for the people sometimes.

b) Not in the slightest, but more than I do insurance companies.

c) They haven’t had any money since World War II. As far as I am aware, the country is still alive. Might as well go balls to the wall, if $20 trillion isn’t balls to the wall enough.

d) Then I go all Bundy clan on them. Why are you asking such stupid questions?

“It is bankrupting us now as are the outrageous public employee pensions as well.”

I don’t disagree with you. It is too bad that government employees aren’t content working for no benefits and terrible pay for their entire lives, while constantly wondering if the next President is going to cut their job.

$10,000 per person per year isn't outrageous given the average high cost of health care. That sounds like a lot to a healthy person, but it's pretty small compared to the young cancer patient that racks up hundreds of thousands of dollars in health care costs - insurance spreads this around so that no one get screwed economically by fate - many pay out more than they will ever use in health care, but we get to live in a society where we don't have to look at very sick kids or accident victims and say - oh well - screw you. That makes me feel better about the system.
Single payer would be better - maybe we get there someday, but the selfish-force is strong in many Americans. Of course, when ill-luck befalls a person who doesn't like the system, without fail that person still accept the benefits far beyond what they paid-in - funny that. Show me the story of a sudden health victim who refuses to accept care because he/she failed to pay for all of it.

"many pay out more than they will ever use in health care"

This is the crux of your point, slypups, and I'm not sure if it's true. Cancer is insanely expensive, as you said. So are many, many other diseases, as well as chronic conditions. All you need is one big thing that costs $100k, and the insurance companies will never be able to recoup those costs for as long as you live. Not to mention how horribly, horribly expensive it is to get old. I don't think that you pay more into insurance (be it private or government) over your lifetime than you get out of it. Not in the slightest. And I think that is at the heart of the issue here.

But I don't think it's the insurance company's fault. I put the blame on the hospitals and doctors, medical malpractice lawyers, pharmaceutical companies and medical device company, and whoever makes CT scan machines and such. The entire system just sucks money out at every single possible point along the value chain. Everyone blames the insurance companies because they're the only part of the system they interact with most.