Replies

There are a multiplicity of regional differences and markets. New England has fishermen who have one life/health-risk profile, while eastern Tennessee and Kentucky and other coal-mining regions have another set of needs and realities entirely. Then there's uranium miners in New Mexico and offshore oil workers in the Gulf of Mexico.

And there shouldn't be anything stopping the insurance companies from charging more to higher-risk groups for coverage. What's your point?

Are you arguing that higher-risk groups should get less health care?

Having a standard that works across all states allows for cross-shopping by customers. That is increased competition, which leads to reduced costs.

Also, the larger the market... the more the insurance companies can spread the risk. Which is how insurance works, using the premiums paid by the health to pay for the medical care of the sick. And a 300 million man market spreads that out over far more people than a market of... let's say, San Francisco (which has it's own separate medical insurance market) alone.

And that *ALSO* reduces the costs of insurance.

Having a standard that works across all states allows for cross-shopping by customers. That is increased competition, which leads to reduced costs.

That is also ignoring the States and denying that they have any power to regulate and police an economic activity.

Honest markets need honest cops. Only crooks want unregulated, unpoliced markets where anyone who wants to, can stick a thumb in the scales and get away with it.

Or maybe you haven't had enough of the greed-and-fraud-induced CMO/CDO/CDS scandal/disaster/catastrophe yet.

AIG's broke, doing it their way, and their idea is to pass the hat to the public?

Don't think so.

Also, the larger the market... the more the insurance companies can spread the risk.

They can do that already in the reinsurance market, but then you knew that.

We don't have to let them walk all over the 50 States and just do what they want. We've already had a trainload of the way they like to do it, with several trains still out.

Pass.