mini

"Rather, the purpose of insurance is to SHARE THE RISK.

If you ALREADY have an illness, it's no longer a question of risk, but of CERTAINTY. You already HAVE the illness, so it's no longer a RISK that you MIGHT get the illness."

And that is precisely the problem with private insurance - we are sharing the "risk" rather than sharing the cost, and the deck is stacked. The result is that sick folks can't get insurance. Actually, healthy folks (like my wife, recently cured of breast cancer) can't get insurance. It means great loss of productivity to the nation - I can't change jobs to somewhere where I might be more productive because no one will ever underwrite my wife.

"Glad we got that cleared up. I would love to see insurance companies accept everyone equally, but that is not financially feasible at this time."

Absolutely true. Which is why we need to do away with health insurance companies. Republican CEOs of health insurance companies, for example, unanimously support the bipartisan expansion of SCHIP because it means a guaranteed transfer of public dollars into their pockets. The expansion of SCHIP could be accomplished FOR FREE - and I really mean FREE (we have crunched the numbers in our state) if the state could self-insure for SCHIP (as they do for my own single-payor health insurance.)

(With my previous insurance, doctors were paid - literally - for not referring folks to needed specialists. The hope was that the "consumer" who needs specialists would switch insurance at the next opportunity, hence saving them the cost. I did. But I am one of the lucky ones.)