Aetna CEO Threatened Obamacare Pullout If Feds Opposed Humana Merger • Hacker News Board

Re: Aetna CEO Threatened Obamacare Pullout If Feds Opposed Humana Merger

#291

Post by phil21 » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 11:41 PM UTC

SteveLAnderson wrote: post #270

zeveb wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can anyone succinctly explain the benefits of having a market for private health insurance companies, rather than a single provider of health insurance (government, aka "public option")? Government provision of health insurance means that every procedure covered is a political issue (e.g. abortion for the left, sexual-orientation counselling for the right). This means that there will be nationwide winners and loser…

"American governments are not capable of running efficient programs" - that's simply false, and your statement about government employees is insulting.

Insulting to whom? While it's a generalization, it's pretty much accurate in the entirety of my personal and professional experience. Some good competent folks work for the government, but they are drowned out to the point of absurdity by the masses of folks doing enough to not get fired. Which generally means showing up on time and not doing something the other bored employees in the office can complain to your manager about.

I have pretty extensive experience with it at both local and state levels, with some experience on the Federal side. There are certain agencies and careers that seem to still attract decent folks, but they seem exceedingly rare.

Re: Aetna CEO Threatened Obamacare Pullout If Feds Opposed Humana Merger

#292

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 11:43 PM UTC

Randgalt wrote: post #285

gnaritas wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're not thinking clearly; the constitution requires a super majority, and yes, if a super majority of people want to be governed a particular way, then they deserve that right, even if it's stupid; but you'd never get a super majority to agree to such a stupid bigoted rule and it conflicts with other parts of the constitution and would be ruled unconstitutional by the courts. Without the notion that the rules…

"you'd never get a super majority to agree to such a stupid bigoted rule and it conflicts with other parts of the constitution" - oh really? Please open a US history book.

[deleted]

Re: Aetna CEO Threatened Obamacare Pullout If Feds Opposed Humana Merger

#293

Post by gnaritas2 » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 11:44 PM UTC

Randgalt wrote: post #285

gnaritas wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're not thinking clearly; the constitution requires a super majority, and yes, if a super majority of people want to be governed a particular way, then they deserve that right, even if it's stupid; but you'd never get a super majority to agree to such a stupid bigoted rule and it conflicts with other parts of the constitution and would be ruled unconstitutional by the courts. Without the notion that the rules…

"you'd never get a super majority to agree to such a stupid bigoted rule and it conflicts with other parts of the constitution" - oh really? Please open a US history book.

Please try and think for 2 seconds instead of responding to the first stupid idea that jumps into your brain; obviously I'm referring to passing such a law today, what happened historically isn't relevant. But you've shown your colors, you have no intention of actually hearing anything said to you because you're more interested in arguing utterly stupid diversions of the main topic. You ignored everything said except the one thing you could find to disagree with, you're a child. Goodbye.

Re: Aetna CEO Threatened Obamacare Pullout If Feds Opposed Humana Merger

#294

Post by xenadu02 » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 11:52 PM UTC

brightball wrote: post #89

seibelj wrote: post #2

Can anyone succinctly explain the benefits of having a market for private health insurance companies, rather than a single provider of health insurance (government, aka "public option")? Can a capitalist case be made for their existence? Does the lack of a large private insurance market in countries with government-provided health insurance cause lots of inefficiencies and waste?

The benefit vs how they happened are very different things. Initially, the benefit was that people paid all medical expenses out of pocket and could purchase insurance in case of extreme medical issues. Businesses started offering health insurance as a perk to attract employees and would negotiate a group rate. This benefits the business by both helping to attract / retain employees as well as helping to keep those e…

We used to have much less medical care available; the best treatment for most diseases was "do nothing". That is no longer the case.

We buy car insurance and fire insurance expecting to never or rarely make a claim. We buy health insurance knowing we definitely will be making claims.

Supply and demand only works when you can establish a price equilibrium which absolutely requires that some people are priced out of the market. In healthcare that means massive disability and/or death. I don't think a fully free market in healthcare is in any way ethical.

Like infrastructure or universal mail/electricity/water, healthcare is one of those things where at least some elements cannot be efficiently delivered by a free market.

Re: Aetna CEO Threatened Obamacare Pullout If Feds Opposed Humana Merger

#295

Post by eridius » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 11:57 PM UTC

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #280

SteveLAnderson wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well ... you're strictly right, but just like the idiotic provision that forced Congress to give up their employer sponsored insurance and use the exchange instead was forced by the GOP, so to were these provisions dropped due to GOP pressure. You see, the GOP continually promised, on one hand, to tie the ACA up in legislative hurdles so it couldn't pass, or, on the other hand, vote for it if it met their requirement…

Um, no. Those provisions were the Democrats negotiating with themselves. At the time the Democrats had the votes to force the issue regardless of the Republican opposition. It was people like Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, and Max Baucus that played a rotating merry-go-round of scapegoats that the Democratic Party used to trump up reasons why they couldn't support more progressive reforms in the healthcare legislation. A…

A Republican policy proposal that wasn't passed back when it was proposed. Just because the Republicans proposed this first doesn't mean it's a bad idea. We're all human beings and we all have a lot of common ground. Not everything a Republican proposes is automatically hated by Democrats, and not everything a Democrat proposes should be automatically hated by Republicans (I say "should be" because lately the Republican party does seem to reflexively hate everything Democrats propose, even if it was originally a Republican idea like the ACA).

Re: Aetna CEO Threatened Obamacare Pullout If Feds Opposed Humana Merger

#296

Post by st3v3r » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 11:58 PM UTC

Randgalt wrote: post #152

gnaritas wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong, it's exactly the world I want to live in and the Constitution happens to agree, which is why we've amended it many a time, because the governed decided it was outdated. The notion that we should still be living by the dictates of men long dead is simply absurd, every generation has a right to decide for itself how its government works as it should, and as we have done.

So, if the majority votes to take away the rights of, oh I don't know, Japanese citizens -- that's a world you want to live in? You're not thinking clearly about the issue.

So you'd be perfectly ok with certain people being counted as only 3/5 of a person, and only white, landowning males having the right to vote? What about that whole slavery thing? Cause the Constitution shouldn't be changed and all.

Re: Aetna CEO Threatened Obamacare Pullout If Feds Opposed Humana Merger

#297

Post by Randgalt » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 11:58 PM UTC

gnaritas2 wrote: post #293

Randgalt wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"you'd never get a super majority to agree to such a stupid bigoted rule and it conflicts with other parts of the constitution" - oh really? Please open a US history book.

Please try and think for 2 seconds instead of responding to the first stupid idea that jumps into your brain; obviously I'm referring to passing such a law today, what happened historically isn't relevant. But you've shown your colors, you have no intention of actually hearing anything said to you because you're more interested in arguing utterly stupid diversions of the main topic. You ignored everything said except…

It can easily happen again. You're the fool for thinking it can't.

Re: Aetna CEO Threatened Obamacare Pullout If Feds Opposed Humana Merger

#298

Post by parasubvert » Thu, Aug 18, 2016, 12:00 AM UTC

Randgalt wrote: post #216

parasubvert wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canadian here. Firstly, diagnostic care is often privately managed throughout the provinces, so if you don't want to wait, you can often pay to expedite. It's about $900 for a joint MRI. Secondly, if you really need an MRI for a critical diagnosis, as I once did in 2012 as a hospital inpatient, I got it within 2 days. Canada's health system is a point of national pride.

It depends where you live. I know many Canadians who've had different experiences. This points to a major problem with socialized products - how they perform depend not on merit or ability to pay, but where you live, how good your representative is, etc. That is much worse.

I really don't agree. I've lived in three Canadian provinces, and four U.S. states, from towns of 1000 people, small cities of 10k, medium cities of 100k, to large cities of 1m+.

Having lived through the Ontario cuts in health care in the 90s ("the Harris common sense revolution"), I don't really think political reps Federally or Provincially had any say on quality of care or what hospitals we got, it was all redesigned top down (not all that different from an HMO really, in my experience). Did care access and waits times suffer at the time? Yes. Still wouldn't trade it for a private system.

The difference in access and amount of supply between a rural market and a city in Canada is not too different than in the US. There's a lot of land mass to cover in either country if you're not in a major population centre.

The Canadian system blows away the US system by an order of magnitude, IMO, in terms of what really matters - access and outcomes. Obamacare made the US a bit better, but that's not a tall order.

Re: Aetna CEO Threatened Obamacare Pullout If Feds Opposed Humana Merger

#299

Post by eridius » Thu, Aug 18, 2016, 12:00 AM UTC

ecommerceguy wrote: post #228

eridius wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no way that we'd get single payer here because the Republican party has convinced their base that single-payer health care is socialism and that socialism is evil, which leads to the situation where poor people who desperately need health care and can't afford it still oppose single-payer even though they stand to gain the most from it.

I think you'll be remiss to find that the majority of insurance company donations go to the Democratic party. Of course poor people have been voting Democrat for over 50 years and they are, for the most part, still poor. Que Einstein quote.

> I think you'll be remiss to find that the majority of insurance company donations go to the Democratic party.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Are you saying I'll determine that to be the case if I'm lacking attention, or are you saying that I'm lacking attention and therefore don't know that? I'm also not sure what the point is either way, why the truth or falsehood of this statement is relevant to my comment.

> Of course poor people have been voting Democrat for over 50 years and they are, for the most part, still poor.

This also doesn't make any sense. Nobody said that voting for either party would make you rich. Making health care accessible to the poor doesn't make them less poor, it just gives them health care.

> Que Einstein quote.

What quote?

Re: Aetna CEO Threatened Obamacare Pullout If Feds Opposed Humana Merger

#300

Post by lutorm » Thu, Aug 18, 2016, 12:03 AM UTC

Randgalt wrote: post #271

lutorm wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fair number of people would consider the right to health care a fundamental human right.

How can you logically have a right to the services of someone else? Health care is a product - doctors, hospitals, medicine, etc. These must all be produced by people.

Didn't you say this earlier, though?

The purpose of government is to protect our rights.

It sounds like you also think "you logically have a right to the services of someone else", otherwise who's doing the protection?