[lbo-talk] Talk about death panels!

[Michael McIntyre]

Here's one way these instruments could enhance incentives for shitty
care.  HCA and its ilk start buying these policies, giving them
further incentives to deny care to the critically ill, thereby
skinning the cat twice - first by avoiding payment and second by
collecting the insurance (perhaps sold by the insuree in order to pay
the bills that her "insurance" had already failed to cover!).  For
this to really operate, insurers and their cousins would have to
collude to some degree, but they seem to be quite good at that.

Or we can just imagine what some bizarre genetically engineered
combination of Michael Milliken and Barbara Stanwyck could do with
this!

MM

On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 8:30 PM, <RicardoStarkey at aol.com> wrote:
> In a message dated 9/9/2009 6:14:02 P.M. Pacific Daylight  Time,
> matthias.wasser at gmail.com writes:
>
>
> "Private health insurance creates bad incentives, limits access,  and so on.
> So that's bad. But given that it already exists I don't see what  additional
> evil is created by allowing insurers to redistribute risk among  each other
> in this way. (Allowing them to run wild with risk redistribution  is what
> led
> to the crisis in the short run, but the devil's in the  details.) Are the
> incentives to provide shitty care amplified by this  practice? I don't see
> how they would be on first blush, but I'm willing to  find that they are."
>
>
>
> I anticipated a response along  these lines, and I find myself of two
> minds.  My left brain admires your  high level of rationality.  (Really.  I take
> your point.)  And  my right brain pities you for the madness into which
> advanced capitalism has  driven you.  (But who of us is spared?)
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>