That raises health insurance costs. It also denies health insurance to old, young, female, and sick people. Lose/lose. Exactly the sort of situation government was invented to prevent.
Of course they do. But if they do it by excluding blacks, because "niggers just gonna eat fried chicken and give themselves heart attacks" then they will quickly discover that they do not have that particular right. (Or if they exclude a group for any other genetic, racial, religious or sexual orientation reason.) Excellent strawman!
Good, then we agree. Genetic health/predisposition is not a protected class, nor do you have any evidence that such measures have any nefarious motive. That's the real world consequence of barring such practices.
We have the entire history of corporate use of such measures, leading to the following basic principle of good governance: Don't let employers do those kinds of things. You have it backwards: That's the real world consequence of allowing them.
Where? Cite the "history of ...such measures". Oh, I forgot, it's just a vague boogeyman. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Again, you fail at basic economics.
So I take it you could not support your claim that "We have the entire history of corporate use of such measures". You have no credibility for your imagined boogeymen. Who said otherwise? I never said ANYTHING about the "total cost of insurance". Companies will have lower health insurance costs for their employees if their employee pool has fewer older and less healthy individuals. But I agree, there needs to be more competition, like across state lines, to help lower overall insurance costs. Insurers could then create pools like you would a mutual fund, where higher risks are offset by lower ones.
You can take it that I'm not going to bother. If you really have no idea how corporations behave in such situations, you aren't following any of this thread anyway. You mentioned "real world consequences" - do you want to ignore some of them now? Not necessarily. It depends on the factors driving the health insurance costs for their employees. In the US, for example, that practice hasn't lowered health insurance costs at all, for anybody. They already can, in many places, and they don't - they make more money charging higher premiums to lots of smaller pools. Insurers have no interest in competing with each other for the pool of high cost people who can't pay high premiums.
Yeah, "such situations" as the topic of this thread, which has never before occurred. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! You can't show a precedent of bad behavior because there is not comparable precedent. Stupid straw man. Quit trolling. You're obviously ignorant or how employer provided health insurance works. Where has the topic of this thread already been tried? Cite it. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Generally, the more healthy the pool the better the rates. No, insurance companies have not been able to sell policies across state lines, but you would know that if you knew anything about the subject you're debating. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Just like investors, insurers are interested in diversifying their risk, which a larger pool allows.
Comparable precedents - such as demanding information about one's weekend and leisure activities, political leanings, religious orientation, race and ethnicity, criminal record, psychological demeanor, marital status, and the like, as well as medical information relevant to corporate medical insurance costs (such as a history of chronic medical issues, drug rehab, or workman's comp claims) are so common as to be simply ordinary common knowledge. There are books written in the 1950s with tips on how to beat a corporate psychological evaluation, for example (remember: "I love my mother and my father but my father a little bit more"). The problem here is that the pool of prospective employees is essentially the US population. And getting "better rates" on that pool means depriving insurance corporations of profit, while divvying it up into smaller and individually rated pools means insurance corporations can arrange for greater profits. So we see that by now corporations in the US pay more to insure the individual people remaining in the healthiest pools than anyone else on the planet. That is partly because these pools are smaller, because these corporations have been allowed to make them smaller - which they have to do, to remain competitive with other corporations who must do the same. As the practice of differentiating the US into ever smaller and more carefully tailored risk pools drives the rates up overall, the penalty for failing to do that increases - it's a negative spiral. This is especially true of insurance corporations themselves. If they fail to take advantage of all information available, they get beat by those who do - even while taking advantage of such info to refine the pools drives up everybody's costs overall. As long as everyone's costs are increasing, it's no problem - they just hike the premiums, without fear of competition. That can even help their bottom line, if they are clever. It is legal to sell insurance policies across State lines under Obamacare, and several States have arranged to accept such sales. http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/out-of-state-health-insurance-purchases.aspx It didn't help. To repeat:
So no employer has a right to ensure the safety of their employees or customers by substance testing ("one's weekend and leisure activities")...even though it is legal? No church has a right to deny employment to people antipathetic to their cause...even though it is legal? No employer has a right to deny criminals employment involving security or valuables...even though it is legal? No employer has the right to personality tests to assess for potentially untrustworthy behavior....even though it is legal? They can require a physical and ask about workman's comp...also legal. They can fire you for expressing political views, and deny you employment for many other reasons...all also legal. So you're going to have to give some real examples, otherwise I just have to assume you either don't understand or don't like the laws. That's you're personal problem, not a problem of employers. Again, you obviously don't know how employer-provided health insurance works. It works much like auto insurance, where you're personal driving record determines your personal rates based on risk. Only the insurer pools all the employees in a company for employer-provided policies. And those rates also take into account the general insurance risk of your state. You have it backwards. The sickest pools cost the most because they draw the most benefits. Basic reasoning skills. You obviously have no clue. Their is no fear of competition only under requirements like Obamacare, where no insurer can create plans that save cost by removing specific benefits (like maternity leave for single males in their 20s). Obamacare did nothing to change the fact that each state regulates its own healthcare plans, including whether they allow out-of-state policy sales, as shown by the individual state legislation in your link.
Some do, most don't, in a sane world. In the US, they all do - and that's the context for this gene testing stuff. The laws allow oppressive corporate behavior - which is why giving corporations the power to test their employee's genetics is a bad idea. You have misread the post. It drives up costs, dramatically and rapidly, when it works like that. That's a major reason the US pays twice as much for medical care as anyone else, and doesn't even provide it for all of its citizens as everyone else does. Which Trumpcare plans to change, thereby bankrupting any insurance company that attempts to provide health care coverage for potentially high cost people who cannot pay high premiums.
No, more like in your ideal socialist world. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Opinion in lieu of argument. Single-payer advocates contend that other nations have managed to better control health-care spending — volumes and prices — by enforcing a true budget for cost. But any review of how our Medicare system actually works illustrates why a single-payer system would be so difficult here: Our government has a pervasive inability to say “no.” Only in the United States is public health care an unbudgeted entitlement: Our government promises to pay for any care seniors need and providers respond by relentlessly expanding the definition of need. It’s no coincidence. - https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...012c1cd8d1e_story.html?utm_term=.f6107534fe7aGovernment interference incentivizes the market to absorb the available funds, just like skyrocketing college tuition under government student loans. Wide-spread cross state policies sales have never been tried, so you have no evidence on which to base that claim. Just more ignorant bare assertions.
There are a handful of States that permit out of State insurance companies to market policies, and none of them have seen an increase in "competition". Nor is there any reason to expect an increase in "competition" - that's not how insurance companies make the big bucks. And combined with the evidence that competition between insurance companies does not lower costs in medical insurance (it never has, anywhere, the mechanisms by which it raises costs are obvious and basic economics, and all the lowest cost setups simply ban it from basic health care), we cannot expect from experience and observation any such benefit from removing State regulation of access to their market. It's not some vague "pervasive" factor, it's Republican policy (with plenty of support from rightwing Dems, such as the Clintons) - explicit, as we see with Medicare Plan D and the Veteran's hospitals and the like. Single payer works better than the US system everywhere, under every government, it's been tried. So does getting rid of competition for profit in a multipayer setup, as in the non-single payer plans that work better than the US plan.
Analyzing someone's genetic makeup has never had nefarious motives? Google "eugenics." Perhaps also "genetic health court." It's like you don't understand the meanings of any of the big words you use.
#profit | #priority Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! "What is Life," said jesting Liberty, and would not stay for an answer: Click for incongruous relief. We should probably note that a lot of this problem goes away when societal health care policy is about health care, and not about what business interests want. Several years ago, Dr. David Goldhill↱, in promoting his book, offered a column for the Washington Post that begins― Steven Brill's recent Time magazine cover story, "Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us," is an extraordinarily well-reported look at medical pricing, demonstrating that high health-care prices have little relationship to underlying cost. For many commentators, the much lower prices paid by Medicare suggests an obvious solution to our health-care problems—"Medicare for all." There's only one problem with this "obvious" solution: Medicare has been a primary driver of the explosion of health-care costs in the United States despite—and perhaps because of—the low prices it pays. ―and ends: Medicare is a major source of votes and campaign contributions, both of which reinforce our politicians' unwillingness to address exploding volumes. The program's low administrative costs aren't an accomplishment; they're a refusal to discipline excess care, even dangerous care. The program's low prices are a mirage. As any businessperson knows, with enough market power—not to mention political power—you can always make it up in volume. The whole point is to complain about medical costs while excusing the private sector. If that wasn't the case, perhaps the good doctor might recognize his false juxtaposition; it's not quite a false dilemma, but, rather, a false substitution: Single-payer advocates contend that other nations have managed to better control health-care spending—volumes and prices—by enforcing a true budget for cost. But any review of how our Medicare system actually works illustrates why a single-payer system would be so difficult here: Our government has a pervasive inability to say "no." Only in the United States is public health care an unbudgeted entitlement: Our government promises to pay for any care seniors need and providers respond by relentlessly expanding the definition of need. It's no coincidence. The attempted sleight is Medicare, which is not single-payer, and which is artificially constricted by Congress. Furthermore, I'll go ahead and introduce tort reform insofar as the problems he describe go away under a single-payer plan in which the first and inviolate purpose is to provide access to medical care. As long as the system is subject to the predictable cutting of corners that comes with private-sector prioritization of profit margins and investor satisfaction above patient care, we are not going to be able to control costs, because the cuts will cause problems that will result in lawsuits that will drive ass-covering extraneity which, in turn, will drive at least some of the creep Goldhill describes which certainly won't be discouraged by private interests that profit from that creep. Myth and pride. That is essentially what this is about. All of this clusterfucking about comes from society's desire to exploit the vital demand of medical care for as much profit as possible, and have long convinced ourselves, generally speaking, that there is something shameful about ending the practice of investor confidence as a tacit and effective death panel. And that's what we have, as long as the first purpose of our health insurance and care provision system is profit margin. If we can afford perpetual warfare, we can afford proper health care policy, instead. And the cool thing is that we can also afford a lot more really awesome science, along the way, that will, in the long run, even help health care. But the thing is, certain endeavors must be about what they are ostensibly about, else they become subsumed by their true purpose. The thing about money is that its ultimate purpose is organizational; it is the key to our distribution system. And that's why people fight about money. And it is why we have food insecurity in the world, because the short-term interests of whoever is in charge of the businesses, and the investors who put them there, see no profit in ending hunger—only financial commitment, risk, and uncertainty. And it's why no matter how much people pretend to object to the guv'm'nt gettin' 'tween you 'n' yer doctor, there are many who will appeal to the private sector need when justifying the insurance company getting between patient and doctor. And the thing about universal care is that it will reshape society to some degree; people aren't real thrilled with that, either, but most couldn't name their fears beyond the superficial or even ridiculous. Still, though, why not aim for something better than self-destruction in the temple of Mammon? Why is this our sacred idol? My quasi-Lutheran upbringing, my life in a society determined to advocate and celebrate patriotism, and in how many other ways are people steeped in idyll, which, in the world they have fashioned requires them to wallow in betrayal because that's what good, decent, responsible people do? In a way, I'm not surprised that my society is destroying itself like this, but at some point I'm going to distinguish 'twixt shepherds and flock. Yes, we Americans do this all to ourselves, but whence came the virtues that our mothers and fathers were taught, that they taught us, that we give unto the next generation? While it is true the specific nature of this thread lends toward business considerations, the overarching—or underpinning, if you prefer—themes of American health care provision primarily orbit the question of what is good or bad for business; what is good or bad for patients is then measured within the resulting range. Americans who call themselves "pro-life", for instance, ought to support single-payer, at the very least. There are plenty in society whose interest generally includes resolving this perversion of priority. 'Tis a strange circumstance that when the question is health care, the primary concern is profit. Except it's not strange. At least, not in these United States of America. ____________________ Notes: Goldhill, David. "How Medicare's low prices inflate health costs". The Washington Post. 10 March 2013. WashingtonPost.com. 23 March 2017. http://wapo.st/2nfru7L
