Reply #2: Actually actuary is the reason [View All]

[sui generis]

The insurance industry has one goal only:

PROFIT

So the insurance industry creates "risk pools" based on arcane statistics and demographics and sets premium rates based on what their expected losses and profits need to be to build and maintain regulatory cash reserve requirements and keep their investors happy, NOT because they give a flipping shit about anyone's wellbeing.

After the system is in place, and particularly in health insurance, the industry does everything in its power to adjust individual risk profiles based on new information and to remove risk (and decrease "loss") from the risk pool.

They have a lobbyist hand in setting "reasonable and customary" service charges artificially low, and doctors have a hand in submitting claims that far exceed these thresholds so that they get paid no matter what is "reasonable and customary". Big Pharma has their arm up the collective ass of congress to guarantee their right to profit the most from the least insured who can least afford it, including making reimportation illegal, and in a nutshell, you exist to be harvested of your cash either directly to the doctor, or to your insurer, sooner or later, until you die, in which case they still don't give a damn about you.

The single most disgusting aspect of our medical system right now is that ordinary life saving medications for seniors and children and even proven preventative regimens are priced sometimes 300% to 1000% higher for Americans than other countries because here in America Big Pharma has a greater right to profit than you have a right to live.

Real universal healthcare for everyone is a fundamental requirement of a civilized society. There is still room for a free market in medicine, just not in its current form. There is no reason in the universe that American seniors should be splitting pills or foregoing medicine for food or shelter, that children should find themselves without access to healthcare, that people with treatable life threatening disease or injury should find themselves unable to afford to stay alive.