Health Insurance Death Sprial

Get away from healthcare and let the insurance system die a natural death in the marketplace. What we are watching as insurance premiums go up and up is actually what Paul Krugman called its "death spiral." The announcement by one provider that it would raise the premiums of all the independent insurance holders in California by 30% is a statement that their model is failing. In fact, it failed long ago by any honest assessment.

Why is Wellpath raising the premiums by such a large amount. Irritated at Fox News for suggesting that they were doing nothing but giving the Democrats red meat in this battle, one Wellpath executive told the Fox listeners why this was happening. Of course no one listened. This attempt to bring needed repairs to our system has produced nothing but hypocricy, irrational screaming, and outright demogogory on the right side of the political aisle. What is it that these people will not face?

Here is what the insurance executive tried to tell Fox News. At the present level of premiums, so many well people have decided to go uninsured that the ratio of well to sick has fallen and thus put more pressure for taking care of the sick onto the sick. In other words, if you have medical needs and buy insurance, then the amount of your medical bills that you are going to have to pay has risen because there are less well people in the pool to help pay your bills.

Here is what the insurance executive did not tell Fox News. At the elevated premium level after the 30% increase, Many fewer people will buy insurance, because they can not afford it, making the burden heavier on the sick, which will produce more increases, which will lead to less people buying insurance. The death spiral actually started about fifteen years ago and is accelerating. In the last year, two million more Americans have been dropped from the insurance premium paying population, either by the companies because they were costing too much or because they found they could no longer afford the premiums. Flush your toilet friends and see what is happening to the system that we have.

Indeed, market forces are going to be the downfall of the health insurance industry if we do not interfere to prop them up, and that is what the present Democratic bill has done. Forget all of the garbage about Obamacare and all the other mindless chatter about people in the government deciding who gets what care. That is the garbage of the mindless. What is happening is that we are seeing that the marketplace can not adapt to contridictions that are inherient in the whole health insurance and healthcare monster. When maximums are achieved at one location it is only because of extreme and undesirable deficiencies at another location in the complex system. When profit is the primary motive of all business interests involved, then "you win-I lose " situations multiply. When you ask some guy in Des Moins to pay $1,500 per month so someone in Kansas City can be cured of cancer, and then next year you demand $1,950 per month from that man because the guy in Chicago quit paying the $1,500 he was paying, and the next year to ask for $2,400 from the guy because the guy in Dallas also quit paying his money, then the guy in Iowa is going to figure out sooner or later that he is getting suckered. Many of our citizens have already figured that out and more and more are doing so. That is the death spiral.

So, I propose that we get as far away from health care as we can get. I openly suggest to all who see themselves as non-users of insurance benefits to quit paying the tax, since it is optional. Let this system die a natural death inside the free marketplace, because, left to itself, it will die. Moreover, it will do so within the next ten years. Put all the money you might put into health insurance into a healthcare savings account, barter, deal, and do whatever you have to do to reduce the costs you do incur. It is time to let these self righteous ideologues and their system die. Let the marketplace work.