For about the zillionth time: Car insurance is NOT analogous to health insurance!

[Hello_Kitty]

I know they're both a form of insurance and both require premiums to be paid. But the similarities pretty much end there. For one thing, auto insurance is purely catastrophic. It pays for damages as a result of an accident or collision. You cannot use your car insurance for routine maintenance. Auto insurance premiums, unlike health insurance, decrease with the age of the car and (up to a point) the age of the driver. That is why I, a 41 year old woman driving a 7 year old car, can pay $800 a year for several hundred thousand dollars in liability and catastrophic coverage for myself. Not so with my health insurance. Mandatory auto insurance "works" because it is relatively inexpensive to insure a large number of people for the statistically small risk they will be in a serious accident. OTOH, the longer you are alive the greater the probability - close to 100% really - that you will have a major need for your health insurance.

While there are many valid arguments about requiring people to purchase health insurance, I think it's important to disabuse people of the notion that adding more people to the insurance pool will substantially reduce health insurance premiums to a level of affordability on a par with auto insurance.

[Ozymanithrax]

1. I have no problem with telling people thy do not have to buy health insurance...

But if they should have an accident, they should be left to die in pain.

I do have a problem with people who make bets on their health with other peoples money.

[Hello_Kitty]

3. Thanks for sharing, but that's not what this OP is about. eom

[Dr Fate]

5. I have a problem with people who make bets on endless wars with other people's money.

Lots of people have lots of problems with other people spending other people's money on one thing or another.

Is that really the issue here?

The issues here is whether we should base HC reform on a car insurance model. Your post does little to convince me that they are similar at all.

Give us a strong public option like they have in Europe and in every other modern nation, and then your statement is moot.

[Generator]

15. Leaving people to die in pain

Wow I love this new Democratic party that Obama has given us. So much HOPE. You didn't actually write that did you?

Other people's money? LIKE MY billions sent for wars I don't want? Or to fund big insurance companies? THAT MONEY? Wow what a great Democratic board this has become.

[Dr Fate]

2. Especially since I take THE BUS (AKA the PUBLIC OPTION)

One can take a cab, ride their bike, or even walk.

Subways, trains & buses= THE PUBLIC OPTION

DLC type centrists are LIARS.

Anyone who tries to make this analogy is either simple or a DLC type "centrist" who is lying on purpose.

[Hello_Kitty]

4. Good point.

I'm also a proponent of "single payer" auto liability insurance. Instead of making people buy liability coverage, add a small tax to gas to go into a large pool of money and appoint a department to oversee the claims. Solves the uninsured motorist problem.

[RaleighNCDUer]

17. good idea, but only viable so long as we are dependent on gas.

would electric owners be exempt from liability insurance?

A vehicle tax - graduated for gas/hybrid/electric/other - would accomplish the same thing. Anyone who drives a licensed vehicle is covered.

[Hello_Kitty]

19. That could work too.

I've been using gas because it more fairly spreads to cost to the people who drive more and are, hence, at greater risk for an accident.

[Ganja Ninja]

6. Yup nobody forces you to own a car.

So you're not really forced to buy car insurance.

[Dr Fate]

11. And I have a PUBLIC OPTION (AKA the bus, rail, etc.)

No one forces me to drive myself, and no one mandates that I take a private cab.

Like most conservative/centrist talkiing points, this one is also based on lies.

[newportdadde]

7. Mandatory insurance will make prices go down.

Remember how much lower the policy on your car was once it was mandatory for everyone?

:sarcasm:

[kitkat65]

8. I hate this comparison too.

Another huge difference between health insurance and car insurance is the matter of choice. You choose to buy a car and drive, you do not choose to have a body-it is a given. You cannot potentially risk the lives of others by merely using this body unlike driving a car where accidents can and do happen thus the justifiable reason for mandatory liability insurance. And, liability is always mandatory whereas collision is optional, so you are able to put your well being into risk to an extent but not others.

[JDPriestly]

10. You are right. The "huge difference" legally speaking as I see it

between mandatory health insurance and mandatory car insurance is that car insurance is required in exchange for the privilege of driving. Mandatory health insurance would be required just for being alive. Being alive is a "natural right" in the law.

I seriously doubt that criminal penalties can be imposed for not buying into health care insurance. You would just have to pay a fine or something. Even there, I'm not sure the courts would uphold a scheme requiring you to buy health care insurance or be fined. You could be required to forgo a tax credit if you don't buy insurance. That is in my view about the only way it can be done.

[Hello_Kitty]

16. Thank you. I forgot to add that.

The insurance you are required by law to buy for your car is liability. You don't have to have any coverage for yourself.

[kirby]

9. They ARE similar...

There once was an epidemic of uninsured auto drivers. What happened? Everyone who had insurance had to subsidize them either directly or through the purchase of an extra uninsured motorist premium.

I have no problem with the law requiring only catastrophic health insurance as the legal requirement since those are the major ticket items that the rest of us pay.

The premiums decline on a car because it depreciates. For health insurance the older you get the more likely to have problem you are.

Driving is an option though, however, everyone gets sick.

[Hello_Kitty]

14. Catastrophic health policies are shit.

I know, I used to sell insurance. After you pay your premiums and a ridiculously high out-of-pocket cost, good luck getting them to cover what you need.

[RaleighNCDUer]

12. Not to mention that at any given time a person can choose not to drive,

thus escaping the cost of auto insurance.

But nobody can choose not to get sick (no matter what some health-nuts may claim).

[county worker]

13. What value does for profit health insurance add to health care?

Nothing.

Since they can dictate what coverage you get, health insurance companies are middlemen who add cost and not value to health care. If there was a single payer, not for profit system, that we all paid into in the form of premiums, which were less costly then paying 100% out of pocket, and we were guaranteed good health care I could see having a mandate. The value added here is the savings in cost to the consumer of individual health care.

But to force us all to pay into a system that adds no value to care is not right.

Auto insurance functions differently. Your claims are generally paid.

[Ozymanithrax]

18. Germany has a system where everyone uses insurance companies...

However, it works because insurance companies profits are controlled by the government..

If we force companies to actually compete by removing their anti-trust protection so that every insurance company can sell insurance everywhere in the U.S., and put in a large pool of people for whom they must compete, then free market capitalist theory says that prices will be forced down. Right now, there is nothing free market about health insurance. They are allowed to create virtual monopolies. This seems to be what this proposal aims at.

Of course, I think that leaving an individuals health to the whims of free market capitalism is obscene. Since we are not going to get single payer, and the Senate doesn't have the votes to pass a public option, we need to get something passed to cover as many of the 50+ million Americans who are not covered at all, and to protect all of us from health related bankruptcy.

Then, we will see what they do in conference to bring the bills together.

[Hello_Kitty]

20. I want single payer, but I'm not married to the idea anymore.

I'd be okay with health care being delivered by private insurers if they implemented the government controls you suggest.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. German insurance companies are regulated like utilities

They can't pull half the nonsense that our insurance companies do. A German acquaintance told me that in his region, insurance companies have to pay the provider within 10 days, no questions asked, and there are no deductibles.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

21. The other thing about car insurance is that they actually PAY PROMPTLY

and without accusing you of fraud, especially if you're in a no-fault state. If your car is out of commission due to an accident, they'll pay for a rental.

If I had to have a life-threatening injury, being in a car accident would be less financially ruinous than suffering any other kind of injury. The insurance agent just says, "Send us the bills."

If you want to change your policy, they don't make you reapply with a mountain of paperwork (containing information they already have anyway) and a month's premium while still paying for your current policy.

They're not flawless, but they're a damn sight better than health insurance companies.