Re: America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 - The USCHO debates
I didn't say you had no ideas. I said your ideas are stupid and have no practical application in the real world. Get it right, will ya?
With no ideas of their own (Red Cloud summed it up perfectly, he wants something done, unless its Dem sponsored of course)
Yawn. Come on, clown, work harder to amuse me.
For example, a lot of knuckledraggers want to say "buying insurance across state lines will lower costs". I call BS and challenge you to explain how this will help. See I don't know if you actually graduated from RPI, or just went to the hockey games, but it seems anybody with half a brain would recognize that:
1) Having every provider having to have agreements and negotiations with 1,300 different insurers (source: MinnFan) is a logistical nightmare. Talk about driving up costs. The money spent on paperwork/recordkeeping/contracts etc would skyrocket, adding expenses to non-medical care. Really good idea there....
2) In some places it costs more for health care than others, much like in some places it cost more to insure your car. Call up a car insurer in North Dakota and ask them to cover your car in New York City for North Dakota rates and they'll laugh in your face. Why would health care be any different? Cost is going to be dictated by where you live and what the providers where you live charge, thus adding to the unworkability of your senseless proposal.
I await your response...
Let me teach you something I learned at RPI (oh snap). I'll dumb it down to your level. It's the economic principle of scarcity.
Let's say you want to buy an ice cream cone (yaaaaay ice cream), and there are 1,000 other people in your area that want to buy an ice cream cone. Unfortunately, there are only two places in town that serve ice cream cones, so they're doing great guns as far as business is concerned, but if you don't like their flavors or ice cream or their prices, you're SOL, aren't you? They are only competing with each other, and given high demand, prices will necessarily be high (that's the equlibrium theory of supply and demand, but I won't overload your little mind with that right now).
Say, those ice cream sellers are making pretty high profit margins with very little competition. But what if more people start setting up ice cream shops? More competition means the profit margins decrease - the people have more options (like more variety of flavors) and disperse among the new shops as supply increases, and demand for each individual shop decreases. Thus, prices go down, and people have more variety of flavors. It may not be an optimal situation for the original two shops, because their marginal profit has decreased, but people that are getting into the ice cream business are now earning something too, and it's great for consumers.
Now, imagine that in some other state, they have better ice cream, but there are laws that keep those sellers from being able to sell you ice cream in your hometown. You want that ice cream, and they'd be happy to sell it to you if they could. But since you can't, you have to settle for the lower quality ice cream at a higher price, since that competitor - and many others - cannot enter the market.
The free market will take care of streamlining #1. Where there's a will (to expand markets), there's always a way (to make the process easier in the name of profit). An ice-cream cone in New York City costs more than an ice-cream cone in Vermont, too, but that doesn't mean you can't get Ben and Jerry's in both places. (that's #2, if you missed it).
Hope I didn't distract you with all of that ice cream, buddeh. Please, don't get any drool on the padded walls.
