On Fri, 7 Nov 2003, Harry Pollard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Why do you see the private sector is terrible at healthcare? I've
>already described the Kaiser-Permanente system, which I would say
>was the equal of any other in the world - private or government.
Is that perhaps because they can cherry pick their clientele among
those who qualify? How would they fare if they weren't allowed to
reject any applicant due to preexisting conditions, or charge them
impossibly high premiums? Say if the only allowable cause for a
targeted premium rate hike was willful indulgence in high risk
activity like smoking? Don't you think under those circumstances
they would either close up shop or degrade their service to
levels much worse than public systems? What are the numbers like
for these issues? And then of course there's the "auto-selection"
provided by the private premium system: only those who can afford
the premiums enroll, so the client base is pre-sorted for more
affluent people who will generally be in better health, having
had better nutrition and better self-image (I'm sure you've seen
the stats correlating health with _relative_ income), and had
more prompt attention to any health issues they may have confronted.
A real health care system must look after the whole population, not
just the upper sixty percent who can manage the premiums.
-Pete
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