How can my statement be true but as misleading as a flawed study? I said people don't hae to worry about bleeding out, true, I said we have many programs already in place, we do, they address many if hardly all of the problems. Personally, I think most of them do a pisspoor job, which to me is an indicator that the gov't is not likely to do a better job than they are already doing if given wider power. Insurance companies, of course, do not want to spend money on people who cost them more than they yield. Who can blame them, saying they should is like saying you personally should have to pay if your neighbor's barn falls over. They are in a business that amounts to telling a lot of people "Here's the deal, everyone gets sick, if you all contribute, when you get sick we'll pay the tab, so long as you pay a fee the whole time that's designed to roughly represent your personal anticipated costs and give us some profit." In that regard, they have a duty to both their shareholders and customers to not accept people who will definetly cost more than they can charge. By rights if someone's average medical expenses each month are $300, they should be charging them at least $300-$350 a month, otherwise they are stealing from their other customers.

Now... if you believe medical treatment is a right, then you shouldn't even be talking about insurance, you just set some guidelines for acceptable treatment and tax everybody to pay the national medical cost per year. There should be no insurance companies if health care is a right, and if it's not, then we have no business involving ourselves beyond the usual anti-trust regulations and such.

It's one or the other, the rest is just BS and emotional arguments to obscure. It is either a right or it isn't.

Any of the arguments people are otherwise suggesting could be applied to house or auto insurance, does someone have a right to get auto-insurance if they've crashed their car ten times in the last year? Of course not. Your house has mysteriously burned down five times and you've been diagnosed with pyromania? No, these arguments are only valid if healthcare is a right, if it is, health insurance is stupid, if it isn't, then the same rules as apply to other forms of insurance should apply. DEmanding a private company give people insurance when they know they'll spend more than they bring in is like asking car companies to sell cars based on the buyer's income, so an unemployed person can get one for free and a millionaire has to pay $100,000 for a pinto. If everyone has a right to a car, like they have a right to police or military protection, what's the point of having car dealerships?

Now, this is of course obvious, or should be, I think most people miss it. Ultimately it comes down to whether it's a right or not, and once in place the veils will start to drop. That's why so many of us on the right call it a naked power grab, trying to make everyone covered by insurance, because we know they know it's just a mechanism to hide the real intent. Perhaps we should have 'free' medical care for others, I don't favor it but I doubt it would be an unprecedented disaster, but all this other stuff is just smoke and mirrors, and that makes it a lie, and I don't trust politicians who do that, hence why I don't trust most politicians, even the ones I know and like.

All that said, there is room to consider subsidies for insurance, to help the poor, the equivalent of giving a tax break to people who buy, say, fuel-efficient american cars, a break that would by nature favor lower income buyers. There is room for the gov't to poke it's nose in, but this should always be done carefully, and currently everything has been rushed to capitalize - no pun intended - on post-election popularity and breathing space. Further, if the ultimate goal really is to get everyone health insurance, then it is, again, tnatamount to calling it a right, easier to just nationalize the blasted thing and get the fund via taxes as normal for such things.

But that should be done by passing direct legislation calling it that, an amendment preferably. If it is a right, then it should be in the constitution, or in a law that the supreme court can make a call on and say "is/isn't constituional". Just like all our other rights.