I am getting really tired of people spouting off about health INSURANCE when they mean health CARE.
People have this bizarre delusion that getting your drugs for $10 and spending $20 on a visit to your doctor is health insurance. This is not health insurance. This is health care. If you think it is insurance, you have no idea what insurance actually is. This is pretty sad as a lot of us have insurance and we only expect it to provide for us a benefit in the manner that insurance is supposed to. Insurance is gambling. You are betting that you will need help with a situation, the insurer is betting that you will not.
I have home owners insurance. I pay a very reasonable amount of money every month to a company who is betting that my house will not burn down, or be destroyed in a tornado or some other such CATASTROPHIC event. I do not expect for my premium that someone will come and mow my lawn, remove my snow, paint my house and landscape my lawn. They have organizations to do that. It's called a home owners association. You pay a fee and they come and do those things for you and the other folks in your community. That is not insurance.
I have life insurance. I pay a fee and in the event that I meet an untimely end, my wife and children have a shot at keeping the house and being comfortable. They don't send me money once a month to help pay my mortgage. That's not life insurance. That's an annuity. You can buy them, but they are kind of stupid unless you are retiring. They are kind of like reverse insurance. You spend a large lump sum to get a bunch of small payments instead of a bunch of small payments to get a large lump sum.
I have auto insurance. I don't get my car repaired for free, or regular maintenance for free, but if I wreck my car in an accident, it gets repaired or replaced.
Health insurance is to protect against catastrophic problems. What we are being asked to provide is preventative medicine which is the essence of an HMO. The thing I can't figure out is why is it that what everyone is gunning for when nobody seemed to like them.
I guess I am just too stupid to get it.
Pat.
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Pat- this is so dead on, I wish more people thought this way... the health insurance industry works pretty well, it is the health care system, lack of adequate preventative medicine and costs of health care that are the problem,. not the insurance industry... Brenda
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