Reply #11: Not a big challenge

[izquierdista]

To convince people, that is. If you had seen "Sicko", you would not be asking the question if people think their private health insurance is efficient. Insurance is a scam run by the wealthy to take money away from the middle class. Note that the wealthy do not need insurance of any type; they can self-insure and save the costs of overhead. Do you really think that Warren Buffet has a GEICO insurance policy? No, it just makes lots of money for him to write those GEICO policies to cover the middle class.

What 'Sicko' pointed out, was that insurance company profits come ahead of any promise of payment on a claim. Insurance in itself is a socialist concept -- "from each according to his risk, to each according to his need". Capitalists turn this notion on its head and the profit comes first, the calculation of the premium second, and dead last, only when it cannot possibly be avoided, is the payment of claims.

The poor, they don't even have the ante to participate in the whole insurance scam anyway, so they get by as they always have -- doing without or maybe lucking out and receiving some charity. As long as the middle class can be fooled into thinking that they are "covered" (a nice word, with connotations of safety and support) the wealthy can continue to set up insurance companies, use the pooled capital for lucrative investments, and cry crocodile tears when it is time to pay out to a policy holder.