Locking the barn door after the horse got away

[eridani]

That's exactly what this sop of requiring insurance companies to have Medical Loss Ratios of 85% is. Real regulation is flat out dictating what basic comprehensive insurance packages must contain and what they must cost. Every other developed country getting to universal health care via private insurance does this. So does every public utilities commission in the US.

What if we regulated utilities by merely requiring them to spend a certain percentage of their gross income on actual power generation? In that case, if grandma died when her respirator shut down due to a fake power 'shortage' designed to jack up electricity prices, the public utilities commission would very likely determine that during the last fiscal year they didn't spend enough of their gross on actual electricity. Dead grandma would then qualify for a refund on her utility bill, way too late to do her any good.

It is equally silly to expect to adequately regulate private health insurance this way.

Dear Mr and Mrs Sarkisian:

It's really too bad your daughter died when CIGNA wouldn't cover her liver transplant, but things will be ever so much better when we make requiring specific Medical Loss Ratios into law. After this reform, if the government determined that CIGNA's MLR was too low at the end of their fiscal year, you would get a premium refund! Isn't that WONDERFUL!

Yours truly,
Dr. Pangloss

[snagglepuss]

1. Ouch. K & R nt

[FrenchieCat]

2. Ooh...death panel talk.

[snagglepuss]

3. You have nothing to rebut this so you resort to idiocy. nt

[eridani]

4. Private insurance companies happen to be death panels

If you are going to allow them to exist, they have to be controlled in the same way that utility companies are controlled.

Care to try for a rational rebuttal to the above statement?

[ima_sinnic]

8. wow--is that you, Sawah? you got nothin, then

we know YOU're okay with spending any amount of money for nothing, as long as "democrats" tell you to, but that doesn't mean anybody else has to be cool with it.

One more thing Obama did not "fiercely advocate" for, since he "didn't" "campaign on" a public option, is some sort of REGULATION of insurance companies (since for some unknown reason, private insurance companies paying 9-figure bonuses for absolutely nothing are the ONLY WAY that health care can be achieved in this country). But why should he do that?

[eridani]

5. Still looking for a rational defense of why setting MLRs amounts to regulation n/t

[ima_sinnic]

6. kick

looks like the astroturfers are in a huddle.

curve balls are no fair!! :cry:

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

7. Rockefeller' original amendment was for 90/95% Medical loss ratio

which was gutted back to the 80/85% by Harry Reid in the Manager's Amendment - or that is my understanding.

The higher Medical Loss Ratio actually engraves profits in concrete to my view. Medicare has 3% overhead for comparison.

And no one anywhere has been able to make any point about how this will lower costs. It won't lower costs, because there is no price negotiation with any "stakeholder" in the bill. Obama bargained away drug negotiation for a pittance, and that has been where most of the price increases in cost of care have been concentrated.

We will have to address this issue over and over as healthcare CONTINUES to eat up the economy until we have a person with with a REAL appetite and will to lead for REAL reform. We did not get that in any way shape or form this time around.