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What is the purpose of health insurance companies?

To be the middle man between doctors and patients? To tell us only healthy people can see a doctor? Why do we need them? Do they provide any service at all besides collecting money? Are you old enough to remember when doctors were healers and not in medicine to collect as much money as possible from your insurance company before the company drops you for being sick? Besides collecting money, what do insurance companies do? And don't say they help cover the high cost, the main reason for personal bankruptcy in this country is medical bills. These are people who had insurance, but were dropped because of major illness. So that's not it. (this actually drives the costs up) This country was built on small businesses, not on criminal big business that provides no service, no service at all. Can you imagine a world in which all you have to worry about when you are seriously ill... is getting well? Besides collecting money, what do insurance companies do? Must see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QwX_soZ1GI

Public Comments

1. Why don't you Google insurance if you don't understand the concept. Its really very simple.
2. Force people into bankruptcy and death.
3. They are like bookies and you are the race horse. They set the odds and most Americans are long shots.
4. obama is gonna take my guns and tax my still let jesus christ fix yer health problems god bless
5. We need to get rid of the current system. Let insurance be what it was meant to be, a system for covering you in case something catastrophic happens. We need a pay as you go system, let the free markets bring costs down for all.
6. Make you think you have coverage so you sleep better.......until you get really sick....then you better have prescription coverage for those sleeping pills you'll need as you lose your home and go on government assistance anyway.
7. You are right. The insurance companies cut the risks of paying for anything by dropping people with major illnesses/diseases or deny the kind of care that could save lives. We are between a rock and a hard place. All the chips are in the hands of insurers. This has to change.
8. .....And thats why we need a National Health Care Bill like the one Obama is trying to push through Congress! Blue Cross/Blue Shield and the drug companies don't want to hear it and their bribing the GOP as usual to keep things the way they are. Why do you think thousands cross the border to Canada for cheaper perscriptions and why is it that so many doctors come to America and turn their backs on their own country? Their all paid 1 set fee for each procedure by the goverment and that' that. People bitch about Socialized medicine, but you don't hear complaints from Canada, England, Finland, etc.
9. They redistribute wealth, by overcharging individuals and employers for insurance, skimming off whatever they think is an appropriate profit, and then investing the rest until a claim is filed. Then they pay lawyers huge fees to help them deny the claim. Customers pay, and insurance companies collect. Oh yeah, they also share the wealth by donating to Congressional campaign funds and by purchasing advertisements that oppose insurance reforms.
10. Insurance should be for catastrophic risks, the kind of risks which will drive people into bankruptcy. Health insurance in the U.S. is not for catastrophic risks. Health insurance companies have figured out ways to make lots of money by being middle men, doing the administration, collecting money in what is essentially a prepayment plan for ordinary run to the doctor kind of stuff. The insurance companies are middlemen even in government programs like Medicare. Medicare almost did not pass, but when President Johnson made a deal with the insurance companies that they would be paid many millions of dollars administrating the program as intermediaries, then they supported it. Just like banks have been looking for ways to make more and more money without taking on risks, so have insurance companies. There is a role for a government public option for catastrophic risks, but only if the insurance companies are kept out of it.