Incorrect.  You've been lied to.  Malpractice has come way down in Texas, the ratio of doctors to patients has gone way up, and cost changes are way down from the national average.

The brain drain from the surrounding states has been quite substantial.  Rates are still dropping too.  TMLT, a mutual(most malpractice insurance is through mutuals), has been paying historically massive dividends back to their policy holders as they keep dropping the premiums from year to year without managing to break even.  For those of you that don't know, a Mutual is non-profit, and pays the excess revenue back to the policy holders, that's the above mentioned dividend.  They've dropped rates around 30% so far, and are still paying out dividends around 20%.

On the opposite end of the equation, health insurance premiums have increased 25% over the last six years.  That's well below the national average of 33%.  In the stupid states, where they haven't even done half witted tort reform, it's around 45%.

As far as the new policies bit goes, if they have to conform to a set of requirements on what goes in a policy, there isn't any private insurance.  Having multiple people sell you the exact same policy the government has, at a higher cost thanks to the insurance companies not having a tax payer subsidized price, isn't having an option.

They've been trying to kill them for decades, anyone that believes they wont use this framework to take them out at the first opportunity is deluding themselves.  As long as they've shifted enough of the population onto the public dole first, it wont even hurt them politically when they do it.

I'm curious as to how many of you have heard of Wendell Potter. He formerly had the top PR job at CIGNA until he retired recently. He testified before the senate about the motives of the for-profit insurers:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/Potter%20Commerce%20Committee%20written%20testimony%20-%2020090624-%20FINAL.pdf

I would strongly encourage anyone who is interested in the health care debate to read his testimony.

Comments on it?

He's dead on.  I've had happen to me exactly what he describes - our small group health plan was 'purged' late last year and we were 'lucky' to get any coverage for our employees - we were 'bare' for 3 months and ended up paying nearly twice as much (and had to pony up 'first & last' premiums, to boot) for much less in the way of benefits when literally the only other option was telling our employees, sorry - we can't offer you health insurance.  It wasn't entirely altruistic that we bit that bullet: we were over a barrel, too - we couldn't get any coverage for ourselves otherwise.

I'm not a proponent of UHC and, given a limited choice of two, would prefer, even with my experiences and knowing what I know about large insurers, a Wall Street-run plan to a government-run plan.  I'd rather identify and prohibit the egregious practices highlighted by Potter, setting equitable rules of the game with suitable consumer protections, than throw out the baby with the bathwater.

One of the (many) ironies is that Cigna, United and several of the other big players got big thanks to government subsidies to incentivize HMO development.  HMO's were always intended to be field trials of top-down 'managed care' - mini single-payer experiments, if you will.  The government consciously sought to use 'stockholder interests' in for-profit HMO's as a way of holding down expenditures - low and behold, they inevitably succeeded, as Potter eloquent confirms.  By the time the HMO model fell somewhat out of favor, the companies were big enough to apply those principles to commercial indemnity insurance.  They had learned that heavy command-and-control bureaucracies were more expensive than simply binging and purging.  Now that success is being used as a club against them.  The way of the world in big-league politics.

True, but let's put taxation "principles" in perspective;

Income brackets already use a pro-rata variation based on deductibles which can lower their participative effects when tallied in a number of different ways.

1- Capital gains off-shooted as investment growth owned & kept.

2- Percentages relative to actual taxable incomes... not in a sense that maximums can be reached but rather if such maximal ratios carry stable (or consistant) value when paid up.

3- Capacity to share outside the scope of business stability concerns IF cash-flow is obtained from necessary risk reserves. In which case, the taxable incomes must be obtained before protected liabilities rather than within gains mentioned in #1.

4- All of this, presuming personal assets are solvable "values".

Then the fair share you introduced is more about responsabilities than probable lackthereof if justified by any economic "laws & regulations" that protect (without which growth and innovations wouldn't exist, btw) such values as stated in #2 or made available by #3.

It would be easier to understand if he did it, but not by much...

Yeah, because they sentence people to dismemberment, stoning, or beheading instead of jail time. Most of the drug offenses we jail people for are capital offenses in Islamic nations, and their appeals processes are sketchy at best. It doesn't take them more than a few weeks to go from arrest to chopping block.

Very well, since you can't seem to get the point: No one here really thinks people with preexisting conditions should be uninsurable, or any of the other bullshit brought up in the testamony linked to earlier. Most of us don't have much issue with paying for other people's problems with our insurance premiums. The situation we want to avoid is that the people with insurance will be paying the insurance that covers themselves AND the premiums for those the public option is going to cover (many of whom make far more than me, BTW).

What we need to do is straighten out the ratfuck that we let the insurance laws become, then get the hell out of it. The very poor are already covered with existing systems and if we fix the existing insurance system it will work for almost everyone else.

Not that I'm advocating this, but something like the Saudi drug sentences would result in hundreds of thousands of executions each year until people wised up. China also avoids long drawn out legal affairs and has some pretty severe penalties as well. And almost no country coddles inmates as much as we do. Come on, cable TV is a Constitutionally protected right for inmates.

There were just short of two million drug related arrests last year. Less than a quarter were juveniles, but still well north of one point five million adults were arrested at some point last year due to drugs. How many of those offensives do you think would have occurred if a conviction was a near certain death sentence carried out within weeks, not decades?

An actual effective death penalty had a substantial deterrence effect.

I get to be a racist.  Sweet.

It's them damn black people!  Seriously!

Iowa, the bottom of the list, 2.7% black.  Louisiana?  32% black.  We should just exterminate the black people and then there wont be any high murder rates!  ZOMG!!!

If anyone takes that seriously and decides I hate black people, please sterilize yourself.  Immediately.

I know the bars look really cool, but you're just as dumb as the idiots in the drive by media when you fall for such narrow minded crap.  Population demographics are and always have been the primary contributor to crime rates, and it doesn't even take thirty seconds to find out for yourself.  Start here.

How about this?

We just do away with any kind of insurance for anything - for everyone.

Let everyone pay for what they need on their own, or through the simple charity of others - or suffer the consequences thereof.

Because, you know what? Once everyone has 'insurance' premiums at a cost below that of the actual care or benefits they receive - whether it be for car or house or health or whatever - there will be some (many) that will be 'opted out'. Because you can't pay for something with not enough money. It will always turn into a system where the 'most important' get covered at the cost and detriment of the 'least important'.

The whole 'insurance' game has never been more than what we had in the early 1900's with the mob demanding 'protection' money. It has simply grown/evolved into a 'legitimate' business, which now the government want's a piece of.

Some of the world's largest purges of hatred are Christian led.. so don't get on your I'm with Jesus soap box..

And if citing an actual example of a people that totally mismanaged their own care during a problem and came running to the world for help, is racist you sir are a fool. 

I wasn't gloating either. Glad you saw it that way.  PS the KKK is a Christian organization.. they'd like to talk to you about how to better serve your people (chances are you won't agree with what they intend is best for your people as they are full of hate)

Again if you want to run a CHARITY WARD... do it with your OWN MONEY...

Goodwill does it

There are VAST number of Christian Charities too numerous to count that do it too...

The GOVERNMENT doesn't and shouldn't be involved in CHARITY WORK...

There are two kinds of folks in the world, Those that provide (for themselves and others) and those that don't.  This measure is MOSTLY supported by those that don't.

You shouldn't be interested in free health care for junkies, the unemployed, the catastrophically ill. 

Were you aware that 70% of all your medical costs are spent in the last 5 years of your life?

That's right.. 70% of the money you spend on medical care will be spent in a last gasp effort to live just a little bit longer.

Instead of logically assessing how much your continued existence is worth and deciding that exiting with dignity you will go kicking and screaming.  Why?

Doesn't paradise await the faithful? I know it does for me. 

She could have had a much less painful and more dignified passing at Hospice, with charity care paid for by those that support that sort of thing.  It would have been sooner and she would have suffered less.

And ending Medicare doesn't bankrupt families, unless they are simple enough to sign away everything to keep mom and dad alive 2 years more...

I like this idea. However, the VAST majority of sheeple are incapable of thinking in terms of long term (more than a month away) planning  ..

Insurance as a medium SHOULD be available for EMERGENCIES.

The problem, the biggest problem, with Healthcare is that it seems MANY people want other people to 'care for them'. 

I have never asked anyone outside my mom and dad to help me with managing my Juvenile Diabetes.  I have lived almost 30 years with a disease that kills if untreated. 

I have had to make choices, not all of which I liked, to work for companies large enough to provide insurance coverage for 'pre-existing conditions' 

I manage as best I can.  I own my own home.  I haven't ever maintained a long term relationship out of respect for those I love and not wanting or desiring to saddle my care needs onto anyone else. 

I don't need America to provide me my health care.  If they can't I can do it myself, it just gets expensive.

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my death will be 16ish times more likely to be from Heart Attack or Stroke, which run on both sides of my family. 

It isn't YOUR concern to care for me.

It isn't MY concern to care for you.

I happen to know a great deal of people that would gladly do so, but my own pride won't allow them to.

Americans on the whole seem to be getting progressively weaker, mentally, physically, spiritually. 

The overriding reason?  PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY.

No one is willing to hold themselves responsible for their own failures.