Why are the WW2 vets angry at the Obama Admin?

[laklak]

With the exception of Obamacare and auto insurance (in most states), insurance is a voluntary, contractual relationship. If you own your home outright then you have no obligation to insure it. If you borrow money to buy the house, the lender may require you to carry insurance on it, but again that's a voluntary relationship, no one is forcing you to borrow the money.

[piscator]

But all insurance claims are paid with OPM, which is my point. One uses an OPM collective whenever he insures anything.



"Voluntary or not", aside from being merely personal states of mind in this case, are Seth's attempt to change the subject from his obvious error in thinking that insurance claims are paid by other than OPM.

Insurance is collectivist and socialist. Insurance is always voluntary.

Don't want to be required to indemnify against auto-related liability? Don't drive or own a vehicle.
Don't want to insure your health under Obamacare? Don't show an income, or show the ability to self-insure.
They're quite a bit alike in that they are both based on your voluntary choices, either to drive or to not qualify for Medicaid or indigent care.

[pErvinalia]

Not that I want to support the libbo cause, but seeing as they couldn't argue their way out of a wet paper bag, I'll do it for them

It is indeed OPM, but with insurance being a somewhat free market sort of thing, if it becomes too expensive to insure (i.e. OPM starts running out), the market will either account for that or fail. With gov health care, the libbo argument would be that it could never self correct if it was running out of OPM. It would just keep going and running on debt. Now, I personally would prefer to fund healthcare out of debt (if that was indeed required) than corporate welfare and a bloated military and global hegemony. But what do I know, I'm just a pinko lesbian Stalinite...

[Seth]

What the hell do you think insurance is? In case you don't know, it's risk management via Other People's Money.

Not when it's compulsory.

So you're under the impression that it's some form of magic, not other people's insurance payments, that pay your insurance claims?

Well, in an actual free-market insurance system the express agreement one makes to contribute to the risk pool finances when one joins the risk pool is entirely voluntary. One is not compelled to enter the risk pool or pay premiums if one does not want to...except in Obamacare, where it's "join the risk pool and pay premiums or we will shoot you in the head." It's pure extortion and slavery, nothing else.

[Seth]

But all insurance claims are paid with OPM, which is my point. One uses an OPM collective whenever he insures anything.

Using OPM is only a bad thing when government power is used to extort and steal it from people against their will, as redistributive taxation does. Using OPM while engaged in a voluntary contractual relationship is perfectly acceptable.

"Voluntary or not", aside from being merely personal states of mind in this case, are Seth's attempt to change the subject from his obvious error in thinking that insurance claims are paid by other than OPM.

Insurance is collectivist and socialist. Insurance is always voluntary.

Not Obamacare. It's compulsory. I'm required to labor by order of the government and/or turn over my private property to the State (albeit indirectly through the health insurance industry) for use by others under threat of imprisonment or death. That's slavery pure and simple.

Don't want to be required to indemnify against auto-related liability? Don't drive or own a vehicle.

Correct.

Don't want to insure your health under Obamacare? Don't show an income, or show the ability to self-insure.

I'm not aware of a self-insurance exemption. As for not showing an income, while it is true that one is exempt if one doesn't have any income, the idea that one is required to live in poverty in order to be free from being enslaved by the government is pernicious and evil and goes against every principle of liberty and freedom that exists.

They're quite a bit alike in that they are both based on your voluntary choices, either to drive or to not qualify for Medicaid or indigent care.

Only because you wish to draw that false equivalency. One does not have a fundamental constitutional right to operate a motor vehicle on a public highway without liability insurance. One does have a fundamental constitutional right to work and make a profit.

[Coito ergo sum]

Regarding insurance companies and OPM, most of the money insurance companies make is as a result of investing the money paid in in premiums.

Yes, in a sense, any insurance payout was once OPM, but that's only in the same way that the money you pay for food was also once OPM. You were paid a wage or income of some kind from someone else, or you sold a product, like a used car. That OPM is then used by you. So, the same is true for an insurance company. They sell a product -- insurance. You pay in a premium and if the designated risk comes to fruition then you get a certain payout. If it doesn't, the insurance company keeps the premium in compensation for running the risk. In the meantime, the premiums you pay them are invested in various investment vehicles.

There is nothing really resembling "socialism" in a private insurance market. It's pooled risk, not socialism.

[piscator]

Regarding insurance companies and OPM, most of the money insurance companies make is as a result of investing the money paid in in premiums.

Yes, in a sense, any insurance payout was once OPM, but that's only in the same way that the money you pay for food was also once OPM. You were paid a wage or income of some kind from someone else, or you sold a product, like a used car. That OPM is then used by you. So, the same is true for an insurance company. They sell a product -- insurance. You pay in a premium and if the designated risk comes to fruition then you get a certain payout. If it doesn't, the insurance company keeps the premium in compensation for running the risk. In the meantime, the premiums you pay them are invested in various investment vehicles.

There is nothing really resembling "socialism" in a private insurance market. It's pooled risk, not socialism.

With all due respect to your presumptive pecuniary pedantry, Professor Pinhead, insurance companies invest premiums mostly in government bonds.

And who pays the coupons on government bonds? ...Taxpayers.

[piscator]

Not that I want to support the libbo cause, but seeing as they couldn't argue their way out of a wet paper bag, I'll do it for them

It is indeed OPM, but with insurance being a somewhat free market sort of thing, if it becomes too expensive to insure (i.e. OPM starts running out), the market will either account for that or fail. With gov health care, the libbo argument would be that it could never self correct if it was running out of OPM. It would just keep going and running on debt. Now, I personally would prefer to fund healthcare out of debt (if that was indeed required) than corporate welfare and a bloated military and global hegemony. But what do I know, I'm just a pinko lesbian Stalinite...

The larger the group of insured people, the cheaper insurance is for everyone vs the same risk, as management and most overhead is divided by a larger number, and the Law of Large Numbers makes claim payments easier to predict with increasing number of policyholders.

Insurance is profitable when predictions of payments are accurate, and few endeavors maximize economies of scale the way insurance does.

[Seth]

Regarding insurance companies and OPM, most of the money insurance companies make is as a result of investing the money paid in in premiums.

Yes, in a sense, any insurance payout was once OPM, but that's only in the same way that the money you pay for food was also once OPM. You were paid a wage or income of some kind from someone else, or you sold a product, like a used car. That OPM is then used by you. So, the same is true for an insurance company. They sell a product -- insurance. You pay in a premium and if the designated risk comes to fruition then you get a certain payout. If it doesn't, the insurance company keeps the premium in compensation for running the risk. In the meantime, the premiums you pay them are invested in various investment vehicles.

There is nothing really resembling "socialism" in a private insurance market. It's pooled risk, not socialism.

With all due respect to your presumptive pecuniary pedantry, Professor Pinhead, insurance companies invest premiums mostly in government bonds.

And who pays the coupons on government bonds? ...Taxpayers.

I'd have to see the evidence for this claim I'm afraid. And even if true, that's irrelevant to the central point here, which is that private free-market pooled risk insurance is entirely different from government-mandated involuntary servitude and labor required to fund a "universal" risk pool by government fiat.

[Seth]

Not that I want to support the libbo cause, but seeing as they couldn't argue their way out of a wet paper bag, I'll do it for them

It is indeed OPM, but with insurance being a somewhat free market sort of thing, if it becomes too expensive to insure (i.e. OPM starts running out), the market will either account for that or fail. With gov health care, the libbo argument would be that it could never self correct if it was running out of OPM. It would just keep going and running on debt. Now, I personally would prefer to fund healthcare out of debt (if that was indeed required) than corporate welfare and a bloated military and global hegemony. But what do I know, I'm just a pinko lesbian Stalinite...

The larger the group of insured people, the cheaper insurance is for everyone vs the same risk, as management and most overhead is divided by a larger number, and the Law of Large Numbers makes claim payments easier to predict with increasing number of policyholders.

Insurance is profitable when predictions of payments are accurate, and few endeavors maximize economies of scale the way insurance does.

Correct. Unfortunately with mandatory health insurance the actuarial tables don't apply and here's why:

When assessing risk to set premiums, an actuary looks at the nature of the risk pool and the perils covered and attempts to create a risk pool that is large enough to fund the necessary payouts plus overhead and profits, but small enough and select enough to exclude the extraordinary outliers in the pool who can cause the funding pool to be drawn down by either an individual catastrophic claim or by many such claims.

Most perils can be pretty closely calculated which is how insurance companies continue to exist. Plus, the company can both exclude expensive outliers by denying coverage for repeated claims, and it can pick and choose who will be allowed into the risk pool and under what conditions. This is the only way for them to control payouts and make a profit.

Obamacare's primary problem from the actuarial standpoint is that the law forbids excluding pre-existing conditions and requires insurers to insure pretty much anyone who applies.

This means that the sickest of the sick (like me) can get coverage in spite of health problems that constitute a 100 percent guarantee of blowing the actuarial risk calculations right out of the water. As it is today, even with the system we have where lots of people can't get insurance because of pre-existing conditions (like me) something like 15% of the very sickest of the sick consume something like 85% of the health care resources the insurance companies have to pay for.

As long as the insurance companies can somehow limit the pool and the perils covered, it can make a profit while still paying according to the contract.

But when they are required to accept ANYONE (like me) who is already sick with something that will cost possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat, they can no longer accurately calculate their risk, and must raise premiums to cover the costs of treating people who, rather than having a calculable CHANCE of needing compensation are CERTAIN to have a need for compensation, usually of enormous size. This raises the costs to everyone in the risk pool who is NOT sick right now, but MIGHT get sick later.

No insurance company can do business without the ability to exclude financially burdensome outliers like the 80 year old lady who has terminal cancer and is going to die no matter what, but who will now be able to demand expensive treatment that will extend her life a few months or years. That's why insurance companies have lifetime limits. No company, and indeed no nation on earth can provide top-quality unlimited health care to every single person in the nation who gets sick, particularly those with hugely expensive problems. It's just not possible economically. Somebody's got to die. Somebody's got to be denied coverage, otherwise NOBODY will be able to a) afford the premiums (happening right this second); and b) get any health care at all when the whole system collapses.

The only thing government can do, and is doing in every place where socialized medicine exists, is to ration health care and determine who will live and who will die based on what the government can afford to provide by way of expensive medical care.

And that's where "death panels" come in... Does Granny get her cancer drugs or do we spend the money on ten kids with curable forms of cancer?

Who decides? What gives them the right or power to decide who lives and who dies?

In market-based insurance, the patient decides whether to pay for top-tier care or something less, and those who are so sick that they cannot be effectively treated without bankrupting the company just have to step aside and take responsibility for their own lives.

It's sad, but true. Everybody dies. All socialized medicine does is keep some people alive and comfortable a bit longer at the expense of providing good care to everybody else. And the longer it goes on, the less care everybody gets, and the lower the quality, because socialist notions of "fairness" dictate that the pain of bankrupt government budgets must be shared "equally" among everyone. That's Marxism's fundamental premise: shared misery, penury and death. All of which are okay with Marxists so long as everybody is equally miserable.

[MrJonno]

Yet more socialism, the healthy subsidising the medical costs of the ill, is there no limit to the evils of 'Marxism'.

Those without children will have to paying for children to go to school is going to be next , once people hear about that revolution is around the corner with the screams of 'Liberty, fuck the poor,children and sick'

[Seth]

Yet more socialism, the healthy subsidising the medical costs of the ill, is there no limit to the evils of 'Marxism'.

If it's such a good thing, why do socialists have to force people to do it? Why can't they depend on the charitable and altruistic nature of human beings to take care of those truly in need?

Answer: Because people don't like to be enslaved to the service of others against their will, whereas they are very often perfectly willing to help those in need voluntarily when and where they can do so.

Those without children will have to paying for children to go to school is going to be next , once people hear about that revolution is around the corner with the screams of 'Liberty, fuck the poor,children and sick'

Not at all. The issue here is compulsion, the use of government force to enslave people not to the benefit of the poor or the children, but to the needs of the government itself. You see, if people fund schools or health care voluntarily and directly, government bureaucrats can't skim 30 percent off the top to keep them in hookers and blow.

The Marxist elite aren't stupid, they know perfectly well that they have to forcibly steal what the proletariat produces in order to continue to enjoy their "entitlements" as the rulers of society because if given a choice, the proletariat won't agree to pay the elite what they have decided is just compensation for their political labor.

If people in a community want their kids to go to school and become educated, as every non dependent-class parent does, then they will find a way to fund their schools voluntarily, at the local or state level (you see, education is NOT a federal matter at all...never has been), without sending a third of their money to some fat fuck in Washington.

But the dependent class socialists don't like the voluntary model because it allows people to opt out of paying for their indolent lifestyle, and they don't like that one little bit. So, they advocate enslaving everyone who is productive to those who choose not to be productive whom the rest of us would gladly allow to experience an ache in their bellies as a motivation to put away the crack pipe and pick up a shovel in order to alleviate their hunger by actually working and producing wealth.

People who are really in need through no fault of their own have gotten help from their communities without the need for a federal bureaucracy siphoning off a third.

Kids have always been educated without a federal bureaucracy meddling in local and state affairs.

Federal welfare bureaucracies serve federal employees first and foremost and the indolent, arrogant and lazy dependent class second, and people in genuine legitimate need third at best.

Nothing the feds do can't be done better and more economically at the local and state level. Don't need them at all.

[Audley Strange]

Not that I want to support the libbo cause, but seeing as they couldn't argue their way out of a wet paper bag, I'll do it for them

It is indeed OPM, but with insurance being a somewhat free market sort of thing, if it becomes too expensive to insure (i.e. OPM starts running out), the market will either account for that or fail. With gov health care, the libbo argument would be that it could never self correct if it was running out of OPM. It would just keep going and running on debt. Now, I personally would prefer to fund healthcare out of debt (if that was indeed required) than corporate welfare and a bloated military and global hegemony. But what do I know, I'm just a pinko lesbian Stalinite...

The larger the group of insured people, the cheaper insurance is for everyone vs the same risk, as management and most overhead is divided by a larger number, and the Law of Large Numbers makes claim payments easier to predict with increasing number of policyholders.

Insurance is profitable when predictions of payments are accurate, and few endeavors maximize economies of scale the way insurance does.

Correct. Unfortunately with mandatory health insurance the actuarial tables don't apply and here's why:

When assessing risk to set premiums, an actuary looks at the nature of the risk pool and the perils covered and attempts to create a risk pool that is large enough to fund the necessary payouts plus overhead and profits, but small enough and select enough to exclude the extraordinary outliers in the pool who can cause the funding pool to be drawn down by either an individual catastrophic claim or by many such claims.

Most perils can be pretty closely calculated which is how insurance companies continue to exist. Plus, the company can both exclude expensive outliers by denying coverage for repeated claims, and it can pick and choose who will be allowed into the risk pool and under what conditions. This is the only way for them to control payouts and make a profit.

Obamacare's primary problem from the actuarial standpoint is that the law forbids excluding pre-existing conditions and requires insurers to insure pretty much anyone who applies.

This means that the sickest of the sick (like me) can get coverage in spite of health problems that constitute a 100 percent guarantee of blowing the actuarial risk calculations right out of the water. As it is today, even with the system we have where lots of people can't get insurance because of pre-existing conditions (like me) something like 15% of the very sickest of the sick consume something like 85% of the health care resources the insurance companies have to pay for.

As long as the insurance companies can somehow limit the pool and the perils covered, it can make a profit while still paying according to the contract.

But when they are required to accept ANYONE (like me) who is already sick with something that will cost possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat, they can no longer accurately calculate their risk, and must raise premiums to cover the costs of treating people who, rather than having a calculable CHANCE of needing compensation are CERTAIN to have a need for compensation, usually of enormous size. This raises the costs to everyone in the risk pool who is NOT sick right now, but MIGHT get sick later.

No insurance company can do business without the ability to exclude financially burdensome outliers like the 80 year old lady who has terminal cancer and is going to die no matter what, but who will now be able to demand expensive treatment that will extend her life a few months or years. That's why insurance companies have lifetime limits. No company, and indeed no nation on earth can provide top-quality unlimited health care to every single person in the nation who gets sick, particularly those with hugely expensive problems. It's just not possible economically. Somebody's got to die. Somebody's got to be denied coverage, otherwise NOBODY will be able to a) afford the premiums (happening right this second); and b) get any health care at all when the whole system collapses.

The only thing government can do, and is doing in every place where socialized medicine exists, is to ration health care and determine who will live and who will die based on what the government can afford to provide by way of expensive medical care.

And that's where "death panels" come in... Does Granny get her cancer drugs or do we spend the money on ten kids with curable forms of cancer?

Who decides? What gives them the right or power to decide who lives and who dies?

In market-based insurance, the patient decides whether to pay for top-tier care or something less, and those who are so sick that they cannot be effectively treated without bankrupting the company just have to step aside and take responsibility for their own lives.

It's sad, but true. Everybody dies. All socialized medicine does is keep some people alive and comfortable a bit longer at the expense of providing good care to everybody else. And the longer it goes on, the less care everybody gets, and the lower the quality, because socialist notions of "fairness" dictate that the pain of bankrupt government budgets must be shared "equally" among everyone. That's Marxism's fundamental premise: shared misery, penury and death. All of which are okay with Marxists so long as everybody is equally miserable.

You know it's amazing how much I agree with you on that yet think you have the entire thing ass-backwards blaming Marxists rather than Plutocrats. Still they're both a bunch of cunts so in the end that's all that matters.

[laklak]

Marx would likely have called then "finance aristocrats", but if it looks like a plutocrat, walks like a plutocrat, etc.

Under the U.S. system, if the dependent class grows to a sufficient percentage of the population they'll be able to vote themselves all the free shit they want. So they are, in effect, the lumpenproletariat under classical Marxism, dependent for their very existence on the ruling elite's success.

[piscator]

Not that I want to support the libbo cause, but seeing as they couldn't argue their way out of a wet paper bag, I'll do it for them

It is indeed OPM, but with insurance being a somewhat free market sort of thing, if it becomes too expensive to insure (i.e. OPM starts running out), the market will either account for that or fail. With gov health care, the libbo argument would be that it could never self correct if it was running out of OPM. It would just keep going and running on debt. Now, I personally would prefer to fund healthcare out of debt (if that was indeed required) than corporate welfare and a bloated military and global hegemony. But what do I know, I'm just a pinko lesbian Stalinite...

The larger the group of insured people, the cheaper insurance is for everyone vs the same risk, as management and most overhead is divided by a larger number, and the Law of Large Numbers makes claim payments easier to predict with increasing number of policyholders.

Insurance is profitable when predictions of payments are accurate, and few endeavors maximize economies of scale the way insurance does.

Correct. Unfortunately with mandatory health insurance the actuarial tables don't apply and here's why:

When assessing risk to set premiums, an actuary looks at the nature of the risk pool and the perils covered and attempts to create a risk pool that is large enough to fund the necessary payouts plus overhead and profits, but small enough and select enough to exclude the extraordinary outliers in the pool who can cause the funding pool to be drawn down by either an individual catastrophic claim or by many such claims.

Most perils can be pretty closely calculated which is how insurance companies continue to exist. Plus, the company can both exclude expensive outliers by denying coverage for repeated claims, and it can pick and choose who will be allowed into the risk pool and under what conditions. This is the only way for them to control payouts and make a profit.

Obamacare's primary problem from the actuarial standpoint is that the law forbids excluding pre-existing conditions and requires insurers to insure pretty much anyone who applies.

This means that the sickest of the sick (like me) can get coverage in spite of health problems that constitute a 100 percent guarantee of blowing the actuarial risk calculations right out of the water. As it is today, even with the system we have where lots of people can't get insurance because of pre-existing conditions (like me) something like 15% of the very sickest of the sick consume something like 85% of the health care resources the insurance companies have to pay for.

As long as the insurance companies can somehow limit the pool and the perils covered, it can make a profit while still paying according to the contract.

But when they are required to accept ANYONE (like me) who is already sick with something that will cost possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat, they can no longer accurately calculate their risk, and must raise premiums to cover the costs of treating people who, rather than having a calculable CHANCE of needing compensation are CERTAIN to have a need for compensation, usually of enormous size. This raises the costs to everyone in the risk pool who is NOT sick right now, but MIGHT get sick later.

No insurance company can do business without the ability to exclude financially burdensome outliers like the 80 year old lady who has terminal cancer and is going to die no matter what, but who will now be able to demand expensive treatment that will extend her life a few months or years. That's why insurance companies have lifetime limits. No company, and indeed no nation on earth can provide top-quality unlimited health care to every single person in the nation who gets sick, particularly those with hugely expensive problems. It's just not possible economically. Somebody's got to die. Somebody's got to be denied coverage, otherwise NOBODY will be able to a) afford the premiums (happening right this second); and b) get any health care at all when the whole system collapses.

The only thing government can do, and is doing in every place where socialized medicine exists, is to ration health care and determine who will live and who will die based on what the government can afford to provide by way of expensive medical care.

And that's where "death panels" come in... Does Granny get her cancer drugs or do we spend the money on ten kids with curable forms of cancer?

Who decides? What gives them the right or power to decide who lives and who dies?

In market-based insurance, the patient decides whether to pay for top-tier care or something less, and those who are so sick that they cannot be effectively treated without bankrupting the company just have to step aside and take responsibility for their own lives.

It's sad, but true. Everybody dies. All socialized medicine does is keep some people alive and comfortable a bit longer at the expense of providing good care to everybody else. And the longer it goes on, the less care everybody gets, and the lower the quality, because socialist notions of "fairness" dictate that the pain of bankrupt government budgets must be shared "equally" among everyone. That's Marxism's fundamental premise: shared misery, penury and death. All of which are okay with Marxists so long as everybody is equally miserable.

You know it's amazing how much I agree with you on that yet think you have the entire thing ass-backwards blaming Marxists rather than Plutocrats. Still they're both a bunch of cunts so in the end that's all that matters.

Well. to start with, health insurance claims are in no way pareto-optimized to the point where 15% use 85% of claim payments.At the high end, maybe 2% of claims cost 8% of claim dollars. Histograms of health insurance claim frequency vs claim size show parabolas where upper tails vanish to tiny slivers of the total amount of claims.

Secondly, the bulk of costs for health insurance and workman's comp claims over $1m are drug costs and hospital services. These costs come down with the economies of scale and increased buying leverage of a centralized purchasing system.
That's right, I said "Centralized", like Apple, and McDonald's. Big buyers get better prices than small lot buyers.

Thirdly, there is a long and vast history of statistical info from places where health services have long been provided to people with pre-existing conditions, so the ACA is not launching the nation into great risky unknown where actuaries have no observations on which to base profitable premium structures.

Fourthly, for an increasing number of claims, average claim size decreases. Moreover, with freely available preventive and primary care, more conditions are caught and treated before they become massively expensive.

Fifthly, "Death Panels" are currently being run by the profit motive of private insurers. Get sick enough, and you lose the ability to ever have insurance again. It may be a death sentence, but they've determined there's just no money to be made off you. Sad, but in some cases you have the condolences of the company that used to insure you.

Sixthly, while Seth is very sick (yet healthy enough to spend his nights running through the underbrush hunting feral hogs with custom rifles in arcane wildcat calibers), most health insurance claims are made by people who can be cured and go on to live productive lives.
Most people would rather live than die or be permanently crippled from a broken leg due to lack of medical care brought about by an arbitrary decision to term national health insurance "Vile Marxism". In fact, most people with broken legs go to the hospital and worry about paying later. Oftentimes the government picks up the tab at one of the "free" hospitals currently supported by the "involuntary servitude" of taxpayers.
True, we're all going to die. But very few of us want to die in a symbolic laissez faire gesture to insure the profitability of the American insurance industry. Seth can if he wants though. His family will have my condolences.