Isaiah Roman

The Insurance Game

An interesting truth was revealed to me recently. It’s an interesting thought process, which I had suspicions about, but could never quite put my finger on the details: Insurance is wrong.

I realize that’s a strange thought. I realize that convention tells us that the idea of insurance is a good thing. I also know that, because of current social circumstances, it is impossible, or nearly impossible, for you to get by without insurance. Yet, the concept of insurance is, in itself, socialism. Let me take a moment to explain.

If you have a history of bad health, you are charged more by the insurance company. If you have a history of good health, you are charged less by the insurance company. Therefore, the less healthy are charged a different rate than those who are more healthy. This determination assigns a value to each person, based upon their classification within that scale. If you look at the model of insurance, those persons who have a greater risk are worth more than those who are not. Accordingly, they are taxed more in order to spread out the benefits of insurance to everyone according to their need. Each according to his ability to each according to his need. Socialism.

Once upon a time there was not medicaid, no medicare, no standardized work-place insurance. When you wanted to have a doctor examine you, you had to negotiate one on one with the doctor. Because you had to dip into your own pocket for the funds, you weren’t willing to pay beyond  your means. Ultimately, this means that either you didn’t go to the doctor as often, or at all, or you refused to pay what you could not pay. Doctors had less patients. Doctors made less money. There were less doctors.

Does this mean that the standard of living was lower? Does this mean that there were more people dying at younger ages? If you look at the actual statistics of mortality rates, you’d be surprised how little difference “modern” medicine has made in the general human condition. People feel better. People look better. People have fewer worries, but overall, the death rate remains the same; one per person.

Insurance began as a way to handle extreme circumstances. It was called accident insurance, or catastrophic insurance. It was intended that people would pool their money and when a major event would happen, an event which reached a level of catastrophe, an event which resulted in damage that no one person could compensate for, that the pool of money would assist in the damage recovery. Then people started making money from insurance. When this happens you have created an industry. In industry your goal is to increase business and increase profits. To accomplish this goal you charge more. If you can’t charge more, you diversify. You offer more products and services for sale.

As this diversification began to happen in the insurance business, the insurance company began to insert itself between you and the doctor. Here’s the unseen truth; when the insurance company started to insert itself between the patient and the doctor, the doctor was released from the pressures of maintaining price controls. You no longer care how much you’re spending on a visit to the doctor, because you don’t actually pay for the doctor visit. Doctors know that the insurance companies are loaded with cash. They know that the pool of money developed by the insurance industry is larger than the number of patients, because the insurance companies work very hard to maximize profits by modifying their membership base. This is now an opportunity for the Doctors to increase their rates without feedback from the consumer.

As a response, people demand a certain level of care. When they don’t get that care they sue. Now the insurance companies offer insurance to the Doctor. The doctor takes insurance money for its patients, then turns around and give a good portion of that insurance money to another insurance company for protection from being sued. Now the cost of business is higher. The doctor has to charge more. Because he has to charge more, the insurance companies need to make more, or they need to charge more. All along, you are oblivious, because you’re still paying the same co-pay you’ve always paid. Yet, where do most people get their insurance?

Insurance companies told businesses that a good perk for valued employees would be covering their health expenses. They offered special group rates for companies who wanted to sign up all their employees, making it easy to get low rates for each person. Then, it became expected that if you were to get a job, your employer would offer health insurance. If an employer didn’t offer health insurance, then that employer wouldn’t attract the best employees. So it became almost de facto that a company must give health insurance in order to maintain a work force. Thus, the insurance companies began to force companies to pay more and more for their premiums as costs have risen. The companies don’t care, because they simply charge more for their products. Eventually, however, the rates reach a point where the company can no longer pay the whole bill. At that point the employees began to take on some of the responsibility.

They did so gladly, because they actually didn’t have to pay the full cost of insurance, because by this time the cost of insurance had become so exorbitant that no one individual could possibly pay the full cost.

Remember, this is all in the name of equality. This is all in the name of providing equal care to everyone, by charging everyone a certain rate, from which everyone shares. This, instead of having every individual negotiate their own individual rate with the service provider.

Now throw in the federal government. The government wants to mandate that each person must have health insurance. When each person has no choice but to buy health insurance it brings everything to it’s fruition. You no longer have a choice in negotiating anything. The insurance company (the government) has the say in what everyone pays and what everyone receives. But, the whole idea of insurance was so that the people could receive health care. When the government begins to force doctors into taking lower fees, because the industry cannot support the continual increase of costs, there will be fewer doctors. The problem is, that there will not be a lesser number of people demanding care. In essence, we will be back to the time when there was no insurance, but insurance will be a mandate. What does that really mean?

When the government becomes the insurance provider, it collects all of the money. When people have no incentive to become doctors, there are fewer doctors. More money, less places to spend it. It’s the insurance game, only you don’t have the choice of moving from one provider to another, one job or another, or even no insurance at all. It is a means of levying a tax, under the guise of individual benefit.

Social Security began as a way to insure the most needy of citizens in their time of greatest need. It was a tax on everyone to provide for those persons who could not provide for themselves. That’s the way it was sold to the American people. Altruistic as we are, we agreed this was a good idea… in principle. What naiveté. We have learned that Social Security is just another insurance scam. But, in this case, we learn that the industry standards of charging more, or diversifying also holds true. Forcing everyone to buy insurance is a diversification tactic. Eventually, however, there will be no more room to diversify, so there will necessarily be a price increase. That increase will come in the form of higher taxes.

So, I ask the question; what happens when that system reaches its limit? What happens when the government itself cannot meet the obligations it has guaranteed to the people? What happens when the whole world reaches a point where it does not have enough money to care for it’s customers? I’ll tell you what happens. It’s the exact same thing that had to happen in Germay, Russia, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, and every other communist country; genocide.

Sound a bit extreme? Take a look at history for yourself. See how many people died in the name of social justice. We don’t like to look at things like this because it’s frightening. We all like to think that something like this could never really happen. The problem is it’s already happened time and time again. What could possibly make you think it won’t happen just one more time? I know it sounds a bit extreme that something as basic, and in our culture as necessary, as insurance could possibly be extrapolated into something as heinous as genocide.

What I am pointing out is this; when men try to play God, they unleash a series of consequences, unintended consequences, which can only be calculated in hind-sight. Insurance is simply another way for humans to bond together as a herd in order to provide for those things which God has said he would provide for us; life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is a way for men to guarantee these things in lieu of God’s direct intervention. After all, God helps those who help themselves… right? In other words, the things that we think are good, and helpful, and right, more often than not turn out to be bad, and detrimental, and wrong more often than not. There is a history, a set of guidelines, a singular Truth which informs proper decision making. Ignore it at your own peril.