Selling Insurance Not Medical Care

Barack Obama is a one man traveling fun show these days.  He’s out everyday holding his famous town halls and campaigning like he’s running for President.  Why?

Because he needs to drum up support for his heath care bill being pushed through Congress right now.  And how is he doing it?  Is he talking about the merits of the bill?  Is he talking about how the costs will go down?  Is he talking about how much this will add to the deficit?

No and no and no.

What he is doing is hammering the health insurance companies.  Hammering them and the profits they make all the while screaming that they aren’t taking care of their customers.  You know, discriminating against those with pre-existing conditions.  It’s as if he and his adulators are without a clue as to what they are talking about.

See, insurance is a product.  It’s where a group of people run and administer a collection of other people in order to provide a service.  That service being insurance.  Now look, you can insure a TON of things.    You can insure that your cargo ship makes it across the ocean and arrives safely in port.  You can insure that your house doesn’t burn down and destroy all of your possessions.  Heck, you can insure your fantasy football players against injury.  You can insure almost anything.  But understand this one thing, they are selling RISK AVOIDANCE.  They are not selling the service that they insure.

That is, when I take out auto insurance, I don’t look to that company to provide me a car.  Similarly when I take out renters insurance, I don’t look to that insurance company to provide me a place to rent, or make sure that I keep the place I am renting.  No.  I go to these brokers because I want to spread risk.  Same with health insurance.

You go to a health insurance provider to insure that you don’t get sick or injured.  You should no sooner expect an insurance house to write you a policy on your house to protect against fire if it is currently ON fire.  Or an auto insurance firm to write you a policy for a car that just yesterday suffered an accident.  Why do we expect a firm who is in the business of spreading health risk to pick up the cost of your pre-existing medical care?

Obama is telling you why — Because it’s the right thing to do.

And it might be the right thing to do.  But why he is arbitrarily going after a single industry is beyond me.  I mean, why not force Best Buy to pay for my medical bills?  It would make just as much sense.

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