“And your theorical story is, of course, appalling. But how many times have you heard it? I have yet to see this happen, personally, and while I may be wrong, I was under the impression that there were already laws against that issue in many places.”

First of all, even if it was rare, it should still be illegal. Murder is relatively rare in this country (“only” about 5 per 100,000). Should it be legal if a company does it, because it is “rare”? And no, there weren’t laws against it in most places; that was the whole point of the national law. What laws did exist were actually written by insurance company lobbyists.

Second, we’re not talking about the flu or a broken leg here. Insurance companies were specifically targeting people with expensive diseases for rescission. That sort of undermines the reason we buy insurance in the first place, doesn’t it? Would you lecture Wellpoint’s victims about “personal responsibility”?

Third, because of that targeting it is not at all rare when you consider the action of conditional probability on policy holders. The testimony given to Congress by insurance industry execs sounded less awful in absolute numbers, but the numbers look very different depending which set you compare them to. The rate of rescission was actually quite high in relation to the set of people to whom it mattered most.

Now if you feel that insurance companies shouldn’t have to insure people who might get sick, you’re making a very good argument for a public option. Which is what I wanted in the first place, and is one of my major disappointments with Obama. It all comes down to the mandate of public vs. private. Whatever the faults of either one, the public sector has a mandate of the general welfare, and the private sector has a mandate to make higher profits for the mutual funds that hold their stock. Maybe that business model is better suited to competitively-priced goods in open markets that don’t have life-or-death consequences, than to the health insurance industry. (Which as I’m sure you know, shares with professional baseball the distinction of being the only American industry that is exempt from anti-trust laws.)

Here’s a transcript of some of the Congressional hearings on Rescission. It’s pretty appalling stuff.

Also, Paul and Dave, take a lookee at this comparison on Flowing Data of Comparison of Republican and Democratic tax plans. You might both find it interesting for different reasons.

I regularly hear the following ideas from people in favor of the healthcare law:

a) government will make sure “the evil” healthcare insurance companies will not be allowed to drop coverage on anyone, regardless of how expensive they may be to insure.

b) the government will not actually be paying for it, so it won’t affect our taxes.

c) the public option is promoting competition.

I cannot put those together under any understanding I have of economics. Businesses cannot increase their risk of loss without increasing their means of covering that loss if they plan on continuing to be in business, but everyone wants to tell me those insurance companies will cover (what was it? 33 million more Americans?) a large new group of people without being able to drop high risk/cost plans without an increase of cost to the rest of the people they cover and they’ll stay in business.

George, you made fun once of my Ayn Rand inspired opinions of economics from Atlas Shrugged, but this appears to me to be the same thing as what happened in her book, but instead of the government telling the railroads that they had to remain in business at a loss, now it’s insurance companies. I know I’d revolt.

Think about it George. What would you do if you were told you had to maintain about 40% more computers at work with no increase in income allowed, no additional costs allowed to be billed to anyone, and those computers have to improve their operations dramatically?

No, conservatives and liberals both often get things wrong, but in this case, the liberals really messed up, and regardless of the spin they try and put on it, people saw it for what it was and decided enough was enough.

But no one has explained to me why I should be against them. It is a very common us-versus-them, divide-and-conquer tactic. The hope of the people that use the tactic is that those they are trying to persuade by the use of the tactic ignore some facts: the poorer people (generally) want to be in the richer class, but if I ask the government to enact laws against the rich, then those laws may one day apply to me, against my own self interest. As Thomas Paine pointed out, “He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

Now, you mention the GAO’s analysis of healthcare, but have you forgotten that the jumps and twists the Congressional Budget Office has taken in trying to explain the overall cost of this bill that we were (in)famously told we would have to pass before we could find out what was in it? The estimated costs of this bill law keep going up. I agree that a change needed to be made, but I disagree on what that change should have been.

Okay, so we’re paying more than other countries for our healthcare with poorer results. First, of those countries, are you taking into account the much higher taxes that they have to pay? Second, of those countries countries that still apply, how many of those countries provide the entirety of their own defense vs. relying even in part on the United States for their defense (Japan, German, etc.)? Last, if our healthcare is so much worse than theirs, why are their citizens coming to the United States for healthcare?

And your theorical story is, of course, appalling. But how many times have you heard it? I have yet to see this happen, personally, and while I may be wrong, I was under the impression that there were already laws against that issue in many places.

But, okay, improvements need to be made. If those improvements were made, why did Congress give themselves an exception so that they aren’t subject to the law? To state it as a humorous analogy, I’m pretty certain I won’t drink from the cup that the offerer won’t drink from themselves.

What an interesting spin, David! Why on earth do you say that? I would immensely desire you laid out any real evidence you have that I’m advocating class envy.

We are paying anywhere from thirty percent to more than double the health care costs of countries that have better results than we do. And in any case, are you OK with health insurance companies just dropping people when they get sick? Picture this: your doctor tells you that you have cancer. Your insurance company gets the claim and finds a reason to drop you. Or you have a child with a birth defect and when you change jobs the child cannot be insured. That OK with you? Or do you believe that for some reason it couldn’t happen to you, and just not care if it happens to anyone else?