Reply #49: That's bullshit. Even countries with flat out socialized medicine have private insurance

[eridani]

So what if you are forced to use public insurance? You are forced to use one fire department as well. Private insurance will cover anything that people want covered that is NOT in the single payer plan. The savings from single payer will be so huge that if you have a middle class income, you will be able to afford all the bells and whistles you want, either out of pocket or covered by private insurance.

Where on earth do you get the ridiculous notion that health insurance companies provide care? Last I heard, doctors and nurses et al provide care, and insurance companies do their level best to make sure you have access to as little of it as possible.

All kinds of private companies successfully compete on the same playing field as public services. Public libraries have not put bookstores out of business. Fedex and UPS compete successfully with the US Postal Service. The introduction of Social Security survivors’ benefits left plenty of room for many different kinds of private life insurance. If private health insurers are worried about competing with government financed health care, they are admitting straight out that they add no value to the health care system whatsoever.

Which, come to think of is, is pretty much the case. A business model predicated on profiting from bankrupting or killing people by refusing to pay claims and by refusing to cover actual sick people in the first place adds negative value. They've publicly said as much to congressional investigators. A subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee recently held a hearing intended to bring a halt to this practice. But at the hearing, insurance executives told lawmakers they have no plans to stop rescinding policies. Odd, but I've never heard of that happening with Medicare.