Shag said:
Facts cannot answer my questions because those questions focus on your interpretation of those facts. You consistently avoid defending your interpretation. Why?
Shag, you are mischaracterizing, I’ve done nothing BUT defend my interpretation. Just because you are incapable of understanding and don’t like my interpretation does not constitute my lack of defending it.
Shag said:
You haven't answered them or confronted them in any way. You have dodged them. It is clear that you are doing the same here in trying to shift the burden of proof. again.
Again you mischaracterize, you demonstrated repeatedly your lack of desire or initiative to research my explanations and provide any factual basis for your side of the argument. You continue to rely on your assumption that a “free market” exists in the health insurance industry and in turn assume that the laws of supply and demand are at work. You cannot expect anyone to consider you seriously when you state your argument is based on assumptions and do not back them up with factual evidence to support ANY explanation why those assumptions are in fact true, especially in the fact of the facts I’ve provided that proves the contrary to your assumptions. The ball has, and remains in your court to show how the health insurance market does, in fact, operate in a completely competitive “free market” where the laws of supply and demand operate unconstrained.
Shag said:
Do you think that the excess premiums charged by insurance companies above what was required to cover their expenditures for health care services did NOT result in their profits skyrocketing over the same timeframe?? Why?I have pointed out numerous times the constraints inherent in the economy that would make any raising of premiums above and beyond what is necessary impossible unless some outside factor were involved; it also has not been show that they did in some way raise premiums beyond what was "necessary", that has only been assumed
Shag, once AGAIN, you are clearly mischaracterizing. It is a FACT that that health care expenditures paid-out by insurance companies increased 70% from 1999 to 2007 (
http://www.lincolnvscadillac.com/showpost.php?p=570853&postcount=16) while at the same time insurance premiums have increased 120%. I have also shown (
http://www.lincolnvscadillac.com/showpost.php?p=570372&postcount=12) that overhead costs for insurance companies have remained only about 11-12% of premiums and therefore cannot be blamed for the excess premium increases. These are RAW FACTS supported by actual data from credible sources. These are NOT assumptions. This is NOT an interpretation of tangential facts to draw some conclusion. Your continued and repeated mischaracterization of these facts as assumptions only further exposes you as the dishonest liar and perpetuator of disinformation that you are. You inability to provide any countering argument based on hard data and instead resorting to false assumptions on your own part further proves this. Your clear lack of knowledge on this subject and your pathetic inability to support your side of the argument with facts is transparent to any casual observer who might peruse this thread.
Shag said:
Additionally, do you believe that premiums the insurance companies charge are determined purely by free-market forces with no regard to profits? Why?I never said or suggested that there was no regard for profits, but I did point out numerous times the constraints the market places on a business in trying to increase profits that would make it impossible for a business to increase prices to increase profits unless some outside factor were involved
YOU LIE! If you continue to “point out numerous times” that the market has “constraints” that “make it impossible for a business to increase prices to increase profits”, then you HAVE, in FACT,
suggested that premium prices are determined with no regard for profits.
That “outside factor” (if you insist on calling it that) in this case is called a monopolistic market that lacks competition.
While it may appear at a grand scale that the health insurance market contains competition by virtue that more than one company is alive and doing business within it, at a personal level where the dollar exchanges hands, it lacks free competition.
From MY OWN personal experience at my place of employment, 10 years ago I had the choice of 6-8 different plans from 3-4 different insurance companies. Now I am offered only 3 plans for health insurance FROM THE SAME INSURANCE COMPANY. I have no other options other than to go outside by employer-based health insurance system and purchase an individual plan. However, to do this I no longer benefit from the help my company provides in paying for those premiums, no does any insurance company offer an individual premium rates competitive with employee-sponsored plans. The insurance companies have managed to acquire a captive audience for their product, in effect a monopoly on the market at the corporate level. My employer is not the only one that has abandoned offering their employees multiple health insurance plans from multiple companies; this same scenario has played-out across this nation.
As competition in the market place is squashed, companies are allowed to pad their profits through inflated premiums without getting penalized by losing market share. As I have already shown with the evidence provided, the insurance market over the last several years has squashed competition through mergers and consolidation. MOST of this has occurred with an insurance industry-friendly Republican congress in office that looked the other way and provided very little or no oversight to avert the creation of these small captive-audience monopolies in the health insurance market. It happened in my workplace, and it’s happened across the country.
Shag said:
I will not directly answer loaded and misleading questions. Besides, I have already confronted these issues numerous times, as I have spelled out.
What are you afraid of, Shag? Just because you refuse to accept the facts I’ve provided numerous times as “truth” does not make my questions “loaded”.
Having said that, I will systematically show how your questions ARE loaded, but I will not hide behind a pathetically lame excuse and refuse to answer them like some little chicken-sh!t.
Shag said:
• Can you prove, through a logically valid argument (not a link to a website, or repeating a talking point, or citing more facts), that there is no competition in the healthcare industry?
Loaded question which presumes I’ve claimed there is absolutely ZERO competition in the “healthcare industry”. I’ve never made such a claim, so why would I try to “prove” that?
What you probably meant to say was “health insurance industry”. Assuming that is what you meant, I’ve provided PROOF already (
http://www.lincolnvscadillac.com/showpost.php?p=577481&postcount=23). In the small health insurance marketplace that myself and the thousands of other employees I work with have access to choices, those choices have systematically been reduced to ONE insurance company. Multiply this across the millions of other employees at the thousands of other companies that provide employer-based health insurance that have eliminated choices over the years and the health insurance market as a whole has become primarily “highly concentrated” with minimal amount of competition.
Interesting that you wish to tie my hands by not “allowing” me to use facts to support my argument. I’m sure you have a fancy rule-name for that tactic too. Regardless, here are the facts that support this argument (again):
http://healthcareforamericanow.org/...ivate_insurers_consolidate_and_control_prices
Shag said:
• If there is no competition in the health care industry, do you think basic economic truths (like the laws of supply and demand and the truths derived from those laws) still apply? If not, why?
Again, loaded for the same reasons noted above for the previous question. Again, assuming you meant “health insurance industry”, NO. With the constrained amount of competition in the health insurance markets, the laws of supply and demand no longer are the dominant forces that help establish price. That is not to say they have NO INFLUENCE, only that their influence is diminished and distorted in the wind that is profit motive.
From one of your favorite sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand
Supply and demand is an economic model based on price, utility and quantity in a market. It concludes that in a competitive market, price will function to equalize the quantity demanded by consumers, and the quantity supplied by producers, resulting in an economic equilibrium of price and quantity.
Other market forms
The supply and demand model is used to explain the behavior of perfectly competitive markets, but its usefulness as a standard of performance extends to other types of markets. In such markets, there may be no supply curve, such as above, except by analogy. Rather, the supplier or suppliers are modeled as interacting with demand to determine price and quantity. In particular, the decisions of the buyers and sellers are interdependent in a way different from a perfectly competitive market.
A monopoly is the case of a single supplier that can adjust the supply or price of a good at will. The profit-maximizing monopolist is modeled as adjusting the price so that its profit is maximized given the amount that is demanded at that price. This price will be higher than in a competitive market. A similar analysis can be applied when a good has a single buyer, a monopsony, but many sellers. Oligopoly is a market with so few suppliers that they must take account of their actions on the market price or each other. Game theory may be used to analyze such a market.
The supply curve does not have to be linear. However, if the supply is from a profit-maximizing firm, it can be proven that downward sloping supply curves (i.e., a price decrease increasing the quantity supplied) are inconsistent with perfect competition in equilibrium. Then supply curves from profit-maximizing firms can be vertical, horizontal or upward sloping.
But then again, since you claim to be the economics “expert” here, I’m surprised you didn’t already know that. Or have you not yet gotten to that chapter on monopolies in ECON101 yet?
Shag said:
• If, as you claim, there is no competition in the free market and it is due to some "maneuvering" on the part of these businesses, can you explain (again, not a link, not a repeated talking point, not through citing more facts) how these businesses did that without any government actions directly or indirectly facilitating that?
Loaded question, “no competition in the free market” is an oxymoron. It also presumes that the current health insurance market evolved “without any government actions directly or indirectly facilitating” it. However, while this is off-topic, this is a valid question and should be the topic of a different thread. There is a long and torrid history behind this, and this article is a good jump-off point:
http://mises.org/story/1749
Shag said:
• Do you think a public option would lead to single payer healthcare? Why or why not?
WOW, a question that is NOT loaded. NO. Whatever might pass as a “public option” will be so watered-down by the GOP and blue-dogs or rely on a trigger to start. It will not be available to enough of the population to put a significant dent in the private insurance market for at least decades, if ever. Also, if the government is so damn inefficient as every right-winger claims they are, the resulting price advantage over private insurance won’t be dramatic enough to draw significant numbers. The ONLY way the US will EVER get a single-payer health care industry is if Congress puts forth a single-payer bill for Obama to sign. I don’t see that happening.
Shag said:
• If there is no competition in the insurance industry, how would a public option and/or more regulation alleviate that problem?
Again, loaded for the same reasons noted above. An option to choose an alternative to a private health insurance plan, which has already been proven to be top-heavy with inefficiencies and profits, puts one more provider in the market. Even IF this new public option was no less costly than available private plans, the fact that there is an additional source of insurance coverage by definition increases market competition. Since a public plan, unshackled by profit motives, will be less expensive than private plans, downward pressure on premium prices will be applied and the private insurers will now have incentive to cut into their profits to provide premium rates competitive with the public plan in order to not lose customers.
Alternatively, regulation like price caps or limits on medical loss ratios could also force the insurance industry to cut into their profits to reduce premium rates. Regulation like limits on market share at the state level, limits on consolidation or allowing interstate competition would increase competition and should drive down premium rates. However, the latter (interstate competition) would have to be regulated with an eye towards preventing further consolidation or elimination of smaller insurance providers from the broader market.
The bottom line is one of the main goals in health care reform is to reduce costs to us consumers. Only 2/3 of the cost increases have been due to increases in the costs of health care services, the other 1/3 is due to inflated premiums. To ignore the latter is negligent at best and criminal at worst for allowing the ransoming of health services by insurers to continue. In order to truly have a “free market” for the health insurance industry where supply and demand laws are free to operate, the strangle-hold (effective monopoly) that the health insurance industry currently has on small markets like employer-provided plans needs to be broken. The public option can be a very viable, effective method for achieving this goal without resorting to the heavy hand of regulation or a single-payer system.
Shag said:
You clearly cannot confront the holes in your argument so you are doubling down on lies, smears, combativeness and deception in an attempt to dodge. Maybe you should try and understand what you are arguing instead of repeating talking points that you clearly do not understand...
A) YOU have shot no holes in my argument that have not gone un-addressed and debunked.
B) Data I’ve provided are facts supported by credible sources and accepted by experts in this field.
C) You are again resorting to personal attacks when you are backed into the corner and unable to win this debate. I suggest you practice what you preach.
Shag said:
Please explain how and on what planet your assumptions trump my facts.another loaded question because I never said assumptions trump facts; I have criticized the interpretation of the facts given as they have to be viewed in the light of the basic laws of supply and demand to make any economic sense and the interpretations given inherently ignore economic reality
AGAIN, your entire argument hinges on your ASSUMPTION that the “basic laws of supply and demand” are at work in a market which you apparently believe is a “free market” when it has been clearly shown with FACTS that it is NOT a “free market”, and thusly, your ASSUMPTION is FALSE. If anyone needs to come to grips with the economic realities, is it YOU.
Shag said:
Apparently you don't understand the difference between "facts" and "truth". You also don't seem to understand that facts alone cannot make an argument.
Nastiness, condescension and dishonesty do not mask ignorance
FACT: You have lost this debate through your inability to support your assumptions with facts and refusal to accept facts that are contrary to your assumptions.
TRUTH: You are an arrogant, ignorant troll incapable of facing that fact and accepting this truth.
:waving:
