Again, insurance companies are businesses.  They make less profit than soda makers, retail stores or HOSPITALS.  If they make no profit, than they go away and no one has insurance.  So they, like any other business, have to constantly make decisions regarding their business practices.  Unfortunately, their decisions involve sick people.  So there's always emotion, and hyperbole, involved.  They aren't perfect.  But they are certainly not the bad guys.

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After what my wife went through because one of these companies wanted to protect their profit margin, all I can say is stick it where the sun don't shine. I hope it never happens to a member of your family.

They have a smaller profit margin that all of the above, but they also have less overhead.

"We need to change the end-of-life culture.  Most people are woefully unprepared for the inevitable and many resources are spent in vain.  But not all - there is a place for expensive and unneeded care.  Nearly every treatment used today was outrageously expensive in its genesis.  It gets really bad when doctors say its time to pack it in and families just can't do it.

We've left patients to languish on ventilators for days and days until the clan could be gathered together to be there when grandpa "passes".  Never mind that grandpa passed three days and $9000 ago.  If you had to stay in a $1500 hotel room every night waiting for your brother to drive from Yellowknife to Buenos Aires, wouldn't that seem a ridiculous waste?  And yet that's going on all over the place, all the time."

I wonder what could be used to correct this?  I know DEATH PANELS!  Who would have ever guessed that Hagerman agrees with Palin?

I'm joking with you Kevin...just in case you don't get it...

 

QUOTE: Perhaps if they spent there resources creating incentives for healthy behaviors and covering preventative care we'd have less trouble with chronic health problems in this country.

Insurance companies spend a lot of time and money trying to get their insured individuals preventative care.

I have a very close relative that works for one the largest insurance companies in the US, and all I can say is that their is a lot of mis-information in this thread.

William it sounds like you went thru a very personal experience, and I empathize with what you went thru, so please don't take any of my comments personally.

People hear cases where someone has an illness, and the doctor will prescribe a package of care.  The insurance company says that they consider the treatment and experimental, and it costs more than what is reasonable and customary, and they don't want to be funding what could be classified as research.  Everyone gets all up in arms at the insurer, but nobody points fingers at the hospital or doctors who won't help people without the gaurantee of a huge paycheck.