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Comment by lftl | Hacker News Reader

There's not really any reason that individuals couldn't voluntarily band together to bargain collectively. Right now there just aren't that many people in the individual market to make it worthwhile.

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Actually, health insurance companies refuse to insure a band of neighbors collectively since they deem the risk of insuring everyone in the same neighborhood too great, due to everyone being exposed to the same environment (power lines, contaminated water, etc.) A friend actually tried to get insured for him and 30 of his neighbors and that was the rejection reason given. So collective bargaining has to fall to a more spread out organization like an employer or a union, with all the politics therein, instead of closer knit locals, which tends to work out better.

This is one reason I'm in favor of government health care: The profit motives of private health care favor denying care, since not paying out money is a good way to make money. So you have case where nobody will cover you for arbitrary reasons, or deny you payment due to a "pre-existing condition" or some other nonsense.

In the case of contaminated water, couldn't the insurance company seek sane recourse from the polluters? Usually in cases where contaminated water is a factor in the health of a community, the contamination and perpetrator is known.

As for power lines.. well, there haven't really been any conclusive studies in this area. But you get the point.

Same-environment shouldn't be a factor, as long as the reasons the environment might impact health are/can be known.

I'd argue that nobody should be living somewhere that might have health risks involved (e.g., underground oil spills, toxic ash, a radioactive waste storage facility a block away from the elementary school .... in other words, williamsburg/greenpoint brooklyn).

There was probably some ass-covering going on in the insurance company asked.

> The profit motives of private health care favor denying care, since not paying out money is a good way to make money.

This is an argument against all private insurance (home, auto, etc).

The difference between health insurance and other types is that payouts for health insurance are theoretically unbounded (well, until the patient dies).

Catastrophic health coverage is not particularly expensive. It would be much more reasonable for the government to cover catastrophic costs (say, those in excess of $200,000) and otherwise leave private insurance alone.

Depends on the coverage you agreed on.

I've never heard of homeowners insurance companies refusing to cover people in the same neighborhood. Why is it different?

Would you favor the nationalization of all types of insurance or just medical? Doesn't auto-insurnace have the same evil profit motive?

With homeowner's insurance the upper limit is known (cost of house + possessions). This isn't the case with health insurance - or at least it's in the millions, and nobody could afford the premiums on a group policy where everybody might have correlated health issues.

Why should correlation be such a big factor? Even if 30 people taking out an insurance are correlated---the insurance company is probably insuring many more than 30 people to balance this out.

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