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From: era@ncar.ucar.edu (Ed Arnold)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: Money vs Pain
Message-ID: <13708@bunker.UUCP>
Date: 27 Aug 90 20:07:35 GMT
References: <13609@bunker.UUCP>
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Reply-To: era@ncar.ucar.edu (Ed Arnold)
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Fidonet: Chronic Pain Conference

Index Number: 9992

In article <13609@bunker.UUCP> Ed.Dobie@f175.n120.z1.fidonet.org writes:
|Index Number: 9904
|
|[This is from the Chronic Pain Conference on Fidonet]
|
|I have a little girl (age 9 now) that was injured in a car accident last 
|Thanksgiving.  She is now a complete quad. (C1) & vent dependent.
|
|She has been held hostige in the hospital waiting for a settlement from the 
|insurance company an housing.  She was been waisting =MANY= months in the 
|hospital and literally hundreds of thousands of dollars (BIG $$$!)  Why 
|couldn't the insurance company spend this money on Jill rather than the 
|medical center?  We could build a nice modest house for $500,000.00. <not 
|grinning>  Now I really understand why insuance rates are so high.

I think it's amusing that the insurance companies have been trumpeting
"lawsuit abuse" all during the 80s, while earning very high profits and
paying little federal income tax.  For instance, State Farm had 1986
net income of $1.6 billion, and paid *zero* income tax.  Recently, AETNA
and several other companies have been sued by several states (including
the one in which I live) for violating anti-trust laws and conspiring to
restrict the availability of liability insurance.

Another stupid thing they have done is to squeeze the medical profession
with ever higher and higher malpractice rates, without forcing the profession
to retrain or remove from practice the approximately 20,000 negligent or
incompetent MDs in the country.  (Those estimates from Peoples' Medical
Society and S.H.A.M.E.).  Again, they've tried to blame it on the consumers
who get hurt, but the Harvard study released in Jan. 1990 shows pretty
clearly who's lying.

The stupidest thing they've done, however, is to continually force persons
with disabilities and serious illnesses out of the system with "preexisting
condition" clauses and the like.  This is making people so mad, that they
may eventually *demand* Canadian-style medicine over the objections of the
AMA and its PAC war-chest, and the insurance industry.  In this case, the
insurance companies will have cut their own throats for the sake of
short-term gain.

Anyone who hasn't heard enough, read "The Crisis in Health Insurance"
in the Aug/Sep 1990 issues of _Consumer Reports_.  I recommend that you
fast for at least 12 hours before reading it.
--
Ed Arnold * NCAR * POB 3000, Boulder, CO 80307-3000 * 303-497-1253(voice)
303-497-1137(fax) * era@ncar.ucar.edu [128.117.64.4] * era@ncario.BITNET
era@ncar.UUCP * Edward.Arnold@f809.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG