Paul Krugman - National Health Insurance

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June 14, 2005

SouthAmerica: Paul Krugman’s column in The New York Times of yesterday once more was about health insurance.

I don’t know why he is not making the case for national health insurance based on DNA technological advances.

Very soon insurance companies will be able to know all the diseases that a person will have based on their DNA analysis, and the insurance companies will charge their policies accordingly. Insurance companies are in business to make money, and not to pay bills for sick people.

For example: 10 years ago when I was the controller for an international trading company, we decided to change our health insurance carrier. I asked a bunch of companies to give us price quotes for their coverage.

Every insurance company did the same thing in our case. They gave us two sets of quotes; one price for all the employees, and one price excluding the president of our company. The price for all employees was out of the reach of our company because was too expensive.

The other price excluding the president of the company was a more reasonable price.

Some companies did refuse to give us a quote if we included our president on our policy.

The president had a severe case of diabetes, and he used to pay a fortune for his private health insurance.

In the future everybody that has a potential for certain diseases They also will be discriminated by the insurance companies.

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June 16, 2005

South America: On his last column in The New York Times Paul Krugman mentioned Ted Kennedy’s proposal to extend the Medicare program to the entire US population.

Regarding the Medicare program, I remember reading a report a few years ago giving an analysis of that program that said: “2/3’s of the total expenditures of the Medicare program were done in the last 3 weeks before the retirees died.

The real expenses in the Medicare program happened in the last 3 weeks of a person’s life. That was where 2/3’s of the costs were located.

How do you fix something like that?

That is a time of crisis and the families and the doctors are doing everything possible to keep the retiree alive – your father, your mother or a close relative.

What I find incredible here in the United States is that Americans are willing to spend a fortune trying to save someone who is at the end of his/her life, and at the same time they are not willing to put the same amount of resources into improving the health system of the children of the US; and these kids represent the future of the country.

(I know, the old folks have the power of the vote, but not the common sense of taking care of the future generation.)

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May 15, 2007

SouthAmerica: I wonder why health care is an issue that is more important to democrats than Republicans - but it is a good thing that we have some exceptions to the rule such as "the terminator" in California.


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