A Federal Reserve system, evil as it sounds, could lead us to Single Payer Health Care.

[Leopolds Ghost]

I'd like to get opinions on this. Fans of mandated health insurance please
don't argue that point here -- the whole point of this thread is to find a
single payer alternative to mandated private health purchases that will be
acceptable to a public indoctrinated to believe that it's socialistic for
the government to take any action that would allow a major corporation
(insurance in this case) to suffer or go out of business.

---

If Insurance cos. won't allow Congress to put them out of business,
and mandates (as I believe) are both fascist and reminiscent of the
Marxist argument that something univerally mandated private health
purshases will eventually cause private insurers to "wither away",

then the recent post on the evil of the current US Fed system that JFK tried to abolish
(which I fully agree with) got me to thinking.

Rather than go thru the path of total fascism and gov't control of private purchases like
Europe did to get to the same goal of socialized health care, why not follow the path of
the Federal Reserve with the eventual outcome of dissolving both the Federal Reserve and
Federal Health Care (or nationalizing them) to create a single payer, civic system?

It could be done a lot less corrupt than the Federal Reserve, a privately owned, expressly
capitalist for-profit body (unmentioned in the Constitution) that controls the US Treasury
money supply.

Say we simply require every Insurance co. that offers health insurance to band together in
a government-regulated trust -- like Ma Bell (which everyone I know misses) or the Fed.
Or Major League Baseball. What the New Dealers wanted Blue Cross to become.

Unlike the Fed, this Federal Health Insurance Co. would:

* Be not for profit (but the existing insurance companies which buy in, plus ANYONE NEW
who had the resources and expertise to join in later, would be able to recover profit
on a competitive basis by participating in the overal nonprofit system)

* Operate like Fannie Mae, pooling health insurance policies (but unlike Fannie Mae,
health insurance would be single payer, a national broker for all BASIC heath care
insurance)

* Operate as a national reinsurance agent for Hospitals, like Freddie Mac,
to allow for catastrophic and required "optional" procedures like MRIs
for indigent persons and inner city hospitals and support hospitals that
have a liberal intake policy, to preserve the Hippocratic Oath of helping
patients regardless if they're in the system

* Additional health care would be available through each health care provider
buying into the system, and most opportunity for private profit would be thru
additional optional plans. But basic, catastrophic, and coverage for optional
procedures (when precipitated by health crisis) on lower-income Americans would
be pooled money available only thru the FHIC.

* The FHIC, like Fannie Mae, would be able to issue stocks and bonds so that
the participating insurers (and average Americans) could invest in the system
and recover profits through capital gains that are derivative of the systems
success, instead of relying on profits from basic health care insurance
(which would be eliminated as inimical to proper doctor care, just as we don't
require FEMA to be for-profit.)

* An identical system could be set up to complement FEMA for disaster insurance.

Then we can solve the problem now and kill the insurance cos. (and the Fed system) later.

What do y'all think?

[Leopolds Ghost]

1. Am I on a bunch of ignore lists or something?

[anigbrowl]

3. No, you're just wrong

The federal reserve system is not privately owned. It's a government body and not a profit-making institution. You've been suckered into the Ron Paul/alex Jones conspiracy vortex.

[Leopolds Ghost]

4. The constituent bodies of the Fed are privately owned. But I am ADVOCATING for a Fed-like system.

Because the insurance cos., like the banks who controlled the nation's money supply in
a convoluted system before the Fed was instituted, are not going to vote themselves out
of existence. And both groups basically own half our politicians.

Of course you are distracting from the policy question.

This is a policy question. If you are opposed to government ownership (or recievership)
of basic health insurance (and public monies, etc.) please start your own thread.

[papau]

5. Interesting- Medicare for all is a lot easier to understand and thus to sell - but your

approach would work to at least make the system single payer -

you add a layer that is the insurance above the Medicare plan level - and set ot up as also single payer but with profit as in the Fannie Mae situation.

But by pooling all policies you set up a claims payment nightmare - a major part of casualty insurance claim payment cost id the effort to not pay the claim via stiffing the claimant or stiffing the reinsurer or claiming co-ordination of benefits sharing with your insurance not paying first dollar. The Fed Reserve approach continues those inefficiencies for no good reason that I can think off.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

2. Too tired to parse this out right now.

Will revisit in the morning.

[soothsayer]

6. Wait, explain the Fannie and Freddie analogy a bit more.

In real life, both have the same mission of providing liquidity (and thus theoretically stability and affordability) to the market by buying up the mortgages that banks and others sell to homeowners, so that the banks and others can take that money and lend it out to more home buyers (rinse and repeat). Then Fannie and Freddie bundle up a bunch of those mortgages to lessen the risk should any of them fail (certainly most of them won't go belly up, is the thinking) and sell them off to investors in a package, and those investors are then guaranteed a steady rate of return. To sweeten it, Fannie and Freddie also guarantee to make up for the ones that do go belly up.

So...say a little more about how this works in your healthcare model, just so I get it.