Insurance

 I was speaking with an insurance agent this morning, having some questions about some upgrades to equiptment and mentioned wanting to look for a better deal on home insurance. They told me this is not the time to go looking for it. Two insurance companies in northing Illinois are currently not writing new home insurance policies and Farmers just laid off about 23,000 employees, about 11% of its workform. The storm damage around the coasts is partially to blame but it also appears that the damage caused by the derecho earlier this year also hit a number of Illinois insurers quite hard.

Health Care Oligopoly

Been doing some reading on health care in the US since Rep. Flowers visit last week. Based on this report, it looks like moving to a single payer system would be that much of a stretch from where we are now. In 10 states, 2 companies cover over 80% of the population with insurance and the AMA views 94% of the country's insurance markets are defined as highly concentrated

Single Payer Health Care

State Rep. Mary Flowers was in town last Thursday night as part of her statewide listening tour promoting her bill creating a single payer health plan for Illinois. about 40 of what I would bet are C'dales more liberal residents were there. As the Southern article indicates, Rich Whitney first showed a slide show about the benefits of single payer, then Rep. Flowers took comments from the audience.

Not surprisingly, the comments were overwhelmingly in favor of single payer. One mildly surprising thing was the last of insurance horror stories told by those speaking. With the exception of one gentleman who referred to himself as a "citizen-prisoner" of the state of Illinois because state Medicare would not pay for his hospital care at a non-state institution (which Rep. Flowers said was an error and that she would look into it for him), most of the rest of the speakers offered support for single payer but from a theoretical "single payer is good, will save us money and guarantee insurance for all and this is why" view, rather than a "Someone I know went bankrupt because they couldn't pay medical bills" stance.

One brave gentleman actually spoke in opposition to single payer, but not from the "ohmigod, we're gonna bankrupt the state" position. Instead, he was concerned about his money going to the state to pay for other people's insurance when he didn't have a say in it and losing his choice as to what type of insurance he wanted. A few people jumped on his comments but luckily, they attacked his position, rather than him personally, with one woman interrupting people already speaking to make her statement, because lord knows, she couldn't wait a few more minutes to state her piece. After that , the speakers stated to diverge on to such things as: fast food is bad for you, people should take responsibility for their own heath and Rep Mike Bost's trucking company, at which point I cut out.

Update: Seems the majority of Americans want some form of public health insurance, even if it means higher taxes.