Healthcare insurance can ironically bring on Premature Demise and Early Sickness.
Firstly, insurance is the business of guaranteeing against IMPROBABLE (low incidence) high costs catastrophe, so that insurance company can pocket as much of the premiums as possible and the clients (policy holders) can sleep well at night.
But today, the original concept of health care / any insurance has become CORRUPTED BEYOND RECOGNITION.
People NEGLECT their own health thinking that healthcare insurance would solve any and every health related problem without pain/ costs and even ignore personal warning signs of ill health till illness is at a terminal stage because they have faith in insurers to pick the tab (and in modern-day medicine to reverse all disease) which are both very false assumptions because this only results in stratospheric claims payouts by insurers since owning a health insurance policy has now instead INDUCED people to NEGLECT their own health resulting in need to treat late stage diseases at much higher treatment costs. Private hospitals are also experts at maxing out healthcare insurance benifits and charge for everything from call button activations to cotton-wool swabs used.
To avoid going bankrupt/ maintain generous profit margins in the light of the high claims payouts experienced, insurance companies then have to raise premiums for remaining participants to the maximum humanly possible which places the remaining participants (who never maintained personal health) between rock and a hard place.
These participants, having invested a large proportion of their income on healthcare insurance premiums at the expense of decent food, disciplined exercise and adequate rest, now have diabetes and other severe chronic disease that would make them un-insurable should they seek alternative insurance at an advanced state of disease/age, yet have to contend with the stratospheric healthcare insurance premiums that are killing them from the inside and causing them excessive stress and ill health that would soon kill them if the insurance premiums don't. They are held ransom by both the threat illness due to chronic disease accumulation as well as stratospheric insurance premiums which they can ill afford: every day is a train wreck in slow motion in an accelerated downwards spiral.
In short, modern day healthcare insurance has become a dangerous and addictive drug that gives false SHORT term reassurance but long term COSTS due to being poorly conceptualized and indiscriminately sold/mis-applied.
Healthcare insurance can NEVER be an effective substitute for a disciplined and proper healthy lifestyle and can adversely cause early demise and ill health if it is indiscriminately applied in a way that places the cart before the horse.
JakeJ, (PF, USA) wroteLately a lot of people we know going in for minor day surgeries they can afford only because of insurance are dying from the surgery. Medical accidents are now the #2 cause of death in the USA. Hundreds of thousands. Go in for a simple hernia operation and end up with your organs failing, in a coma and on a respirator. Another person we know that happened to from dental surgery. Another person's father was declared "brain dead" twice, but when pulling the plug refused he revived both times. There is a growing joke around here that if you want to commit suicide, go the ER foor some elective surgery. Insurance also is likely why have the people in the country take a hand full of prescription drugs a day despite all the warnings about them.
It is becoming if a person can avoid surgery they are playing Russian roulette if they have it done.
I feel so SAD that both insurance and the medical profession, once noble, are now fighting over scraps.
In the beginning, both insurer strived to promote health, but i dunno which party started the DOWNWARDS SPIRAL to now promote ILLNESS.
Ironically now both insurer and hospital want the person more sick/ dead ASAP, but each for separate reasons.
The insurer wants the person whose payouts exceed premium payments paid/ doesn't seem to be getting better- dead ASAP so all medical treatments can CEASE IMMEDIATELY to protect profit margins of the insurance trade. The doctors get paid for services rendered, so the sicker the patient gets, the more compensation for work done they can invoice the insurance company for. The most profitable patients are those on terminal life support who use every device and procedure under the sun and basically become the guinea pig- piggy bank for all hospital staff without being able to complain too much. It is too complicated to pay/ rank numerous private hospitals and clinics based upon performance, so hospitals get to become the leeches/parasites of the insurance business, just as long as the Dr CEOs and practitioners know the loopholes to get patients sicker without ever being caught.