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Aetna CEO Threatened Obamacare Pullout If Feds Opposed Humana Merger

(www.huffingtonpost.com)
142 points helloworld | 1 comments | 17 Aug 16 17:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.221s | source
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seibelj ◴[17 Aug 16 18:06 UTC] No.12306806[source]▶
Can anyone succinctly explain the benefits of having a market for private health insurance companies, rather than a single provider of health insurance (government, aka "public option")? Can a capitalist case be made for their existence? Does the lack of a large private insurance market in countries with government-provided health insurance cause lots of inefficiencies and waste?
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njkanjsd ◴[17 Aug 16 18:08 UTC] No.12306825[source]▶
The healthcare system in countries like France, Canada, Germany is much more efficient and provides better healthcare to most of it's citizens than the US healthcare system pre and post obamacare.

https://www.oecd.org/eco/growth/46508904.pdf

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/press-releases/...

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X86BSD ◴[17 Aug 16 18:29 UTC] No.12307068[source]▶
Yeah I'm not buying this and never have. You're going to need to cite some kind of scientific statistics or stats or studies.

When people get sick they come to the US for treatment if they can. You don't see world leaders and those with money going to Canada or Europe for treatment. Not when it's dire. The US is hella expensive for many reasons one is that we have the most bleeding edge medical technology.

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1. danielweber ◴[17 Aug 16 18:32 UTC] No.12307107[source]▶
> You're going to need to cite some kind of scientific statistics or stats or studies.

There are plenty of studies that support his position.

But there are also lots of studies that oppose his position.

And everyone will listen to the studies that support their prior viewpoint and say that the others are bunk.

You could have a good debate about health care if everyone gave up their priors, was willing to listen to opposing evidence, and was willing to accept their preferred system has real honest-to-God not-said-sarcastically tradeoffs. Let us know when that happens.