In the ideal world, an insurance company handles the paperwork of collecting money for risk pooling and paying the bills as they come in, as well as assessing individual risks to set premiums.
Sort of like most other insurance industries. Maybe arguing about if you paid for coverage, but not actually arguing that you don’t need the fix.
Your car insurance might argue you aren’t covered for damage that happened while the car was parked in the garage, but they won’t try to argue that your car might not actually require a new windshield since you haven’t tried plastic wrap yet.
In this ideal world, the people making the decision to ration care would be… The doctors, who are perfectly positioned to do this, and actually do when there’s a real need to do so.
A death panel fully acknowledges that the patient will die if they decide not to treat, and consider that against the possibility of saving more lives with the limited resources allocated to them. An insurance company pretends the patient doesn’t really need the expensive treatment that doctors have determined is crucial to save their lives, and the money saved doesn’t go into treating other people - it goes into profit.
What is the insurance company if not a death panel?
In the ideal world, an insurance company handles the paperwork of collecting money for risk pooling and paying the bills as they come in, as well as assessing individual risks to set premiums.
Sort of like most other insurance industries. Maybe arguing about if you paid for coverage, but not actually arguing that you don’t need the fix.
Your car insurance might argue you aren’t covered for damage that happened while the car was parked in the garage, but they won’t try to argue that your car might not actually require a new windshield since you haven’t tried plastic wrap yet.
In this ideal world, the people making the decision to ration care would be… The doctors, who are perfectly positioned to do this, and actually do when there’s a real need to do so.
A death panel fully acknowledges that the patient will die if they decide not to treat, and consider that against the possibility of saving more lives with the limited resources allocated to them. An insurance company pretends the patient doesn’t really need the expensive treatment that doctors have determined is crucial to save their lives, and the money saved doesn’t go into treating other people - it goes into profit.