No, it has to do with the fact that we don't have as much free-market as anti-free-market whiners like to tell us we do. You can't strongly regulate an industry and then claim that free market failed.

e.g. cable television, insurance, pharmacuticals, power production, power distribution, etc, etc, etc.

The American Revolutionary War
The American Civil War
Mexican American War

I don't think society has any legitimate interest at stake here that is not covered by allowing the free market to set prices for human kidneys. It should be interesting to see what kidney buyers will place real $ value on.

Colourblindness is not a loss of something. I can still see colour just like you do but if someone writes on an orange piece of paper with a green pen, I cannot read it.

So in other words, you lied. It is a loss of something.

In fact, color blindness can be dangerous, common signals used in all transport agencies; air, marine, train, all use signals that are hard or impossible to distinguish for the colorblind. Not only are you unable to take any number of jobs, but even recreational activities would be potentially dangerous.

Me tending to my ill, those related and associated with me, is not the same as tending your ill.

Hunter gatherers felt the same way. Even the ones that won the evolutionary war.

I do nothing "per se", because I don't value the "service" wikileaks "offers".

Neanderthals also lost the war of evolution. Coincidence?

No, what they're saying is that it's expensive and people shouldn't be required to pay for other peoples health care anyways. Especially when the people in question are busy not buying health care on their own (as most uninsured young adults choose not to buy it).

Also of course, anybody against health care is racist and want to step over (and on!) the dead bodies of the poor! Or so the conversation goes...

Seriously. Saying "we have something" is boring. Post it, or shut up.

He was told to get back into his car after the officer had just punched him in the face.

I can't even imagine where this timeline of events was created. Probably in your head. It doesn't appear in any credible news source.

Both the blogs are biased, uninformative, and basically uninteresting.

Furthermore, the source chosen for the slashdot posting seems to have been searched for and specifically chosen so as to be the least informative and lacking in interest. A better one is at Toronto Star

Among the information in that paper is a statement by Watts that the trial was fair, and a direct contradiction to "Making Light's" timeline of events.

Oddly, a grand jury found reason enough to charge, and a second criminal jury found reason enough to convict.

And here you said that insurance companies would leave the business before doing such a thing, and yet, every job provided health insurance plan I ever had came with a set price.

Every job provided health insurance plan covers healthy individuals, which are the bulk of workers. The larger the company, the larger the pool, and thus the smaller effect an ill hire would have on the plan costs. Some states allow employers to pool together.

At the end of the year, every pool - every single pool! - has its premiums adjusted so that that pool is profitable to the insurance company. If your company consisted of 10 people all with MS and nobody else, then your insurance costs would be astronomical.

When somebody enters the pool with a pre-existing condition, they are effectively punishing every other member of the pool with higher rates without having paid premiums while not needing care.

Oh. I get it. So the insurance companies are not allowed to deny coverage based on existing conditions, but there is nothing wrong with them charging premiums, of say, one hundred billion dollars a month ($100,000,000,000/mo).

That depends on what you're talking about, you keep changing context.

If your context is your proposal: Clearly not, because being forced to cover all comers regardless of pre-existing conditions or coverage at flat rates while not requiring the cheap-to-cover healthy individuals to pay for coverage would cause rational individuals to delay coverage until needed, requiring insurance companies to charge astronomical rates people like you wouldn't "allow", thus ending the potential for profit and the insurance companies would leave the market.
If your context is the "Obamacare" reconciliation bill: High cost individuals will be placed into high risk pools that is subsidized by the gov't. The insurance company recoups the value spent by the high risk pool on medical costs, the gov't subsidizes to the level it is willing to, and the balance is billed to individual policy holders.

Existing state policies for high risk, such as California's Major Risk Pool pools the high risk patients with Cobra and other state sponsored medical coverage, and then subsidizes coverage on top of that. This is the only reason a group of guaranteed cost individuals can be covered without massive premium costs.

Once again, insurance is a profit making enterprise. If you are intent on eliminating the possibility for profit by requiring low cost coverage to high cost individuals, thus allowing low cost individuals to escape the market due to lack of need, then the insurance providers will be vacated by profit seeking companies.

See, that way the insurance company, say Humana, can claim that they offered coverage, but the customer refused to pay, which is required by law. They were so kind as to give the number to Cigna. Their rates are half of what Humana's are for preexisting condition customers.

$50,000,000,000/month is still a profitable enterprise, even for a pre-existing condition. Of course, yearly caps exist - until "Obamacare" is passed, so the actual price point would be much lower.

See, an understanding of how insurance works is necessary to design reasonable proposals for reform.

No, the industry that would be vacated would be the insurance industry. Not the medical provider one.

I would hate the be under a gov't control health system like the VA system is. I have VA coverage and never, ever, use it. Neither does my grand-father.

For a health company insurance company insuring someone with MS, for example, they are on the hook for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to cover that single person. And you are saying that they should not be allowed to deny a MS patient coverage (I agree), but can base rates on preexisting conditions or risks(I disagree).

Wow. Your reading comprehension is seriously lacking. At no point have I suggested an insurance company should not be allowed to deny new coverage of a person found to be a victim of MS, or any serious disease. At the point they are diagnosed it is a pre-existing condition and should not be covered by anything new. The suggestion that insurance companies should be on he hook for every old disease they have the day they sign up for coverage (which you suggest the insurance company cannot deny) is entirely yours.

It's simple really: You do not have a right to force a company to pay for your medical coverage, even if that company bills itself as a medical insurance company. If you want that sort of guarantee, do not look to insurance for it. Look to your gov't, because only the gov't has the ability to engage in the kind of force required to demand medical providers (of which insurance companies are -not-) provide such services.

How much would an insurance company have to charge to break even? What's to stop them from charging that amount or more to either cover the cost of this patient, or force this money loser to move to their competition?

Actuary tables are very good. When you sign up and are not ill your payments will be based on not being ill. If you sign up and are already ill, your costs will go up because it is a known fact that it will cost much more to cover you. That's assuming you can find somebody willing to assume the absolute certainty that you will require medical services. If you sign up and lie, claiming to not be ill when you are, then when the insurance company finds out they will rightfully discontinue your coverage ab initio, from the outset.