reboot the republic

From  FOX News

From The Freeman

It seems inevitable that the government will grab the remains of “private” medical care, so I will look at our medical futures. One development will be the implementation of the infamous “death panels” that socialists swear are a figment of the imaginations of paranoid persons like Sarah Palin.

For example, I received emails from the religious left-wing organization “Sojourners,” which declared that Palin was lying when she made the comment last August 7 in her Facebook page that declared:

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

In the ensuing firestorm, the New York Times called it a “false rumor,” and the “fact checkers” at the Politifact website named her statement the “Lie of the Year.” Kate Snow of ABC News said the claim was “shocking” and “inflammatory.”

Neither the House nor the Senate bills use the phrase “death panels,” but that is not surprising. None of the other countries that have socialist care actually have committees with that name. However, the “death panel” mentality certainly exists, and it exists precisely because socialist medical care exists not for care of individuals, but rather to enforce larger egalitarian political goals.

Ironically, the New York Times provides the “smoking gun” to the egalitarian mentality that leads to the “death panels” route. The paper last year carried a story about a British woman, Debbie Hirst, who suffered from cancer, but could not receive the medications she needed because the National Health Service declared them too costly.

Hirst decided to raise the money herself by selling her house, but the government said that if she did that, then it would not pay for any of her care:

Officials said that allowing Mrs. Hirst and others like her to pay for extra drugs to supplement government care would violate the philosophy of the health service by giving richer patients an unfair advantage over poorer ones.

“That way lies the end of the founding principles of the N.H.S.,” Mr. Johnson said.

Patients “cannot, in one episode of treatment, be treated on the N.H.S. and then allowed, as part of the same episode and the same treatment, to pay money for more drugs,” the health secretary, Alan Johnson, told Parliament.

In other words, unless one can justify one’s treatment under larger socialist purposes, then the government will be happy to let someone die, for enforced egalitarianism trumps actual care. This is not something new. Writing in the November 1993 Freeman, Dr. Jane Orient noted that government medical “cost containment” is another term for denying care:

The global budgeters “contain costs”—ration health care by denying those things that you do need insurance to pay for: heart surgery, radiation treatments for cancer, hip replacements, things like that. Out of “compassion,” reformers may open another exit: the one that leads to the cemetery. (Emphasis mine) Do you think it’s accidental that euthanasia and “universal access” are on the agenda at the same time?

Thomas Sowell is correct. Entrepreneurs lower real costs by finding ways to create more goods and using fewer resources. Governments “lower” costs via raw force or denying medical care, and if a person offers to pay for the care, well, that defeats the real purpose of socialism. Yet, we are told that private entrepreneurship in medical care is evil and medical socialism is good. People who accept such things as being true also will endorse the presence of “death panels,” even while denying that the panels exist.

This is just the beginning. More and more clinics, large and small, will drop more Medicare patients.

—

From Bloomberg News

Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) — The Mayo Clinic, praised by President Barack Obama as a national model for efficient health care, will stop accepting Medicare patients as of tomorrow at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona, saying the U.S. government pays too little.

More than 3,000 patients eligible for Medicare, the government’s largest health-insurance program, will be forced to pay cash if they want to continue seeing their doctors at a Mayo family clinic in Glendale, northwest of Phoenix, said Michael Yardley, a Mayo spokesman. The decision, which Yardley called a two-year pilot project, won’t affect other Mayo facilities in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota.

Obama in June cited the nonprofit Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio for offering “the highest quality care at costs well below the national norm.” Mayo’s move to drop Medicare patients may be copied by family doctors, some of whom have stopped accepting new patients from the program, said Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, in a telephone interview yesterday.

“Many physicians have said, ‘I simply cannot afford to keep taking care of Medicare patients,’” said Heim, a family doctor who practices in Laurinburg, North Carolina. “If you truly know your business costs and you are losing money, it doesn’t make sense to do more of it.”

Medicare Loss

The Mayo organization had 3,700 staff physicians and scientists and treated 526,000 patients in 2008. It lost $840 million last year on Medicare, the government’s health program for the disabled and those 65 and older, Mayo spokeswoman Lynn Closway said.

Mayo’s hospital and four clinics in Arizona, including the Glendale facility, lost $120 million on Medicare patients last year, Yardley said. The program’s payments cover about 50 percent of the cost of treating elderly primary-care patients at the Glendale clinic, he said.

“We firmly believe that Medicare needs to be reformed,” Yardley said in a Dec. 23 e-mail. “It has been true for many years that Medicare payments no longer reflect the increasing cost of providing services for patients.”

Mayo will assess the financial effect of the decision in Glendale to drop Medicare patients “to see if it could have implications beyond Arizona,” he said.

Nationwide, doctors made about 20 percent less for treating Medicare patients than they did caring for privately insured patients in 2007, a payment gap that has remained stable during the last decade, according to a March report by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, a panel that advises Congress on Medicare issues. Congress last week postponed for two months a 21.5 percent cut in Medicare reimbursements for doctors.

National Participation

Medicare covered an estimated 45 million Americans at the end of 2008, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the agency in charge of the programs. While 92 percent of U.S. family doctors participate in Medicare, only 73 percent of those are accepting new patients under the program, said Heim of the national physicians’ group, citing surveys by the Leawood, Kansas-based organization.

Greater access to primary care is a goal of the broad overhaul supported by Obama that would provide health insurance to about 31 million more Americans. More family doctors are needed to help reduce medical costs by encouraging prevention and early treatment, Obama said in a June 15 speech to the American Medical Association meeting in Chicago.

Reid Cherlin, a White House spokesman for health care, declined comment on Mayo’s decision to drop Medicare primary care patients at its Glendale clinic.

Medicare Costs

Mayo’s Medicare losses in Arizona may be worse than typical for doctors across the U.S., Heim said. Physician costs vary depending on business expenses such as office rent and payroll. “It is very common that we hear that Medicare is below costs or barely covering costs,” Heim said.

Mayo will continue to accept Medicare as payment for laboratory services and specialist care such as cardiology and neurology, Yardley said.

Robert Berenson, a fellow at the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center in Washington, D.C., said physicians’ claims of inadequate reimbursement are overstated. Rather, the program faces a lack of medical providers because not enough new doctors are becoming family doctors, internists and pediatricians who oversee patients’ primary care.

“Some primary care doctors don’t have to see Medicare patients because there is an unlimited demand for their services,” Berenson said. When patients with private insurance can be treated at 50 percent to 100 percent higher fees, “then Medicare does indeed look like a poor payer,” he said.

Annual Costs

A Medicare patient who chooses to stay at Mayo’s Glendale clinic will pay about $1,500 a year for an annual physical and three other doctor visits, according to an October letter from the facility. Each patient also will be assessed a $250 annual administrative fee, according to the letter. Medicare patients at the Glendale clinic won’t be allowed to switch to a primary care doctor at another Mayo facility.

A few hundred of the clinic’s Medicare patients have decided to pay cash to continue seeing their primary care doctors, Yardley said. Mayo is helping other patients find new physicians who will accept Medicare.

“We’ve had many patients call us and express their unhappiness,” he said. “It’s not been a pleasant experience.”

Mayo’s decision may herald similar moves by other Phoenix- area doctors who cite inadequate Medicare fees as a reason to curtail treatment of the elderly, said John Rivers, chief executive of the Phoenix-based Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association.

“We’ve got doctors who are saying we are not going to deal with Medicare patients in the hospital” because they consider the fees too low, Rivers said. “Or they are saying we are not going to take new ones in our practice.”

By John Stossel

From Yahoo News

WASHINGTON – A loophole in the Senate health care bill would let insurers place annual dollar limits on medical care for people struggling with costly illnesses such as cancer, prompting a rebuke from patient advocates.

The legislation that originally passed the Senate health committee last summer would have banned such limits, but a tweak to that provision weakened it in the bill now moving toward a Senate vote.

As currently written, the Senate Democratic health care bill would permit insurance companies to place annual limits on the dollar value of medical care, as long as those limits are not “unreasonable.” The bill does not define what level of limits would be allowable, delegating that task to administration officials.

Adding to the puzzle, the new language was quietly tucked away in a clause in the bill still captioned “No lifetime or annual limits.”

The 2,074-page bill would carry out President Barack Obama‘s plan to revamp the health care system, expanding coverage to millions now uninsured and trying to slow budget-busting cost increases. A tentative deal among Senate Democrats to back away from creating a new government program to compete with private insurers appears to have overcome a major obstacle to the bill’s passage.

Officials of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network said they were taken by surprise when the earlier ban on annual coverage limits was undercut, adding that they have not been able to get a satisfactory explanation.

“We don’t know who put it in, or why it was put in,” said Stephen Finan, a policy expert with the cancer society’s advocacy affiliate.

Democratic officials of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee would not comment publicly but said the bill contains numerous provisions that will benefit patients with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses, not to mention improvements in preventive care.

Advocates for patients say they’re concerned the language will stay in the bill all the way to Obama’s desk.

“The primary purpose of insurance is to protect people against catastrophic loss,” Finan said. “If you put a limit on benefits, by definition it’s going to affect people who are dealing with catastrophic loss.” The cost of cancer treatment can exceed $100,000 a year.

Under the health care bills in Congress, the major expansion of health insurance coverage won’t take place until three to four years after enactment. Democrats have touted a series of consumer protections as immediate benefits Americans will secure through the legislation. Both the Senate and House bills, for example, ban lifetime limits on the dollar value of coverage.

But Finan said the change in the Senate bill essentially invalidates the legislation’s ban on lifetime limits.

“If you can have annual limits, saying there’s no lifetime limits becomes meaningless,” he said. A patient battling aggressive disease in its later stages could conceivably exhaust insurance benefits in the course of a year.

It’s unclear how widespread such coverage limits are in the current insurance marketplace. Large employers have moved away from coverage limits, but insurers have wide discretion in designing plans for small businesses and individual customers.

In the House bill, neither annual nor lifetime limits would be allowable under an essential benefits package intended to provide comprehensive coverage.

From Liberty For All

Governments run up the cost of essential goods and services, by making them so called “rights” or entitlements. When something is “free,” people overuse it. When it is paid for by other people aka third parties or insurance, the people using the goods and services don’t care what they are charged because they aren’t paying for it, which ultimately raises prices for all. Service providers are guaranteed payment by the government or insurance company, and not wanting to or having to deal with delinquent accounts like others in the so called “free market” – (we cannot in reality say we have a free market in America because almost everything is Regulated by bureaucrats) – providers hesitate or refuse to give care to those who do not have the insurance or government coverage.

Also a huge idiocracy (check out the movie- its hysterical) is formed which is expensive, inefficient, dumb, and wasteful!

Alas, after the costs have sky-rocketed due to entitlements for some and regulations for all, most individuals cannot afford to receive medical care without risking financial ruin if they do not have insurance or the governments “help.”

Now, along comes Uncle Sam, declaring the situation a crisis! The government has decided it wants to further control the market, raise taxes and expand the entitlements, which will in turn raise the prices even more, and force people to pay for goods and services they do not want or need. The flip side of this is the government will prevent them from receiving services or products they DO want and need.  Your money and your health care choices are reduced or eliminated. You are worse off than before. More government; less freedom; economic and personal. The government gets the coal mine, the people get the shaft!

The correct solution to the is to get the government out of the health care business altogether like it was in the 1960 ties before health care became and entitlement and was  bureaucratized.  People paid for their own routine care and saved for catastrophes, or bought low cost hospitalization insurance. Individuals could buy insurance in the free market to suit their own budget and pocketbook. Private charity, churches, and all kinds of voluntary associations as well as and the medical profession themselves did a great job of providing care for the poor and down trodden. That was they way it worked before government intervention into health care and it could work that way again.

Health care prices would drop like a lead balloon and become affordable, like other products and services not protected from competition in the free market place. Our lives would not be dominated by the fear of getting a serious illness and losing everything we have and have worked for in life!

Economics 101: People will take or use what is free, whether they need it or not.

People will waste and abuse what they do not own or work to pay for. Basically, people are not as concerned about how they spend other peoples, or “the insurances companies,” money as they are what comes out of their own bank account, even though the reality is, the insurance company and the government got the money from them in the first place!

NOTE:  I use the collective word “People” with literary license, as I fully know not ALL people overuse the system and folks ARE frugal with third party payments. However, it appears that enough people do follow the negative behavior I have described so as to make present day insurance prices a burden for the rest of us. We have lost site of the original function of all forms of insurance which is help cover a catastrophic loss. Health insurance should have never begun paying for routine care. This was where it all went astray.

Health insurance started with hospitalization insurance, and did not cover routine doctor visits and preventive care. You paid for this yourself, like an adult, and prices were cheap. When I was born, my parents paid for my doctor and hospital bills out of pocket. My dad saved money and paid the doctor out of his paycheck. I don’t know the total costs, but my mother said it was 3 dollars a day for the hospital nursery. This was in 1951.

My great grandfather, who lived 6 days shy of his 100th birthday in 1960, was a graduate of the University of Louisville medical school, doctored and delivered babies in Louisville’s West End until he was 85 years old. Sometimes he just got paid with chickens. He was not a wealthy man to say the least.  He lived in a modest home with his extended family until he broke his hip and was placed in a rest home a few months before he died.  He also chewed tobacco, and drank a concoction of whole milk and raw egg every day of his life! So much for high cholesterol or hardening of the arteries in his day and time.

I digress even further as I report that “Grandpa” was sued when he was at fault when he had an accident while driving his Model T Ford – and settled for the magnificent sum of seventy-three dollars!

One more bitch about government meddling before I end this epistle. The War on Drugs which is truthfully the war against the individual’s right to be left alone and control his or her own little hunk of flesh! How much more of a slave can a person be, than to be told what he can or cannot peacefully ingest even in the privacy of his own home.

I cannot accept this. It freaks me. This one thing alone was enough to make me despise our government and withdraw my support from the MOFO’s.

First, a little about ME: I was born in 1951, graduated for High School in 1969 , and married the first time in 1976, Gave birth in 1979,divorced, and got married the second time( the good one) in 1984.  In my day and time, talking a walk, coming back in laughing hysterically and   heading for the food table was a normal course of events at almost every party!  Buts its MY generation, the Baby Boomers or more accurately stated  the Baby BUSTer’s” who are now running, looting, killing  and bankrupting the US and the rest of the world, who are shamefully locking up, robbing and murdering their own kids  for  using the same substances they did growing up, and YES: THEY DID INHALE!  I exclude myself from this group of hypocrites because I have continually and consistently spoken up and out against this sick and evil travesty known as the War on Drugs.

In the sixties, I grew up saying things like: “The world does not owe you a living,” and “Sticks and Stones can break my bones, and words can never hurt me,” and listen to this one: “Prove It” – Yes we used to say prove it when people fed us a line of BS that did not make sense!!

We had a song with lyrics that said: It’s your thing, do what you want to do. I can’t tell you, who to sock it to, and “I’m a true nature child, I was born, born to be wild.”

Also, Ringo Starr observed that, “Everything the government touches turns to crap,” and Abbie Hoffman said, “How can I talk about the government if I can’t say fuck?

Fellow Humans: please reclaim your lost liberty NOW, as it is quickly becoming a fading memory……… Like “Camelot” when King Arthur, Guinevere and Sir Lancelot sought “Right Over Might”!

In Closing: What is your opinion of this ACTION PLAN?

Call or write your so-called “officials and representatives” and tell them, in a nice and polite way of course, that violence and coercion disgusts you and you believe that voluntary co-operation and free markets are the way for individuals to live and to structure their societies. You withdraw your support for the political means. You are a rational human being and want to make your own decisions about how to spend your money and run your own life in your own self interest. Period. Goodbye. It’s been REAL: Thank you very much. Then, stop voting, sending money, and don’t associate with the scoundrels.  Also, turn off the 4th branch of the government known as TV and radio and ignore the propaganda and focus on what you see!  Live life in the present as you see it yourself!

True freedom can’t be tamed!

From FFF

by Jacob G. Hornberger

The core problem in the health-care debate is that most everyone just assumes the existence of Medicare and Medicaid and medical licensure. Then, they come up with some sort of reform plan that works around these socialist and interventionist programs.

That’s ridiculous, because Medicare and Medicaid and occupational licensure are the heart of the problem. It’s just that people are so accustomed to and dependent on these government programs that they simply cannot imagine life without them.

But life without them is the only cure for America’s health-care woes.

Last Saturday the Washington Post carried an interesting article about a family doctor in Post, Texas. By closely reading the article, one can infer how Medicare and Medicaid destroyed the finest health-care system in the world.

The doctor, Ben Edwards, is the only family practitioner within a 45-mile radius of the town. He has 2,000 patients, which he treats by allocating an average of 15 minutes to each of them. His professional time is filled to the maximum. His wife and child are important to him, and he does his best to spend evenings with them.

What would happen if President Obama were to get his wish of “free” health-care for everyone, including the 3,708 residents in Post? Edwards’ office would suddenly be inundated with people. According to the article, “He has no idea how he would fit in anyone else” and the last thing he wants to do is work at night. The article sums it up: “The truth is this: Edwards will not have time to treat them all.”

You see, the problem is the same as it is with Medicare and Medicaid. Without health-care coverage, people are much more cautious about going in to see a doctor. Once the government gives it to them for free, they go into the doctor seeking treatment on every single ache and pain, no matter how minor.

Rosemary Tuck is an example. A waitress in Post with no health benefits, when she gets sick, she treats herself with over-the-counter medications. Her statement is revealing: “If I had coverage, I would go see Dr. Edwards, even if I got a cold or sick.”

Her sentiment is echoed by Rosa Latimer, a newspaper editor with no health insurance: “If I’m really sick, I’ll go to the doctor.” But if she had coverage, she says, “I might go more often and get tests done without waiting.”

And that’s precisely what Lyndon Johnson’s socialistic Medicare and Medicaid programs did. By providing “free” medical service for millions, these two socialistic programs placed an enormous additional burden on the demand side of the health-care industry, bringing about ever-soaring health-care costs, which then produced a panoply of distortions and perversions in health care.

What about the supply side? The Post’s article was revealing in that respect also. If Obama’s health-care plan goes into effect, an estimated 40 million uninsured Americans might well suddenly seek general doctors for physicals and other everyday medical needs. Yet, “There is no sign that … the country is training enough family practitioners.”

That’s because government licensing restrictions operate to artificially restrict the supply of doctors and other health-care providers. Like with so many other professions (law being a good example), licensing is nothing more than a protection racket whose purpose is to restrict supply in order to keep salaries high of the privileged who have the money to meet the prerequisites for getting the licenses.

Yes, I know, the statists will immediately come back with, “Oh my gosh, there would be quacks doing brain surgery on me!” Well, there’s no one better to refute such nonsense than Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman’s. See his famous essay “Medical Licensure” here: http://www.fff.org/freedom/0194e.asp.

Now, it’s true that medical regulations, insurance regulations, and employer-based health-care insurance have greatly distorted the health-care market too. Everyone would be better off with their total repeal.

But the only long-term cure for America’s health-care woes lies with radical surgery — the complete repeal of Medicare, Medicaid, and medical-licensure laws. Only by completely separating health care and state, as our ancestors separated church and state, can we restore a sense of normality to the health-care part of our lives.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

From Rasmussen Reports

Just 38% of voters now favor the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s the lowest level of support measured for the plan in nearly two dozen tracking polls conducted since June.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% now oppose the plan.

Half the survey was conducted before the Senate voted late Saturday to begin debate on its version of the legislation. Support for the plan was slightly lower in the half of the survey conducted after the Senate vote.

Prior to this, support for the plan had never fallen below 41%. Last week, support for the plan was at 47%. Two weeks ago, the effort was supported by 45% of voters.

Intensity remains stronger among those who oppose the push to change the nation’s health care system: 21% Strongly Favor the plan while 43% are Strongly Opposed.

Rasmussen Reports is continuing to track public opinion on the health care plan on a weekly basis. Next week’s Monday morning update will give an indication of whether these numbers reflect a trend of growing opposition or are merely statistical noise.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

Only 16% now believe passage of the plan will lead to lower health care costs. Nearly four times as many (60%) believe the plan will increase health care costs. Most (54%) also believe passage of the plan will hurt the quality of care.

As has been the case for months, Democrats favor the plan while Republicans and voters not affiliated with either major party are opposed. The latest numbers show support from 73% of those in the president’s party. The plan is opposed by 83% of Republicans and 70% of unaffiliated voters.

Other recent polling shows that Democrats consider health care reform to be the top priority for the president. Republicans and unaffiliated voters see deficit reduction as most important.

Among the nation’s senior citizens, 34% favor the health care plan and 60% are opposed. A majority of those under 30 favor the plan, but a majority of all other age groups are opposed (Premium Members can see full demographic crosstabs).

Support for health care has declined along with President Obama’s approval ratings. For the first time in the Obama era, the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Approval Index has been in negative double digits for nine straight days.

Despite the decline in support for the health care plan, 50% still say it is at least somewhat likely to become law this year. That figure includes 17% who say passage is Very Likely.

While Senate Democrats this weekend assembled enough votes to begin debate on the plan, many challenges remain. All Republican Senators and several Democrats, for example, have expressed opposition to the so-called “public option.” Sixty-three percent (63%) of voters nationwide say guaranteeing that no one is forced to change their health insurance coverage is a higher priority than giving consumers the choice of a “public option” government-run health insurance company. Most liberal voters say giving people the choice of a “public option” is more important. But most moderates take the opposite view and say guaranteeing that no one is forced to change their health insurance is the top priority.

Overall, 46% favor the creation of a government-sponsored non-profit health insurance option that people could choose instead of a private health insurance plan. However, if the plan encouraged companies to drop private health insurance coverage for their workers, support for the public option falls to 29%, and opposition rises to 58%.

As Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “The most important fundamental is that 68% of American voters have health insurance coverage they rate good or excellent. … Most of these voters approach the health care reform debate fearing that they have more to lose than to gain.”

Other challenging issues in the Senate debate include abortion and illegal immigration. Ever since the House’s passage of the Stupak Amendment which says the “public option” would not cover elective abortions and that recipients of federal insurance subsidies could not use them to buy abortion coverage, the divide among Democrats has been visible.

Earlier polling showed that 48% nationwide favored the abortion ban, but most supporters of health care reform didn’t want to address the issue. Just 13% of all voters wanted abortion coverage mandated in the legislation.

On immigration, 83% say that proof of citizenship should be required before anyone can get health care assistance from a government program. Most Democrats while claiming the plan will not cover illegal immigrants are opposed to including a proof-of-citizenship stipulation.

Other polling shows that 47% trust the private sector more than government to keep health care costs down and the quality of care up. Two-thirds (66%) say an increase in free market competition will do more than government regulation to reduce health care costs.

While voters are skeptical of the plan working its way through Congress, 54% say major changes are needed in the health care system. Sixty-one percent (61%) say it’s important for Congress to pass some reform.

Only 31% believe Congress has a good understanding of the proposed health care reform.

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From The Independent Institute

In this discussion of regulatory frameworks, the authors investigate the similarities and differences between insurance legislation on either side of the Atlantic. They discuss the developmental history of state and federal regulation in the United States and European Union and present policy recommendations for reform in the US based on their analysis of various market trends.

The authors, all professors and experts in the field of insurance and risk management, explain that while the EU has developed a principles-based approach to insurance regulation and risk management, the US has maintained rigid, rules-based regulations that enforce a blanket approach to risk-pooling practices. The EU model provides guidelines for capital reserve standards, but allows individual firms to establish risk assessment and management practices on a case-by-case basis. The flexibility of this method “yields a variety of risk strategies, limiting the possibility of systemic risk inherent in using a single standard model for all or even most insurers.”

The EU’s recent deregulation of insurers has led to increased competition between firms, which are “encouraged to develop and use their own risk models in order to determine the regulatory target capital.” According to cited studies, these developments have increased efficiency and “greatly improved the supply of insurance,” fostering healthy market conditions and administrative transparency. While the American system has stagnated under inflexible policies that fail to capture individual risk profiles, the report predicts that heightened competition among European insurers will “develop the best risk model in the market,” and will eventually result in lower prices for consumers and more stability for successful firms.

Supported by dozens of recent studies, reports, and articles, the authors conclude by presenting policy reform suggestions for US insurance regulations, closely adhering to the EU system that promotes beneficial competition between firms. They emphasize the need for legislators and consumers to recognize “the ability of market discipline to substitute for government intervention.”

Read the entire 36 page report in PDF format.

From AZCentral.com