Can people with loss-of-function mutations to CYP2E1 be resistant to benzene poisoning?

Insurance People --- May I Borrow Your Minds for a Moment?

• Here's a health insurance plan I dreamed up today. I would like to know your thoughts about it. But before you give me your thoughts, please take a moment to read the plan. Companies stop offerring health insurance. What they offer instead is wellness programs, which can be on or off company property. These programs are focused on weight control, exercise, nutrition, and medical monitoring (blood pressure, heart health, obesity, range of motion, pulminary function, liver function -- simple blood tests) No employees are compelled in any way to participate in any way in any company wellness program. But, those that do, get certificates signed by physicians stating the wellness factors that apply to that individual participant. Kept his weight down, did running, has good heart function, liver is fine ... blah blah blah. These would be the kind of certificates that local health insurors would take into account in rating the premiums to be paid by that individual wellness program participant. Beyond the certificate, and depending upon wellness factors attainments (weight loss, better this, better that etc) the company provides a wellness encouragement award in the form of a check, once every 90 days. Recipients of such checks can use that cash for anything they want, including time with working girls in Nevada, or rye whiskey, or Cuban cigars. However if they can present a receipt for a health insurance premium they have paid, for their own selves as beneficiaries of privately acquired health insurance policies (with a little help from the certificate signed by physicians from the wellness program) then, their next award check, if they get one by continuing to make attainments, will be doubled in value. The doubling only happens once. Once a person is getting double-sized award checks they keep getting those checks as long as they keep buying private health insurance, and can show receipts, and as long as they keep making attainments in the company wellness program. This plan is filled to the brim with justice. It is highly focused on individual responsibility, not just a gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme style system. People whose behavior is cost-containing and good get highly rewarded. All people of every kind are completely free to do anything they want. Nobody is compelled in any way to do anything. The company gets to set up their wellness program as a charitable educational or health related organization -- a 501 (c) (3). They also get to create a company Foundation -- a 501 (c) (6) to give money on a tax deductible basis to the wellness program. So all the costs of the wellness program become tax deductions, including the fees for the trainers, nutritionists, and the award checks given to employees, either in the single portion amount or in the double portion amount -- all those costs are a tax deduction for the company. They come out of pre-tax gross income. The incentives here are 100% perfect. The outcome here is that probably 10 million additional people get health insurance -- not the full load of 35 million, but a step in the right direction is still a step. More importantly by dumping a lot of healthy people into the insurance pools, who pay full premiums (some of which is subsidized by their award checks), everybody's health insurance premiums go down. Not only that, the average healthiness of the American population goes up. So more healthy people are paying premiums and there are less sick people who need healthcare. Less sick people, not only makes premiums go down it also makes our national productivity go up. How productive we are, in relation to our national debt, determines how long we get to exist as a nation that's not in default or owned outright by China. My plan is an extremely good plan -- it cuts through all the nonsense and goes straight to the core issue which is health. It properly incentivizes everybody involved. It is 0% coersive -- no mandates on anybody. I'm putting it up here so that a few thoughtful people can read it, think about it, and send me useful comments to make it better, or fix any flaws you see in it. Cynical clowns could just please leave this question alone, I don't have time to read your snarky junk answers. Persons of goodwill, please come forward, my strength is not equal to my task, I need your help.

• Answer:

  Although it's a lovely idea, I can think of several reasons why it won't work: 1. it would violate millions of union contracts 2. people who CURRENTLY have preexisting conditions, wouldn't be ABLE to get health insurance. Wellness programs won't affect the issues related to pregnancy (#1 preexisting condition!), type 1 diabetes, cancer, that sort of thing. 3. you'd still have cost issues with affordability - especially for family plans 4. How would you migrate welfare health insurance plans - Medicaid and Medicare - over to this. Your plan, addresses ONE of the main reasons why health care costs are drastically rising. Don't get me wrong, I LIKE it. But it doesn't address several of the OTHER reasons why health care costs are rising: 1. it's impossible to comparison shop. There can't be any competition, as long as a. you never know what the doctor/hospital is going to charge until AFTER you've received the services b. the doctor/hospital can charge 5 different people, 5 different rates and c. the consumer is completely isolated, financially, from their health care, by having insurance pay for it. 2. pharmaceutical company issues - lump it all together here, from getting a new patent because now your drug is time released for two more hours (same formulary!), to public advertising (ask YOUR doctor if Viagra is right for you!) 3. legal issues - medical malpractice is exhorbitant, and the rates DO get passed to the consumers. No claim makes me, an agent, groan more than a 'dead baby' claim - because it doesn't MATTER if the doctor is at fault or not, the policy limit WILL be paid out. NO jury is going to side with a doctor, over grieving parents. Lawyers encourage this, by taking a HUGE chunk. Yes, I think we've got some serious self responsibility issues here in the USA, when we're always looking to someone else to fix it for us. I do have my own ideas for health care reform (note, not health INSURANCE reform, different thing!), but mine aren't going to work either. ** Amusingly enough, my kids' pediatrician suggested government run medical centers, instead of health insurance reform, when I was discussing the issue with him. Although . . . is it your intention to provide medical coverage to illegal aliens? We have somewhere between 15,000,000 and 20,000,000 illegals here, and they are a good portion of your 35,000,000 uninsured.