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**What is Life Insurance?**A life insurance provides financial protection to the family in cases like the sudden death or the permanent disability of the main earning member of the family. Thus, it is an assurance that the insurance company will take care of the financial well-being of the family members even when the breadwinner is not around. This is done by paying the sum assured to the nominee or the beneficiary. The insurance can also cover other contingencies like critical illness and permanent or temporary disability. To get this financial security, the policyholder agrees to pay a certain amount, also known as the premium, to the insurance company The premium amount to be paid is decided on the basis of various factors. The policyholder is called the insured, while the insurance company is called the insurer.Basically, a life insurance policy helps in meeting three goals in life. Let us look at them:1. **Protection**: A life insurance policy provides financial security to the family on the untimely demise of the insured.2. **Investment**: Along with protection, life insurance also helps in investment so that the money can be used for meeting various financial goals.3. **Saving**: Along with protection, through life insurance, you also get to save money which can be used during retirement or for other financial needs.1.**What is Life Insurance Premium?**A premium is an amount paid to the insurance company for getting a life insurance policy. The premium amount is an important aspect to be considered before finalizing a policy. It depends on various factors like age and gender. To reap the benefits of the insurance policy, it is important to pay the premium on time. In case of a non-payment or a payment delay, the policy can be considered as a lapsed policy. However, before a policy happens to expire, you usually get a grace period of 30 days. The payment mode can be regular or single. A regular payment can be monthly, annually and so on. Let us understand some factors on which the premium depends.**Age**: This is an important deciding factor while buying an insurance policy. Older you are, higher the premium amount. Accordingly, younger people have to pay a lower premium amount for a life insurance policy.**Gender**: the Premium amount for women is lower compared to that for men.**Smoker/Non-smoker**: In case you are a smoker, the premium will be higher because you are prone to higher risks in life. Thus, a non-smoker has to pay a lower premium.**Sum assured**: Higher the sum assured or the death benefit, higher the premium amount to be paid.Policy term: If the policy is for a longer duration, the premium amount will be higher.Types of Life Insurance PolicyLife insurance is of seven types. And each has its own features and specialties. You can choose them as per your need and requirement. They are Term Insurance, Whole Life Insurance, Endowment Policy, Money Back Policy, Child Plan, Retirement or Annuity Plan and United Linked Insurance Plan (ULIP).Term Insurance:Term insurance is a pure protection plan where the beneficiary gets the sum assured, also called death benefit, if the policyholder passes away during the term of the plan. However, if the insured survives the term plan, the coverage also ends, with the beneficiary not getting any money. Even the premium paid is not refunded to the insured, though there are some plans where the premium paid is returned, if the policyholder happens to the survive the plan. This payment is termed as survival benefit. The premium for such plans is quite high. Otherwise, a pure term plan is one of the most affordable plans compared to other types, as the amount of the premium is quite nominal. One can opt for regular payment or single payment mode. Term insurance is of three types:Level Term: The sum assured remains the same during the entire term of the policy. Thus, even the premium amount and renewal premium remain constant.Decreasing Term: In this type, the sum assured decreases over time; however, the premium amount does not change.Increasing Term: Both the sum assured and the premium amount increase over time. This is mostly opted by people who think beneficiaries will need more money.TYPES OF TERM INSURANCELevel Term Insurance**Decreasing Term Insurance****Increasing Term Insurance**Sum assured for the beneficiary remains constant throughout the term of the plan. Even the premium and renewal premium remains the same during the termSum assured decreases with time and the premium amount remains constant. Example: credit life insurance, mortgage redemption policiesNot just sum assured, but also premium amount increases with time**Whole Life Insurance/Life Cover Insurance:**Under this policy, the insured is covered for the lifetime, i.e. till his/her death. The maturity age is usually 100 years. Thus, you need to keep paying the premiums until 100 years of your age. Here, the beneficiary gets the sum assured along with maturity benefits on the untimely demise of the policyholder. On the other hand, the policyholder gets to enjoy the survival benefits, in case he/she happens to survive the policy term. A whole life insurance plan offers benefits in both the cases – when the policyholder survives the policy or on his/her sudden demise during the term.******Whole life insurance is of two types :**Traditional whole life plan and ULIP. In the case of ULIPs, a part of the premium paid is used for coverage and a part is invested in the market. Traditional plans can be further classified as participating, where the insured gets the bonus or dividend from the company, and non-participating, where the insured does not get any bonus or dividend from the company. You can enjoy the benefits at the end or receive them as periodic payments.**Endowment Policy:**This offers both coverage and a means for saving. Like any other life insurance plan, here, the beneficiary gets the sum assured in case of the death of the insured. However, if the insured survives the plan, he/she gets the maturity benefit. The policy can be both participating, where the insured gets bonus and dividends from the company, and non-participating, where the insured does not get bonus and dividends from the insurance company. An endowment policy can also be a ULIP, where a part of the premium is invested in the market apart from a part being used in coverage.**Money Back Policy:**In this policy, the insured gets a certain percentage of the sum assured at regular intervals during the term of the policy. If the insured survives the tenure of the policy, he/she also gets the sum assured irrespective of the percentage of the sum assured already paid out to him/her. Thus, in the end, the insured gets the sum assured along with the accumulated bonus.And in case of the death of the insured during the term of the policy, the beneficiary gets the full sum assured regardless of the number of premiums paid. It is one of the expensive policies, as it provides benefit to the insured during the term period along with the long-term benefits of usual life insurance plans. A money-back policy provides benefit to the insured in between the term of the insurance which he/she can use for meeting various financial goals.**Child Plan:**People can take this insurance plan if they want to save money for the future of their child along with getting coverage for the breadwinner. It is a combination of savings and insurance, where the insured can use the money for the future needs of the childlike higher education. The investment in this plan does not have any vesting age – one can start investing soon after the birth of the child and one can withdraw money after the child reaches a certain age. Some child policies offer intermediate withdrawal options as well. This can be either a ULIP or an endowment plan.**Retirement or Annuity Plan:**Taking insurance policies for the sake of the family is not enough. One should also keep one’s old age in mind. When you are young you have a regular source of income, but during old age, the situation can change. So, one needs to plan for retirement also. Along with coverage, retirement or annuity plans give the option of saving and investing money which can be used in the old age. Life insurance companies in India provide retirement plans which help create a corpus from which a regular income, called annuity or pension, is given to the insured after reaching a certain age.Retirement plans can be availed “with cover” or “without cover”. The first plan offers a sum assured to the beneficiary and the “without cover” one gives the corpus amount to the beneficiary only after the death of the insured. Retirement plans are of two types:**Immediate Annuity:**** **The insured gets the pension within one year of the premium amount being paid.**Deferred Annuity: **The insured decides a time frame after which he/she will get the annuity from the company. This time frame is known as deferred time.**Unit Linked Insurance Plan (ULIP):**Unit Linked Insurance Plan (ULIP) offers a dual advantage – coverage and a means of investment. Under this plan, the cash value/paid-up value of the policy depends on the current asset value. The total premium paid by the insured is divided into **two parts:** one that is invested in the market or debt funds and the other that is used for insurance. The type of investment is selected by the insured depending on the type of risk that he/she is willing to take.There are different types of ULIPs depending on the type of investment made and the death benefit.On the basis of investment made, there are three types of ULIPs:**Aggressive ULIP****:** Here 80-100% of the investment amount is invested in equity.**Balanced ULIP:** In this case, 40-60% of the investment amount is invested in equity and the rest is investedin the debt market.**Conservative ULIP:** Here 20% of the investment amount is put in equity and the rest is invested in the debt market.On the basis of the **death benefit**, ULIPs are of **two types**. In the first case, the beneficiary gets the sum assured or the fund value, whichever is higher. In the second case, the beneficiary gets both the assured value and the fund value.Group life insurance is a type of life insurance that covers a group of people. It is mostly provided by companies to their employees. As insurance is done in a group, group life insurance is considered cost-effective. The group can comprise lawyers, members of cooperative banks, societies, doctors, etc. This life insurance can be contributory, where the employees contribute along with the employer in the payment of the premium, or non-contributory, where the employer pays the entire premium amount.**Life Insurance for Senior Citizens**You can brave various situations of life when you are young; however, in old age, you need more protection and security. To manage such circumstances of life in old age, life insurance for senior citizens can be a good option. The insurance will provide them with financial coverage at times of need. In case you do not have any support for your spouse, life insurance for senior citizens can provide financial security to the spouse in case of your sudden demise. The death benefit can also be used to manage loans, debts and other financial needs.**What all Life Insurance Covers?**Along with the standard coverage which varies with a plan to plan, you can further enhance the protection with the help of riders, such as accidental death benefit rider, total or permanent disability rider and many more. The additional benefits can be availed on payment of some extra amount. Following are some common riders:* **Accidental death benefit rider**: Nominee gets this financial benefit along with the sum assured if the insured happens to dies in an accident* **Accidental Total and permanent disability rider: **Insured gets financial assistance if he/she is not able to earn due to some disability mentioned in the policy* **Critical illness rider**: This covers major critical ailments like cancer, heart attack* **Hospital cash rider**: A fixed amount is paid to meet the expenses of non-medical items in case of any hospitalization* **Waiver of premium rider**: Once you have this rider along with your life insurance policy, the company waives off the remaining premium payment on the sudden demise or total permanent disability of the insured**Eligibility Criteria****Particulars****Details**Entry Age18-75 yearsPolicy Term5-75 yearsPremium Payment OptionRegular, limited and single premiumSum AssuredRs 3 Lakh-100 Crore**How Life Insurance Functions?*** Before purchasing a life insurance policy, you should understand your need and analyze your financial condition and also decide your beneficiary* Choose the insurance company and the policy after a thorough comparison* Once you finalize the company and the policy, also decide the policy term. The premium is decided on the basis of various factors like age, lifestyle, gender, policy term, etc.* The policyholder has to pay the fixed premium to the insurance company for the fixed term. The premium is accumulated to provide the sum assured on the untimely demise of the insured* In case of the sudden demise of the insured, the claimant should immediately inform the company and provide the required documents along with the claim form* If the claim is approved, the beneficiary gets the sum assured. The claim can also get rejected because of reasons like nonpayment of premium, the reason of death not covered in the policy, etc.**Documents Required For Claim Process**Following are the standard set of documents required to process a claim:* Duly filled in and signed a claim form* Original policy certificate* Death certificate issued by a local authority* FIR* Post-mortem reports* Hospital discharge summary* KYC documents of a beneficiary like a copy of photo ID and address proof* Copy of canceled cheque and bank statement* If the claim is made by someone other than the nominee or assignee, the person making the claim has to submit legal proof of his or her title**Life Insurance Policy Claim Process**In case of the untimely demise of the insured, the nominee or beneficiary can file a claim to get the sum assured.* Inform the insurance company as soon as possible with details like time of death, place of death and cause of death along with a required set of documents given above* Once these documents are submitted, the insurance company would verify the details and accordingly settle the claim* Sum assured would be transferred to the bank account of the beneficiary* In case the company finds some problem while verification, it might reject the claim**Cases Where You Can’t Make Claims for Life Insurance Policy (Exclusions)**A life insurance policy protects the insured and his family against different scenarios, but certain claims are not covered by the insurance company. Below are some common exclusions. However, this might vary for different policies.* Self-inflicted surgery or deliberate self-harm* Involvement in extreme sports activities like paragliding, water-sports activities, rock-climbing* Man-made disasters or damage caused due to negligence on part of human beings* Loss of life due to HIV and STDs* If a claim has arisen due to the involvement in any unlawful activity**Time Taken to Settle the Claim**After informing the insurance company about the death of the insured, the claimant needs to submit the required documents, along with the claim form. The insurance company takes something like a week to a month to evaluate and approve or reject the claim. Settlement of a claim usually takes one or two months and in case it takes more time than specified, the insurance company might pay late payment interest on the sum assured. However, insurance companies also take the initiative to keep the nominee posted about the status of the claim.**Companies Offering Life Insurance Policy in India**There are 24 insurance companies providing life insurance policies in India. They are listed here according to their Claim Settlement Ratio (CSR) for 2017-18. A CSR is the total claims paid compared to the total claims received in a financial year.**INSURANCE COMPANIES**Max Life InsuranceDHFL Pramerica Life Insurance*Future Generali India Life Insurance*Life Insurance Corporation of India*Aditya Birla Sun Life Insurance*Star Union Dai-Ichi Life InsuranceTATA AIA Life Insurance*AEGON Life Insurance**Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance*ICICI Prudential Life Insurance*Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance*IDBI Federal Life Insurance*HDFC Life Insurance**Canara HSBC OBC Life Insurance*PNB MetLife India Insurance*Bharti AXA Life Insurance*Reliance Nippon Life InsuranceIndiaFirst Life Insurance*Exide Life Insurance**Aviva Life Insurance*Sahara India Life InsuranceSBI Life Insurance Co. Ltd.Kotak Mahindra Life InsuranceShriram Life Insurance**Importance Aspects**Since there are many companies selling insurance policies, selecting a particular company and policy is a big task. To ease this process, you should keep certain points in mind.* Ask your insurance provider to explain the exclusions under the policy you have chosen. This helps in getting a clear picture of what is covered by the policy* As your needs evolve, it becomes important to review your insurance needs on a yearly basis* Don’t defer payment or pay after the renewal date as this will be considered as a ‘bad risk’ and your plan may lapse* Choose wisely as per your need while selecting the type of insurance* Consider the claim settlement ratio of the insurance company as this indicates how reliable the company is when it comes to settling the insurance claim* Use life insurance premium calculator to gauge the pros and cons of various life insurance plans and then choose the best life insurance policy depending on your need and ability**Advantages of Buying Life Insurance Policy*** **Managing unpredictability**: Everyone wants one’s family to lead a good life even after his/her demise. No one can fill the void of one’s death, but financially, one can secure his/her family’s future so that the members don’t have to be dependent on someone else. This is when the sum assured of the life insurance policy helps.* **Financial cushion**: Life insurance policy helps bailing out the family from the financial troubles like loans and debts after the untimely demise of the breadwinner of the family.* **Retirement**: One needs to secure his/her old age when various sources of income might start drying up. An annuity plan can help in such a situation. The money invested or saved through ULIPs or endowment plans can also be used in old age.* **Tax benefits**: Tax benefits can be enjoyed for the premium payment and the returns given by the company under Sections 80C and 10(10D) respectively of the I-T Act, 1961. You can get tax benefits even on riders.* **Mental peace**: Once all the finances are sorted, a person is relieved from all the tension and thus, can concentrate on other aspects of life.* **Savings tool**: Along with the term plan, one has an option to choose a plan which will be a combination of protection and savings. This will help to create a corpus for future financial needs.* **Safeguard children’s future**: Things like education cost and marriage expenses can be a big concern while raising a child. Child plans can help in bailing you out from such situations.* **Loan against policy**: With certain insurance policies, one can even take a loan against the sum assured or the paid-up value, depending on the type of insurance plan taken. Usually, these loans are taken on a lower interest rate.* **Protection against other eventualities**: The riders or additional facilities offered through these policies can provide financial help in cases like accidents and disabilities.**Terms Related to Life Insurance**Below are some common terms related to life insurance:**Maturity Age: **Every life insurance policy comes with the maturity age at which the policy ends. Basically, Life Insurance Company will beforehand communicate to the insured about the maximum age till which the coverage will be provided to the insured.**Premium: **It is the amount which the life insured pays to the company in exchange for policy and the sum assured.**Premium Payment Term:**** **The duration of paying the premium. It can be regular (monthly, annually), limited payment term and a single payment.**Nominee: **It is the legal heir chosen by the policyholder to whom the sum assured will be paid after the demise of the life insured by the insurance company. The nominee could be wife, child, and parents of the policyholder.**Sum Assured: **It is the amountthat the insurance company agrees to pay on death of the insured person to the nominee.**Riders: **They are additional features or extra protection you can get on the payment of some extra amount. Riders increase the base cover and protect the insured against unexpected circumstances.

I haven’t read all the answers so someone else may have said this already, but i think this is a good question to look for the answer to, because when something doesn’t make sense, it’s good to find out why.The most important point to make is that what conservatives/Republicans mean by “government healthcare” is an imaginary picture of something terrible that nobody would want (so why do the Democrats/liberals want it? They have to be idiots)(it’s not just Republicans and conservatives who do this, creating an ugly caricature or mythical false picture of the other side’s position and concluding their opponent is an idiot, and worse, both sides do this, and if they don’t stop, they are going to lose legitimacy with the public. That is already happening. Maybe people who think the way you suggest in your question are just too deep into it for too long to change, but when someone like you asks a question, and listens to the answer, then that is a good thing, that is moving in the direction where people would become more interested in the conversation).I hope the US eventually has universal public funded health care, supplemented by private secondary plans, like all the countries i know of have, and like Medicare is.In practice, public funded health care is way less expensive than private insurance, stacked up next to each other. The method of funding is different. Public health care is funded through taxes. That’s why it’s called “public” health care. The public, everyone, chips in, according to their tax rate, and they all chip in to fund a universal system that everyone benefits from. The amount an individual pays in taxes per month is minuscule compared to the premiums people pay each month for private insurance plans, the copays and deductibles. The cheapest private health insurance is the HMO model, managed care. Managed care means that a quality assurance group, what you might call bureaucrats, privately funded ones, someone who is not you or your doctor, makes the decision about what health care you’ll have and what you won’t have. In return for giving up the freedom of plans where patients have choice of physicians and doctors are free to choose and bill for services they consider medically necessary, people pay lower premiums and copays, and usually no deductible, unless that has changed recently. That is the private system. It’s very expensive. Everyone knows that. if it wasn’t so expensive, public health care wouldn’t even be on the table for discussion.Donald Trump, not currently performing as a liberal or centrist Democrat, during the campaign last year, said many times that he favors government (that was his word) paid for health care. He also said that the private insurance companies would supplement, he said “something will be worked out with the private insurance.” I’m paraphrasing but it was close to that, “government has to pay.” or “government has to do it.” He said private insurance would have a role to play. If you’ve followed the current healthcare policy debates you will probably remember Trump saying that the House plan passed by Republicans, was “mean.” He said that because this has been his position for a long time, that everybody should have health care and that it’s not affordable for too many people. In order to have “the greatest healthcare system in the world!” as he often characterizes his goal, that is what he has said is necessary, and anyone with their eyes open knows that without government funding, the US will never have the greatest healthcare system in the world.Trump also knows what he didn’t say, that public health care is just so much cheaper in dollars and cents, that it’s bad business and bad for the country as a whole not to have government funded health care. Google “Trump Scott Pelley interview 60 Minutes Healthcare” something like that, you should be able to watch a video or read a transcript to see what he said. He has made similar comments in more general terms where you can tell he understands that people need more help to have access to healthcare, and it is a populist position at this point that politicians ignore or oppose at their peril.Now, to get to your question, in public healthcare systems, does the government control health care? Does public funded healthcare mean government control of health care decisions?No. That depends on who is running the system, what model they’re using, and how they are funded. As others have said, the VA does do a lot of things well, my Dad was a patient for decades, my mom had Blue Cross insurance for the family through her job as a public school teacher, but my dad would often choose to go to the VA, even though it was farther drive from the many doctors he had the free choice of if he used my mom’s insurance, and he sometimes did because the VA did have inconveniences, but he used it by choice, he had a great private plan to use where you choose any doctor you want and any lab, any hospital. He had surgery on his nose in the 50s when i was a little kid at the VA. And we liked visiting him there, it was a nice place.But certainly something has gone wrong on the administrative level with the VA in recent years, apparently there are more patients than the system is designed for, and perhaps some administrators are opportunists who aren’t in their role for the right reasons. For the past few years, it’s been proposed that veterans have vouchers or some kind of resource to enable them to go to private medical clinics, when the VA can’t meet their needs, when no appointments are available with long waiting lists. It hasn’t been made clear in the media what exactly the reason for this is. Is there enough tax revenue allocated to the VA by the government to enable them to provide a high level of care for veterans with every day health care needs, where they can readily get timely appointments, the same as in the private sector? i don’t know, but it isn’t because of government control that this is happening, it’s because of negligence and an opportunistic way of setting priorities, and a misallocation of abundant resources while pretending “we can’t afford it.” BS. I’ve seen the same thing happen in the private sector, after the onset of widespread use of the HMO model. When quality assurance boards have to review your doctor’s decision and you have to wait until they get around to reviewing yours, they do the reviews on Thursdays (things i was told when i called on the phone). When analyzed in public discussion, in the media, doctors complained that profiteering was at the cost of sound medicine. These criticisms were made persistently and vocally in the media but it still took many years for things to improve where doctors have more freedom and the review process doesn’t take as long, but it’s still bureaucrat control and the value system is based on how to maximize profits. One of the worst things about these systems is that you have to choose a primary care doctor who is low paid by the insurance company for his or her “captitated” time with you, in return for accepting a low payment, the doctor receives many referrals from the insurance companies becaues patients have such limited choices, of these few low paid doctors. Patient freedom? ha. Too costly. So lets say you sign up for Dr X, somebody you never heard of, you just picked him from an insurance company list. You go to see him and you realize right away he is not that great of a doctor, or you don’t like his abrupt coldness as he rushes you through telling him your issue, because you’re captitated, you only get the amount of time with the doctor that the insurance company has pre-decided, anything more than that comes out of the doctor’s pocket, cuts into his profit. i don’t know if you’ve experienced this. Many of us have.So let’s say you don’t like this doctor, you don’t have confidence in him. You call the insurance company and say, this is not a doctor who can help me, he doesn’t listen to me and he doesn’t seem to know anything about my symptoms, i need another doctor. You are told that you can go back to their list and choose someone else, and next month, you will be able to see that doctor. “But i’m sick NOW!” ‘well, that’s our policy, you can’t make changes more than once a month..” etc etc, this is how it is both in the classic HMO model and in the hybrids that let you see doctors in the community but if they want to refer you to a specialist, approval can be a long wait and it turns out there is only one specialist in your “region,” a large geographic area, requiring a long drive, and that doctor, you find when you get there, is incompetant, and during the few times you saw him, he did not write down any notes so he couldn’t remember the next time, what it was that he said you had, and what he did and what he wanted you to come back for, because the office had shifted over to a computer system where he was required to put the notes on a computer but he couldn’t get it, so he asked me to keep track of what he said for him, and let him know. When i called the insurance about getting a different doctor, they said there weren’t any—and i live in a large metropolitan area with many doctors, specialists, this was ear nose and throat, but they only have one signed up with them, and they give him all their business, and in return he accepts a low fee. This was in 2013, United Healthcare. I detailed the errors he had made and he did permanent damage to my left sinus using an ancient technique called politzerization to try to clear my ear which i had lost hearing in following a virus. The insurance company made a special exception, to approve the specialist that my primary doctor REALLY wanted to refer me to, but that wasn’t his choice, and it took about a week for the approval to go through.Many of the problems i referred to above are composites of things that happened over the years with managed care, even when it wasn’t called that and there was more choice, which i liked, still there was the primary capitated doctor through which you had to go to get to a specialist or lab tests or anything.It was NOT government funded or government run, it was private, it involved many different insurance companies, Pacificare, Metlife, Blue Shield. Through my job. The best plan i had was for the last many years, the Blue Shield plan, through my Union, not the employer, though the employer paid for it (which is to say, i earned it through my hard work), the reason the Union got a better deal for a better plan than any of the 4 others the employer had negotiated with insurance companies is because while i worked for a large employer, maybe 6000 people at least, giving the employer good negotiating power, the Union was part of a coalition of unions statewide, and that is a very very large group of members, who the Union can then negotiate with the insurance company extremely competitively, the companies wanted our business because there were so many of us. We were all public employees, different unions not all the same, but joined together by a state wide organization of all of us, so you hear sometimes in the media that public employees have “cadillac plans,” we had good coverage and patient and doctor choice (that is what is meant by ‘cadillac’, basically what conservatives say they’re in favor of, patient and doctor freedom), our plan had a far lower cost, premium, out of pocket and cost to the employer than the other plans the employer negotiated with. Lower cost, better coverage, that is a cadillac plan, and i resented hearing conservatives criticize this because tax payers pay for it, that’s what society decides they want, in my case, social workers for abused and neglected kids, other public employees are teachers, sanitation workers, etc etc, so to encourage the public to think they are being ripped off when such workers get good coverage and low premiums because there are so many of them, compared to most people, they simply can be more desirable to the insurance companies because it’s so much business for them, it’s not the public employees’ fault that insurance companies want their business and give them ‘cadillac’ plans, public employees work as hard as anyone else, and they do what other people do, strive to have adequate income and health care.Even still, though i was a public employee, my healthcare was from the private sector. I had decent choice of doctors, still had to go through the primary doctor, you do realize don’t you, that that is not freedom for the patient, it’s restrictive, and that was invented by the private system in the late 80s? but to my benefit, i rarely had any health issues. that is the best way to not have problems with insurance.Then i retired. Because i took a 40% pay cut, i chose the cheapest insurance plan from the retirement offerings, that was when i got United Health Care, again, a private insurance company—-how could it be that i have no free choice? i’m asking this to Republicans and conservatives—you say that private health insurance gives freedom, public health insurance doesn’t. So how can that be that i and so many other people throughout the society have never known freedom of choice in healthcare in their adult lives, despite having private health insurance plans?? If you and i are having a conversation, what would be your answer to that?The year i retired, i wasn’t feeling too good, that’s why i retired, i didn’t see any symptoms, just feeling off and unmotivated and low energy, so i decided i had been working too long, 25+ years, at such an intense job, and my judgement wasn’t as sharp as it used to be, and i actually felt forced to retire by my declining functioning.The following year, i started having some alarming symptoms, falling, lack of coordination, a blood test that showed my glucose was 32 and next to it the lab put CRITICAL. So i had some sort of hypoglycemia, but the United Health Care specialist, endocrinologist, my doctor referred me to, who spent a lot of time with me, because i had some serious symptoms, something was wrong with my brain and when i ate the symptoms cleared up, but he said what i told him didn’t match what he knew about hypoglycemia, and he said he thought it was my liver and i should see a gastroenterologist. in other words, the guy was an ignorant idiot, but that is what the insurance company offers for specialists.Then the next big event was that i turned 65 !!!!!! i qualified for MEDICARE, government health insurance !! the dreaded government healthcare , according to people who think that single payer government funded health insurance means you will lose your freedom of choice and government will tell you what to do. I am trying to show you that if you think in sound bytes without looking at lived experience, you will be mislead. You looked at the VA, and you concluded government controlled healthcare is bad. I don’t know if you looked at other government funded healthcare programs, but i am telling you about things i’ve experienced directly, not something i heard from the propaganda of one side or the other in the debate.When i went on to Medicare, we had to choose a supplemental policy, and i chose Anthem Blue Cross. I did not know how Medicare works and i still don’t, but i was not ready for the amount of freedom i had, it still has not sunk in after 3 years, how much freedom i have, the private system trained me to always go to my primary doctor first, for specialist referrals for example. Not that that’s a bad idea, i’ve found him to be a great doctor, but before the advent of the HMO model in the late 80s, private insurance was mostly based on the “indemnity plan” model, which meant you were free to self refer to any doctor you wanted, the insurance paid, any lab, any hospital. And so, if a good friend tells you that they had a great experience with Dr Smith, you get his number from your friend and you go, you call the doctor on the phone and make an appointment. It’s been so long since i’ve had that freedom, that now that i do again, thanks to Medicare, the government funded single payer system, i don’t remember that i have it. If you know you need a specialist, you don’t have cost the insurance company more money by having to first to go to your “primary doctor,” which is a general practitioner.So, after i turned 65 and was set FREE from private insurance restrictiveness, i was having those bizarre and scary symptoms and “critical” low glucose on my lab test, and the HMO private funded “specialist” told me it wasn’t endocrinological and i should see a “liver doctor” (there aren’t any liver doctors, you see a gastroenterologist for liver things, even i knew that, but private insurance paid doctors aren’t always the most expert, and when your choice is restricted to them, you’re stuck, not free. it’s a bad feeling. )So, i asked my primary doctor who he would recommend, no insurance company approval process, wow, just what was his opinion? and he recommended a guy highly, and i called and made an appointment. How different. I got in to see him quickly, brought my lab tests, i now had a second one that the “endocrinologist” had done, which showed low glucose but he said my test result was “great!” because it was in the afternoon right after i had eaten in the car on my way to the doctor as i told him, but he knew less about hypoglycemia than i did, so when my glucose test was only slightly below the normal range instead of critically, he said it was “great.” So i took these lab test results and my own home testing results that showed every morning my glucose was extremely low, and though it went up after eating, it stayed in the below normal range throughout the day.The “liver doctor” i went to , highly recommend, no insurance company approval to get before making the appointment like with the private system, looked at my results and listened to my symptoms, which now included waking up laying on the floor with no memory of how i got there , unable to get up, unable to enunciate words, and this doctor who i referred myself to said “It’s odd that no one checked your insulin to rule out insulinoma.” He ordered the test and i went and got it. In my readings about hypoglycemia, i had read about insulinoma, i knew it was something extremely rare so i skipped over it. But at that point, i was thinking it could be that, because it wasn’t the normal kind of hypoglycemia. And the blood test immediately showed that i had an insulinoma tumor on my pancreas. They are usually benign, 90+%, but they wreak havoc with your life and your health, and are often not diagnosed for a very long time. By looking at old blood tests i saved (i save everything), i could see that the first time i had low glucose on a blood test was 2006, and continued having low ones after that. Before that, they were never low, they were normal. So apparently that was when the insulinoma was becoming active. It coincided with the time when my performance at work started deteriorating and i was not myself, i wasn’t the same, and was eventually forced to retire early. All that time, with relatively good private insurance, those blood tests showed up but the doctors didn’t mention them. I once told my doctor about some really strange symptoms i got related to delaying having lunch one day, and she said yes, you have hypoglycemia, and you are managing it the only way there is, by eating on time and eating low carb foods, she said that is what they tell people with hypoglycemia to do.But when i got “government health care,” two years after i retired, a total of 8 years after i had first started having symptoms and lab results, i was able to go to a highly recommended doctor, not the specialist for my condition, who thought of this rare thing immediately, while the private funded and private controlled doctor who WAS supposedly a specialist, had no clue, he never paid attention in class when they were talking about rare insulinomas because you aren’t ever going to make money off something only 4 per million per year get, so why pay attention to it? But my “liver doctor” was paying attention in class and remembered so that if he saw the symptoms, he could rule it out, that’s what a doctor does, they have expert knowledge about diseases and how to distinguish and differentiate them, and they don’t try to save the insurance company money by not ordering something that might be unnecessary.Doctors know that with Medicare, they are free to order what they deem to be medically necessary, whatever is in the best interests of the patient. The operative word here in my reply to your question is “FREE.” They are free to do medicine based on medical considerations. When you call on the phone to make an appointment with a doctor and they ask your insurance, when you say Medicare, you’re in, with the vast majority of doctors practicing in the US.Surely you are aware that Medicare beneficiaries love their healthcare ,because you get more illnesses as you get older, or things wear out, and you need medical help and your income is lower, when you retire, and society wisely provides taxpayer funded healthcare, taxpayer i.e. government funded, not just to current beneficiaries but to themselves, and that’s why cutting Medicare, as certain politicians advocate, is very unpopular with the public. Beneficiaries sure don’t want to trade it in on some lower quality care, which doesn’t have their best interests as the top priority the way Medicare does, they don’t want something that doesn’t allow them the FREEDOM Medicare gives them to make their own healthcare decisions.When i found out i had this rare tumor on my pancreas that was causing me to have seizures, just guessing because i would wake up laying on the floor not able to get up or talk, and in a weird state of consciousness that would wear off after about 10 minutes, urine on my nightgown, no memory of any of it, this tumor that unless I ate food around the clock, i would risk more seizures because it’s fasting that causes the tumor to secret insulin, i was glad to find out that it’s curable by surgical removal. But because they are so rare, how do you get a surgeon who’s experienced at removing them? There’s a whole range of outcomes for patients depending on the experience and skill of the surgeon. I AM SO GLAD I WASN’T ON UNITED HEALTH CARE PRIVATE INSURANCE COMPANY for this thing, wow, i could have ended up with permanent digestive defects if it had been done by an inexperienced doctor, i could have ended up with a much more invasive procedure, which would have cost more money to treat, time in intensive care, wound care, possibly skilled nursing after discharge because i live alone and didn’t have anyone to take care of me like people need if they have the more crude surgical approach of the inexperienced. How do you find an experienced surgeon to remove an insulinoma when there are only 4 new cases per million per year? I used google. I didn’t have to worry about private insurance companies making these decisions for me, i was free to find the best doctor i could. Fortunately i live in a large metropolitan area with some top hospitals in the country, and even with all that, i only found one surgeon who really was experienced, according to their website, that was one of his specialities, and he was a pioneer of things like minimally invasive surgery on the pancreas (which is behind the stomach and liver and gall bladder and really hard to get to, i of course wanted someone who really knew their way around in there. These tumors are like one centimeter, they’re really really small, and being hard to get at and hard to see and feel, they are hard to remove. I found this guy at the top hospital, i went to see him. First i had to call a nurse who asked me questions about my insurance and had me fax her my lab reports.It wasn’t just Medicare that was important, the supplemental private plan was important too. This was all new to me so i didn’t know anything about it, but she asked me what my secondary insurance was and which of their plans it was, and when i told her it was Anthem and the name of the plan (“prudent buyer” i think), she said , “Oh, that’s the GOOD kind,” so i was in. One of the very best surgeons for this in the world. If i hadn’t been able to have this surgeon, who accepts Medicare assignment of benefits, the language they use to say he accepts Medicare, then i would’ve been in less capable hands, and i know how much worse off i would have been. I was on a Facebook page with other people in the same position, and many had something called a Whipple procedure, which means they don't just remeove the tumor, they also remove part of the pancreas, and the gall bladder and the bile duct, and this has permanent effects on your health. i was just really lucky to have this very experienced guy.As it turned out, while he thought he was going to do it laparoscopically, which is called minimally invasive, and just involves a few small cuts, because he wasn’t able to find the little thing for about 4 hours, he had to do an open surgery, meaning about a 10 inch upside down horseshoe shaped incision, to get better access and to even find the thing, but once in there and with the help of a high tech intra-operative ultrasound thing and technician, they came up with an ingenious way to get the surgeon’s hands to the tiny tumor, and at that point, he was able to “enucleate” it which means, they just take the tumor, they don't take part of the pancreas or other surrounding stuff. it’s the best case scenario, despite a difficult surgery. i recovered so fast, i was discharged in 2 1/2 days. I had a wonderful comfortable private room, great nursing care, all the medication for pain i wanted and not what i didn't want, and i was ready to go home. Although i live alone, my daughter and son in law were in town for his dad’s funeral, so they stayed at my place and went out for food and stuff, got my pain meds prescription. i didn’t need much. About 3 days later they were gone, i would have been fine even if they hadn’t been there. My friend who picked me up at the hospital said if i needed anything she would go to the store for me. i wasn’t supposed to drive for something like 3 weeks, at least. But once i was alone, i felt ok to drive and i went out and did some shopping, i was taking it easy but i wasn’t completely laid up, after major abdominal surgery. and i know a lot of people who, with the same kind of surgery, were still in the hospital a month later, that was a worst case scenario, but there is no substitute for experience for quality surgery for something so delicate and difficult. And i had the freedom to look all over my city and choose the best surgeon i could find. How free is that??And, with the various preoperative things, including two procedures that required general anesthesia, and aftercare, as the months went on afterwards, i never got a bill for anything.That is world class public healthcare. To do the same thing using private funding would cost so much, only the rich could have it.Many people, including President Trump in his various statements about what he favors in healthcare to have the best healthcare in the world (his phrase) is something like Medicare for the whole society, including secondary supplemental plans for everyone, which for some people will have premiums, but much much lower than when private insurance is your only insurance, your primary insurance. Medicare has a premium. In the lower income level, like me, it’s $134 a month. There’s only two levels i think.This is something that is now being seriously talked about, for US health care. Simple. Patients free to choose any doctor, not just free to choose based on their income. In other words, when some Republicans in Congress say they want to have more freedom for people to choose the health insurance plan they want, they certainly don’t mean a low income person can choose the kind of private plan high income members of Congress can choose. Unless it’s public funded, people with low incomes are not going to get the freedom that increasing numbers of people believe every one should have, and such people know that the private system, unless you can afford to buy a platinum plan, are very restrictive of patient choice.Before i got my job long ago, when i was still a full time student, i was on Medicaid (Medi-Cal in CA where i was). I had freedom of choice with that, and was living on very very little money in very poor conditions, but i could go to the same doctors high income people could go to, back in the 70s and early mid 80s. I never found a doctor that didn't take Medi-Cal. That is freedom. The middle income people had freedom too up through the end of the 80s, before the managed care model started taking over private insurance replacing the predominance of the indemnity plans.While the VA has serious problems in serving the needs of veterans in too many places, the problem isn’t “government.” The problem is the people in those jobs, especially the people running it and setting expectations, and there is a problem of underfunding and being cheap. If the US had the best healthcare in the world, if it had a system like the single payer system that puts patients’ well being at the highest priority, and gives doctors a system that doesn’t get in their way, then veterans wouldn’t need the VA anymore. Just think about the money people would save if they weren’t paying it in high insurance premiums and copayments and ridiculous deductibles. There would be no worry about pre-existing conditions, no need to keep 26 year olds on their parents’ insurance plans. Everything would be simple. And it would be far less costly for citizens when every taxpayer is chipping in, the amount an individual would pay in taxes to make this possible would be 1/100 of what they pay for private insurance. They still get the same doctors, the same quality health care, and better because they don’t have insurance company restrictions and “managed care” deciding what they can and can’t do for their health.That has just been my own personal insurance, i’ve had Medi-Cal, and both very good and very bad private insurance, for many years, and i now have Medicare as my primary insurance. If the politicians used this as a model and got serious about working together to make it the best in the world, it would take so many burdens off of so many people, including employers who wouldn’t be paying massive amounts of money for insurance. There was a time when that worked well for those many people in the population who had employee heath insurance, but beginning in the late 80s, insurance companies wanted to increase their profits, which they called “cost containment,” and their profits continued to rise while quality of coverage declined and got more expensive.