universal healthcare

[eppie]

It may or may not work, since the reformed Dutch system is only 4 years old.

An Experiment with Regulated Competition and Individual Mandates for Universal Health Care: The New Dutch Health Insurance System<blockquote>"The first lesson for the United States is that the new (post-2006) Dutch health insurance model may not control costs. To date, consumer premiums are increasing, and insurance companies report large losses on the basic policies. Second, regulated competition is unlikely to make voters/citizens happy; public satisfaction is not high, and perceived quality is down. Third, consumers may not behave as economic models predict, remaining responsive to price incentives. If regulated competition with "individual mandate's" performs poorly in auspicious circumstances such as the Netherlands, how will this model fare in the United States, where access, quality, and cost challenges are even greater? Might the assumptions of economic theory not apply in the health sector?"</blockquote>

I'd still like to review the profitability, and growth projections for Achmea, CZ, VGZ, Menzis, Agis, and ASR.

As I said, the difference between you and us is that we came from a system with for the largest part state run health insurance (with obligatory payment) except for higher incomes who could take a private insurance. (costs didn't even differ so much), and you come from the other way if I'm correct. (often arranged via private inusrance though employers).

Of course profitability depends on what is compensated and what not, and how expensive health care is (so costs for pharma and manpower). And of course the duty to insure people even when they are sick (and will likely give you a loss) will make it less atractive for health insurance companies. (something they will get back from their other customers just like a government would do via taxes).

Most of those companies are not on the tsock exchange. I read on wikipedia dat e.g. achmea had close to 1 billion profit in 2007.