Silly Little Country

And This Clown Wants to Remake an Insurance Industry?!

theblogprof analyzes the rather witless story, which The One probably just made up as part of his lecture to us bozos who don't understand insurance the way he does, and told to the world watching his health care summit.
What is clear that the concept of collision insurance, which most normal people deal with every year, is beyond his mental capabilities.
Judging from the comments over there, he is not endearing himself to some insurance agents.

I saw this, too, and was screaming at the screen so loud I scared the dog sleeping under my desk. Firstly, hard-working small-business-owning insurance agents don't laugh at people to whom we deliver bad news. We wouldn't be in business very long, now would we? We sell people what they want to buy, and we advise them when we think they're not thinking things through, offering them what we think they should have. When they don't take our advice, we don't laugh at them when the inevitable happens. I spend a great deal of my professional day trying to talk people out of making bad decisions such as this. Sometimes they listen, sometimes they don't.
With all DUE respect, MR. President, I require an apology from you over this stupid, ignorant, offensive remark, both personally, and on behalf of my profession. I'm not holding my breath.

To be honest I thought he simply does not understand the concept of insurance, as evidenced by his apparent preference for comprehensive health insurance as opposed to catastrophic, or even high-deductible, high co-pay options.
As Arnold Kling commented during the excellent Cato live-blog of the summit:

Obama admits that you could get cheaper insurance if you allowed higher deductibles, higher co-payments, and less coverage. So why not let people do that?
Obama is saying that catastrophic insurance is not real insurance, but comprehensive insurance is real insurance. That's the opposite of what I believe.
Obama: We are not taking over health insurance. We are just going to design the policies and fix the prices, that's all...

I'm with Arnold.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 7:35 PM