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TechnoratiUpgrading To National Health Insurance (Medicare 2.0)
The Case For Eliminating Obsolete Private Health Insurance
Private health insurance was an idea that worked during part of the last century; it will not succeed through the 21st Century. With jobs increasingly service-based and short-term, the large employment-based risk pools that made this insurance system possible no longer exist. Medical care has become more effective and more essential to the ordinary person, but also more costly and capital-intensive. The multiple private insurance carriers that emerged during the last century can no longer provide a sound basis for financing our modern health care system.
Alone among the nations of the world, the U.S. has relied upon private insurance to cover the majority of its population. In the mid-20th Century, when medical care accounted for barely 1% of our gross national product, medical technology was limited, and jobs lasted for a lifetime, health care could be financed through such employment-based, premium-financed health insurance. But the time for private insurance has passed.
Health care has now become a major part of our national expenditures. The premium for an individual now averages more than $4,000 per year, while a good family policy averages more than $10,000 per year, comparable to the minimum wage and nearly one-fourth of the median family income. As a consequence, though the US spends far more on health care than any other nation, we leave millions of our people without any coverage at all. And those who do have coverage increasingly find that their plans are inadequate, exposing them to financial hardship and even bankruptcy when illness strikes.
If we believe that everyone should have health care coverage, and that financial barriers should not prevent us from accessing health care when we need it, then it has become clear that the private health insurance system cannot meet our needs. Health care has simply become too expensive to be financed through private insurance premiums.
Supporters of insurance companies claim that they create efficiency through competition. However, the truth is that insurance industry is increasingly concentrated, with three national firms, United Health, Wellpoint, and Aetna, dominating the industry. And the high and rising cost of health care shows that whatever competition there was in the past has not worked to hold down costs.
Supporters of private insurance also claim that it expands consumer choice. However, the choice of plans that these companies offer is not what consumers want; it is the choice of their physician and hospital, exactly the choice that private insurance plans, in the guise of managed care, increasingly deny us.
What has been the response of the health insurance industry to this situation? To protect their markets and try to make premiums affordable, they have reduced the protection afforded by insurance by shifting more of the cost to patients, especially through high-deductible plans. They have also targeted their marketing more narrowly to the healthy portion of the population, so as to avoid covering individuals with known needs for health care. Yet premiums continue to rise each year, increasing by nearly 70% above inflation in just the last six years.
The so-called "universal health care" proposals being put forward by mainstream politicians would simply expand the current system without addressing any of its problems. They would simply mandate that either our employers provide us with coverage or we, as individuals, purchase our own coverage in the private insurance market. These plans cannot work in the face of the high cost of premium-based coverage for even the average person. (Some proposals would offer the option of buying a competing public plan, under the theory that the public program would be more efficient and effective. The flaw here is that the public plan would attract those who are unable to afford private coverage or who are paying high premiums or have no insurance because of pre-existing conditions. Placing these high-cost individuals in a separate government pool would make it unaffordable for most other people. This "death spiral" would cause the public plan to fail.)
The main impetus for renewed interest in health care reform has been the rapid rise in costs over the last few years. Yet, while most of these proposals give lip service to the need to control costs, none actually addresses the problem in a serious way. (The introduction of health information technology and "disease management", which some of them urge, are mere placebos; they may make politicians feel better, but studies have shown they will do little to reduce costs and may actually increase them.)
Everyone acknowledges that coverage for low-income individuals must be subsidized. But what about the average-income individual and family? If they must now be subsidized as well, we might as well throw in the towel and recognize that a more efficient, more equitable financing system has to be adopted if it has any chance of providing coverage while being affordable to the society. An individual mandate to purchase private insurance cannot provide good coverage while remaining affordable, while employer-provided coverage also can no longer be sustained as the premium costs to the employer become increasingly unaffordable.
The private insurance industry spends about 20 percent of its revenue on administration, marketing, and profits. Further, this industry imposes on physicians and hospitals an administrative burden in billing and insurance-related functions that consumes another 12 percent of insurance premiums. Thus, about one-third of private insurance premiums are absorbed in administrative services that could be drastically reduced if we were to finance health care through a single non-profit or public fund. Indeed, studies have shown that replacing the multiplicity of public and private payers with a single national health insurance program would eliminate $350 billion in wasteful expenditures, enough to pay for the care that the uninsured and the underinsured are not currently receiving.
Such a single payer plan would make possible a set of mechanisms, including public budgeting and investment planning, that would allow us to address the real sources of cost increases and allow us to rationalize our health care investments. The drivers of high cost such as administrative waste, deterioration of our primary care infrastructure, excessive prices, and use of non-beneficial or detrimental high-tech services and products could all be addressed within such a rationalized system.
In sum, we will not be able to control health care costs until we reform our method of financing health care. We simply have to give up the fantasy that the private insurance industry can provide us with comprehensive coverage when this requires premiums that average-income individuals cannot afford. Instead, the U.S. already has a successful program that covers more than forty million people, gives free choice of doctors and hospitals, and has only three percent administrative expense. It is Medicare, and an expanded and improved Medicare for All (Medicare 2.0) program would cover everyone comprehensively within our current expenditures and eliminate the need for private insurance. This is the direction we must go.
Leonard Rodberg is Research Director of the New York Metro Chapter, and Don McCanne, Senior Policy Fellow, of Physicians for a National Health Program. www.pnhp.org
23 Comments so far
Show AllVery good article and useful comments. I read Don's and Len's work all the time, and most recently used material from both in a public debate on single-payer health care. I have the greatest respect for them. Nonetheless, I would take issue with the following line:
The introduction of health information technology and "disease management", which some of them [insurance companies] urge, are mere placebos; they may make politicians feel better, but studies have shown they will do little to reduce costs and may actually increase them.
Actually, both health information technology and disease management, while no substitute for health care system reform, are "good things." Harvard Community Health Plan (a non-profit HMO) had electronic health records before there were PC's, and it was a great convenience to be able to talk with a nurse in the middle of the night who had our full medical histories in front of her. Disease management is also a proven cost-saving strategy for some diseases (e.g. diabetes)- I mean, would you rather the disease were NOT managed?- as witness the fact that self-funded employers make use of it.
More to the point, to the extent that health information technology and "disease management" are indeed useful, there is no reason they cannot be incorporated into a universal health care system. Indeed, both are used extensively by the best health care system in the country, the VA (now VHA). Which by the way is not only socialized health insurance, but socialized health care.
In the long run, the most important thing is not our health care, but our health, and that will improve only when we clean up our atrocious lifestyles- stressful, malnourished, physically inactive. Each of these states is manufactured in part by industries who have a stake in our ill-health. The stress part is actually intentionally nourished by many of our employers and investors, who see job insecurity as a positive. (It is not frequently mentioned, but tying medical insurance to employment is a good way to keep working people in their place. This may also help to explain the mixed record of labor unions on the issue.)
For the moment we have succeeded in getting a little light shone on the health care system, and it is worth putting an effort into helping our fellow Americans understand exactly how they are being taken to the cleaners. Indeed, depth of understanding and strength of organization are what we will need to counter the inevitable onslaught of propaganda that will engulf us when the insurance industry really gets worried. That is the purpose of the national campaign for a single-payer system and our local effort, as to which see:
http://healthcare-now.org/
http://hcfafl.org/
Well, you can always tell when the latest wave of "health care reform" is crashing down on the U.S. -- the half-truths come out like worms after a downpour.
Case in point: Ronald White's comments about Canadian health care, as he flames DiegoACNP ("Can you read and write ?") for his very reasonable "But we need to have some form of single payer medical care - any ideas?"
(DiegoACNP does seem to understand that the U.S. already has single-payer "AKA Medicare" for those over 65, those with end-stage renal disease, and a few other groups. What he doesn't seem to know is that U.S. Medicare runs quite well, is much more consistent in its coverage, and operates at about 25% the administrative overhead of the arbitary, private-insurance nightmare currently in place for those under 65. Any problems it has come from inadequate funding -- which has nothing to do with single-payer anymore than trying to drive a Mercedes with an empty gas tank impugns the car's engineering.)
White is apparently a Canadian (as am I, though I've actually lived in the U.S. and had care under the U.S. system). His comments only show that ignorance of one's own health care system is not just for Americans anymore.
White refers us to "Government of Canada Health Care Act" (he means The Canada Health Act: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hcs-sss/medi-assur/index_e.html ). For supporting evidence, he suggests that Americans "ask any Canadian who speaks English, which is all of them except maybe a few in Quebec". Here he doesn't let the facts get in his way either: The population of Quebec makes up 22% of the entire Canadian population, and 82% of them (6.1 million) have French as their first language. Fewer than a third of those claim to be bilingual in English -- that leaves 4 million people. More than "a few".
Then he claims that a "token 100 dollars per month" is paid out of pocket by Canadians. First of all, he apparently has no idea of median family incomes in rural Canada, where $100/mo would not be considered "token" except by American standards.
But second, and more important, this kind of payment is NOT universal. The Canadian health care system is actually 11 systems -- 10 for each of the ten provinces and another federally run one for the territories and military. The provinces devise and administer their own plans, which the federal government will very partially fund (only about 15-20% of the total cost, if the province abides by the basic principles of the Canada Health Act).
Only two or three of the ten provinces require their residents to pay such premiums, and no one is denied health care for not paying them (unlike the care one might or might not receive after paying premiums in the U.S.).
In Quebec, for example, ALL health care payments come from general tax revenues. No patient ever sees a bill or premium notice. And the Quebec government, unlike most other provinces, offers tax-funded insurance for pharmaceuticals (with a modest annual premium and modest co-payments) to all residents who opt for it.
Then, in another common but still unsettling show of ignorance, White says Tommy Douglas "introduced socialist medicine to Canada in the 1960s". (He means "socialized medicine" -- that favourite scare phrase used by the American establishment.)
Canada has never had, nor is it proposing to have, "socialized medicine". Canada instead has socialized health insurance. Physicians bill the health ministry on a fee-for-service basis, just as in the U.S. -- except that the choice of physician in most provinces is far, far freer than in the U.S.
Not only that, but physicians in Canada rarely get told after the fact that a billing is being denied -- covered services are determined in advance in negotiations with the single-payer (the Ministry). And MDs get reimbursed faster in Canada than in the U.S., with its blizzard of overlapping paperwork from hospitals, insurance companies, physicians and other providers.
Tommy Douglas (who was a Baptist minister, Americans) introduced his health care reforms, first for hospital insurance and then for medical insurance, in the 1950s. The rest of Canada followed suit in the 1960s.
And Canadians voted Tommy Douglas the Greatest Canadian in a nationwide CBC poll a couple of years ago. (Does the U.S. even HAVE a health care leader who would get nominated for such an honour?)
"Watch 'Sicko' and get over the paranoia of socialism especially when it applies to healthcare", White urges his readers. Not a tall order to fill, since there isn't any "socialism" to spark paranoia.
There is, however, lower infant mortality (because virtually all Canadian mothers have access to perinatal care at no cost), less obesity, and longer life expectancies than in the U.S. -- which may or may not be the result of better access to quality medical care.
Not to mention the lack of fear among Canadians over losing health insurance when they leave their jobs, even if they decide to become self-employed. If you're self-employed in the enterprising U.S., you'd better be married to someone with health insurance or else you go without it -- you certainly can't pay it out of pocket.
But White gets one thing right: All Canadians should see "Sicko" lest they fall prey to the myth that introducing private health insurance for those with the means will improve rather than worsen their health care access and outcomes.
Moore's film notwithstanding -- sorry to say this, dear U.S. neighbours -- if Americans do manage to organize and propose a system that will meet their health care needs (just as all the other rich countries have), the chances of enactment and implementation are virtually nil. Anything that threatens the involvement of the 500+ private health insurance companies in the U.S. will prompt the health insurance lobby to tap into the billions of dollars available to campaign against such change.
That's what happened in the 1994 reform attempt (remember the Harry and Louise commercials and "the government takeover of health care" they lied about?).
OR ... you could forgo spending billions on needless wars and endless presidential campaigns and fund a health care system the whole world would envy. It's up to you, not to your candidates. They haven't had the balls to do anything yet.
That would mean holding your elected officials responsible day after day. You might have to turn your TVs off and get the actual facts by reading up on your options, not just accepting what Wall Street tells you your options are. (Dream on.)
Our hearts go out -- yet again -- to the 45 million uninsured in the U.S. (150% of Canada's entire population) and to the 45% of personal bankruptcies due to health care costs. Good luck!
correctivelens has important points about about the state of healthcare. I'am an ER nurse, and one of the main reasons we do thousands of dollars worth of tests that are largely unnecessary is the fear of litigation. Until we have some real tort reform there will be no changes. Currently any case no matter how flimsy can result in a payoff. So it becomes cheaper to take on the CYA (cover your ass) mentality when caring for people instead of relying on clinical judgement, which is what physicians learn in their vast training. So until the court systems and jurys come around and quit handing people ridiculous sums of money for any little thing, it will not change.
It would be helpful to have a board made up lay people, legal people and medical people, to review any medical malpractice case for its merit before it can proceed. Also to stop allowing attorneys to take on these cases with no cost up front for the plaintiff. I do believe in accountability and feel it is important that people who are truly victims of incompetence and malpractice have some avenue of recovery. The current system drives up costs more than anything else.
You're spouting right-wing/Limbaugh like talking points; however, if you truly want to understand what has happened in America, our government has been under seige by corporate-fascism which owns and controls our Senators/Representatives.
You should have faith in a people's government . . .
we just haven't had one in a long time!!!
It's like government is a typewriter . . .
and it depends on who is writing the copy and
who has charge of the typewriter.
Recently, we've had fascists writing the script.
What you see with the post office is something inflicted upon them by this right-wing rule. Going "postal" became a common expression because of the pressures put upon the personnel.
Also true with the IRS which has been directed at pillaging the poor while ignoring wealthy offenders.
And, sorry, but it's Republicans who are corrupting our elections most notably with black box voting owned by private companies headed by Republicans -- and various schemes like "purges" and "caging" to eliminate minority voters.
QUOTE: I love my country, but fear my government. I don't have much faith in the US government running ANYTHING, from a war, to a postal service, to an income tax program to even a Presidential election; much less run a single payer (AKA Medicare) healthcare insurance program.
But we need to have some form of single payer medical care - any ideas?
My feeling has always been and still is: if you want to f*ck something up quick - let the government run it.UNQUOTE
What we should do is extend Medicare to everyone --
citizens of every age -- and then ensure that the system isn't STARVED and isn't privatized in any way.
It should include drugs -- throw out Bush's drug plan.
It should include dental health --
and it should include mental health --
We in Progressive Democrats of American have been succesfully lobbying our congressional representatives to support H.R. 676. If your congress person is not a co-sponsor of this bill, then please join or form PDA chapters in your congressional district and set up lobby teams to push for the only really viable and sensible solution to our healh care delivery system crisis: H.R. 676.
The time has come for we Americans to get active and take back the initiative to make change. In terms of the Iraq occupation, health care for all, election integrity and reform, environmental concerns, economic fairness, we no longer can sit on the sidelines as passive observers. PDA is involved in all of the above. Democracy demands that we get engaged.
Join PDA at www.pdamerica.org and get busy. We not only have to move those on the Right so that we can take our nation back, we have to steer those on our side of the aisle to remember who they serve and why we put them in office. Check us out, join, and get busy.
In Ohio we are working for single payer with www.spanohio.org. To build the movement, we can go through the states and ultimately achieve a national health single payer plan, the expansion of an improved Medicare for All. The battle lines are drawn and the fight will be rough. Lets pick up the mantle and run the gaunlet fending off those who will lie and cheat to keep us from achieving our goal. It is going to take a movement. If we build the parade, the politicians will run to the front to get in front of it.
I may be repeating some of what has already been said on this blog, but AMEN to the criticisms and conclusions outlined in the lead article. Not only is our health system completely broken, but the future costs of health care entitlements if we continue as we are will bankrupt the nation, according to many experts. We must completely revamp the system, both in how we pay for medical care and how that payment is funded to solve both problems. A single-payer system ("Medicare 2" makes sense to me) is the answer, but the funding issues must be addressed as well. Saving $350 billion a year is a good start, but we need to make sure we can continue to pay for our healthcare indefininately without deficit spending. I personally believe that there are many ways to increase efficiencies, and consolidating all of our patchwork of health care systems into a single plan that covers everyone would certainly be part of that. And a system of taxes (the current tax for Medicare might have to be adjusted), employer contributions (howls of protest here from employers who have never provided healthcare benefits, but certainly enthusiastic support from companies who can no longer afford or are being bankrupted by health care benefits to workers), and a progressive schedule of co-pays and/or deductibles for everyone could be designed to meet those costs, to everyone's benefit.
I disagree with those who continue to complain that our government can't do anything right. As a recent retiree, I was amazed at how efficient the process was to become a reciprient of Social Security benefits. I am told by my doctor friends (whose comment on a national health care program is universally "Bring it on"!)that Medicare benefit administration is also very efficient. I hate the current administration's drive to "privatize" government functions. When we transfer responsibility for government services to private enterprise, we can be sure that the result will be a deteriorization of service, degradation of wages, benefits and working conditions to employees providing the service, and an increase in cost. Check out the example of private contractors in Iraq as Exhibit A. Government is responsible to the people; private contractors are responsible to thier shareholders and the bottom line. Sure there is waste and inefficiencies in government, but most of the government workers providing services I know are hard working and concientious. I would much rather have government workers administrating and taking care of our public lands, parks and forests, for instance, than contracting out our natural heritage to private contractors who will administrate it for profit. We should demand better government, not sell our welfare and heritage off to the highest bidder.
US health care is not as bad as current pop culture would have you believe. It is, however, very expensive. This is true for at least four reasons:
(1) American patients demand (and doctors often recommend) the latest, most technologically-advanced and expensive treatments out there. My wife (who is a physician) recently told me that a friend who has headaches since she had a minor car accident should get a CAT scan. She probably will. In just about any other country, she'd take an aspirin.
(2) Administrative costs! Like the article above mentions, providers have to deal with a mess of administration and legal hoops to cover the myriad of insurers. What's more, private insurers spend a ton of money on marketing. In a single payer system, both of these costs are substantially reduced.
(3) Too many people without insurance flock to ERs for treatment (much of it unnecessary) where treatment is extremely expensive. Rarely do they pay for it; the rest of us do.
(4) Demand is high because (a) we think we deserve the very best (as long as someone else pays for it) and (b) we're freakin' fat. We get fatter all the time, which causes havoc with out bodies.
A single payor system has its advantages, but plenty of disadvantages too (lack of innovation, supply and demand for certain treatments not in balance, you know, the things that Michael Moore would studiously avoid). Please note that a single payor system will NOT work in the U.S. unless some patient cost-sharing is attached to it. We, as a culture, have a huge sense of entitlement, and we would drain the system dry for everything we could unless we had to share the burden each time we went to the doctor.
National government single payer health care is the answer and we will be forced to admit it sooner or later. How far do we have to fall in life expectancy, infant mortality, and communicable disease and how high will the costs be before we wake up.
The government often does a good job. I was just at the Appleton WI DMV office. She had a behind the wheel test passed and we went home in 1 hour and 10 minutes with the new picture license in hand.
I have spent longer on hold on the phone just trying to confirm a simple order with corporate America.
We must restore competence to government as a first step; that entails getting rid of the fools who have systematically attempted to cripple virtually every federal agency from the inside out.
We must then overcome the years and years of right wing brainwashing that has resulted in even the average person on the street thinking that all government is bad. The other thing we need to overcome is the view people have that all taxes are dreadful and any effort to increase taxes should be fought tooth and nail. It would be interesting to see how Mr. and Mrs. Average American would respond if shown in black and white the vast disparity between the rich and the poor and middle class.
This issue of health care is creating an enormous buzz right now. With some of the largest corporations coming down on the side of single payer universal coverage, perhaps this critical need will actually get the attention it deserves. As one who pays around $1500 monthly for premiums and copays, I would welcome some relief and would jump at the opportunity to pay more taxes in order to solve the myriad problems we have as privately insured people.
I heard that Medicare overhead costs are in the range of 1-2% and the private insurance industry is more like 20%. If health care costs the nation $2 trillion per year and we can reduce the overhead enough to insure all the uninsured, we will have made good progress.
I would like to see Medicare compete with private insurance companies. You can get a private plan or a public plan, it is your choice. Let us see who can provide the best care for the lowest price. Business people talk about competition, as long as it is not in their industry.
I don't believe in a Hell, but if I did it would be to send US HEALTH CARE INC. there to stay.
"But we need to have some form of single payer medical care - any ideas?"
No question is dumb but this comes close. What planet do you come from ? Can you read and write ? You must be literate or you could not have written this essay. I've got it, you're stubborn and refuse to copy anything that was not MADE IN AMERICA
Here are some suggestions. Take a holiday in Europe ( doesn't matter what country ) and ask ANY person on the street who can speak English,which is most of them , how their Health Care System works. Keep the kernals and throw away the chaff because not all systems are flawless.
Even easier , take a day off and cross the border north and ask any Canadian who speaks English,which is all of them except maybe a few in Quebec ,"who pays your medical bills"? You may get a lengthy dissertation on the Provincial/Federal cost-sharing agreement that you
can peruse at your leisure on-line "Government of Canada Health Care Act"
It is more likely that his/her answer would be " Hey dude , you're snowin' me , right ? I don't pay medical bills ; I pay taxes ". Except for the token 100 dollars per month which is waived for those below the poverty line , provincial health-care budgets COME OUT OF TAXES with no private-insurance vultures to mess things up.
So a short answer , this time,polite,to your question,"any ideas": Throw out Aetna , Blue Cross...and fund health-care budgets by taxes.Work out the details with your governors state and federal but don't wait for them. You be the change. Go online and read the biography of Tommy Douglas, the socialist Premier of the Province of Saskatchewan who introduced socialist medicine to Canada in the 1960s.Take note , Canadians in Sask did not wait for the Federal gov't to lead just as town councils in Maine and Vermont did not wait for an impeachment precedent by Congress.
If you cringe at the word socialist then I'm afraid you and the rest of Americans will be the dubious benefactors of private health-care FOREVER.
Watch "Sicko" and get over the paranoia of socialism especially when it applies to healthcare
I agree, Unknown Arts. I give you privatization of the reconstruction of New Orleans and Iraq, of education, of the prison system, just to name a few. Each of these is profit-driven and has been utterly disastrous. And who foots the bill for "privatization"? The taxpayer, of course. I would much rather my taxes go to public programs that operate according to principles of transparency and oversight and that reflect values other than maximizing profit for the few at the expense of the many.
Economist Dean Baker suggests that Congress add a drug benefit (with negotiated prices like the VA gets) to Medicare, whose administrative costs are 2-3% versus private insurance companies' 20-30%. This program would be an option seniors could choose instead of having to study the 50-100 different plans and formularies available in most states.
If 85% of seniors chose the Medicare option, we as a country (taxpayers and seniors paying premiums, co-pays, deductibles & doughnut-hole purchases) would save over $640 billion in its first 10 years. If only 50% signed up, we would still save $400 billion. What an example for those who doubt that government can do it both better and cheaper.
If we dumped the current Part D and offered a Medicare plan to cover all seniors, we would, as a country, save $800 billion over its first 10 years. (See www.ourfuture.org)
And, of course, if we dumped the entire insurance & drug-company system-of-health-care- management-in-their-own-interest -- we'd save a third to a half of our health care bill. (See HR 676 & Sicko)
I am intrigued by the number of people who balk at a national healthcare system because the government would be running it. Why doubt the government, but trust a private enterprise firm whose sole purpose is PROFIT? Consider that the reason the government DOES what it DOES with regard to healthcare policy is because they are lobbied HEAVILY by insurance companies. So, what is essentially bad about the government in healthcare is that it listens to lobbyists. If government becomes the insurance provider, no more lobbyists on that issue. Government is not bad WITHOUT motivation. They require people who pay for their campaigns, send them on cruises, give jobs in the lobbying industry to their kids (Fred Thompson, you old OUTSIDER, you), and so on. The system of government is made corrupt by lots of money being thrown at it. Cut out the money and you have a significantly higher chance of a responsive government.
As to how people can believe a private corporation is going to be more trustworthy, how can you imagine such a thing? Is it because the Market will drive them out of business if they aren't responsive to the public outcry? Then, one might wonder, how is it that we've gotten such rotten health insurance companies with so much money, so little compassion, and no choice in the Market? They are no less a monopoly, being a small, handful of companies, than the government would be a monopoly, and, if they have a monopoly, they are not threatened by us when we say we'll take our dollars elsewhere. Short of leaving the country, they know full-well that we have nowhere else to go.
Right now, the corporate news is smearing Sick without false facts and innuendo, trying to discredit Moore for revealing a discreditable industry ( http://unknown-arts.org/politics/?p=115 ). They would rather spend MILLIONS on PR than spending the same money on our health. The fact that they CAN spend so much to improve their image gives you both, an idea of their considerable war chest (profits), and also of their concern for the health of their consumers. A company who cared about YOU would not rise to the occasion, would stand on its record, know that satisfied consumers would stand by it, and would have no need of a multi-million dollar public relations campaign to convince they were good guys. They are not.
It is time to quit trusting our health to the market. It is time we joined the world in acknowledging that health care is not a class privilege, but a human right.
Like the article says streamline the process, avoid administrative costs and save $350 billion then stop going to war with different countries every 5 years, reduce the military budget, avoid spending trillions on disabled veterans and provide free health care for all.
The conservative argument compares government handling of healthcare to communist russia or scenarios of beaureaucratic manhandling from third world countries which do not occur in developed countries. If I have to pay more taxes instead of the premiums and deductibles I pay to insurance companies throughout the year which will also help really needy people, then I'm all for it!
SUPPORT KUCINICH!!
I don't have much faith in the US government running ANYTHING..." Yes, and they have been running health care for a long while. Why can't small businesses get together for group insurance? Because there's a law (or there was until very recently I think?) and so forth.
And they're trying to make even more laws that restrict access to alternative care. This should not be ignored by persons who want reduced cost health care.
Physicians are losing their licenses through action of their state medical boards for treating their patients with "unapproved" therapies,EVEN WHEN THEIR PATIENTS TESTIFY TO THE BENEFITS THEY RECEIVED FROM THOSE THERAPIES.
The first step is to demand passage of HR2117--Health Freedom of Choice Act, to prevent the FDA from controlling supplements to the benefit of big Pharma and the detriment to us and lots of small businesses.
Then expand the law to protect physicians from prosecution by State Medical Boards, unless harm has been done. These two actions alone will not fix everything but they will be huge step in bringing costs down to manageable proportions and who knows, insurance companies might be able to provide a useful service. Maybe not, but health care would slowly become truly affordable.
See 2 websites run by M.D.s www.healthfreedomusa.org and www.wrightnewsletter.com (I have no financial or personal interest in Dr. Wright's newsletter, he's just offering another way of looking a health care))
Medicare as it stands is not the answer. Medicare pays only 80% of approved services and a hospital bed costs $992 per day. Everyone on Medicare needs additional insurance and most of us wind up with Medicare HMOs. And we all know what HMOs are like.
We need real universal health care. Or maybe we all need to be on the same plan as Congress. They pay something like $35 per month for something better and cheaper than Medicare which costs a minimum of $93.50 per month.
I love my country, but fear my government. I don't have much faith in the US government running ANYTHING, from a war, to a postal service, to an income tax program to even a Presidential election; much less run a single payer (AKA Medicare) healthcare insurance program.
But we need to have some form of single payer medical care - any ideas?
My feeling has always been and still is: if you want to f*ck something up quick - let the government run it.
The solution is simple - Medicare for all. We've been doing Medicare for over 40 years. It works well and it's cheaper than private insurance. Countries with national health care systems have better healthcare results at lower per capita costs than the US. It is beyond disgraceful that we have the system that we do. Medicare for all and relegate private insurance to the medi-gap market.
Jesus Christ! We've been fucking around with this since after WWII. LET'S GET IT DONE......
Agree -- extend Medicare to everyone in America --
and ensure that they do not STARVE the system --
or move the system into private hands --
Meanwhile, the Petition connection isn't working right now . .. ? I'll try again some time.
Sign the petition for HR 676:
http://www.sickocure.org/
Organize folks in your area - website with tons of resources:
http://www.healthcare-now.org/