1 in 6 Americans are uninsured and millions more are under-insured, yet lobbyists try to convince Congress and the media that health insurance companies are the best way to provide affordable health care to America. If the President's plan is changed to exclude an option similar to Medicare, health care in this country remains mired in the hands of insurance profiteers.
A public, single-payer option is the way to guarantee health care for all Americans. Insurance companies are in it for profit - that's what business does. Our big mistake thus far has been expecting them to behave altruistically. Where is their motive? It's on the bottom line.
New legislation without a new option is no longer a viable choice. Let people keep the for-profit coverage if they already have it, but a public health care option is overdue. Of course, competition should force private industry to provide better service at lower costs, but it still doesn't force them to help the uninsured.
"In 2009, Congress must take up and act on meaningful health reform legislation that achieves coverage for every American while also addressing the underlying problems in our health system. The urgency of this task has become undeniable."~Senator Max Baucus, (D-MT)Chairman, Senate Finance Committee12 November 2008
"In 2009, Congress must take up and act on meaningful health reform legislation that achieves coverage for every American while also addressing the underlying problems in our health system. The urgency of this task has become undeniable."
To date, the private, for-profit payment systems have enriched a few large corporations while leaving millions of average Americans one illness or injury away from medical bankruptcy. The system is broken; it's a mass of red-tape, with medical decisions in the hands of bureaucrats instead of doctors. We spend more per capita on health care than any other nation, but our results leave a lot to be desired.
“The reason we spend more and get less than the rest of the world is because we have a patchwork system of for-profit payers. Private insurers necessarily waste health dollars on things that have nothing to do with care: overhead, underwriting, billing, sales and marketing departments as well as huge profits and exorbitant executive pay. Doctors and hospitals must maintain costly administrative staffs to deal with the bureaucracy. Combined, this needless administration consumes one-third (31 percent) of Americans’ health dollars.“
We need to re-define success. Big business is ignoring the problem, looking instead to their separate bottom lines, while non-profit organizations are bringing real innovation and proactive thinking to bear. We need insurance profiteers out of the health care industry - now. They drive costs up, because they're middle-men making a profit. What's right for their business is wrong for providing cost-effective health care to Americans. Let's pass the President's plan and move on to tackle the other thorny issues of our time: education and the economy.
Single-payer national health insurance isn’t socialized medicine (and if it was you can bet most doctors in the U.S. wouldn’t support it.) Single-payer is simply a streamlined system in which a single agency organizes health-care financing and payments: delivery of medical care remains essentially as it in in the U.S. today - largely private. All that’s lost is the red-tape and restrictions.
Who’s against it then? Insurance companies, because they profit enormously from the current system - even though they add no value. In fact, many people will tell you that insurance companies make it hard to get what they deserve and pay for with the premiums. That’s why it was such a major focus of Obama’s campaign in 2008: he proposed that modern health care should include giving everybody in the U.S. coverage.
To get there we need the freedom to choose between keeping private insurance—for those lucky enough to have any—and opting into a universally available public health insurance option (something like Medicare.) Ultimately, by reducing the number of agencies handling the payments we simplify the task for hospitals and clinics - less of the time and money goes to red tape, and more goes to actual medical services.
Ultimately that also means diminishing the power and profits of the private insurance companies currently siphoning their lavish earnings off your health care payemnts. They make money off the red tape, and by letting non-medical personnel decide what should and should not be prescribed to treat patients, and that’s a large part of what has caused costs to soar while coverage just shrinks.
It’s time for a reality check. Insurance companies profit from the current system, so naturally they’re opposed to changes that hurt their bottom line and their corporate bonuses. What value do they add to the process?
Digg this article…
Once again, FEMA blows it. From the Associated Press:
NEW ORLEANS — In what some see as another bureaucratic absurdity after Hurricane Katrina, FEMA is refusing to pick up the cost of restocking New Orleans' aquarium because of how the new fish were obtained: straight from the sea.
FEMA would have been willing to pay more than $600,000 for the fish if they had been bought from commercial suppliers. But the agency is balking because the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas went out and replaced the dead fish the old fashioned way, with hooks and nets. That expedition saved the taxpayers a half-million dollars but did not comply with FEMA regulations.
"You get to the point where the red tape has so overwhelmed the process that there's not a lot you can do to actually be effective," Warren Eller, associate director of the Stephenson Disaster Management Institute at Louisiana State University, said of FEMA's actions.
Katrina knocked out power to the tourist attraction at the edge of the French Quarter in August 2005, and the staff returned days four days later to find sharks, tropical fish, jellyfish and thousands of other creatures dead in their tanks.
Aquarium officials wanted to reopen the place quickly. So even before the $616,000 commitment from the Federal Emergency Management Agency came through, they sent a team on an expedition to the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida Keys and Bahamas, where they caught 1,681 fish for $99,766.
Despite the clear savings, the dispute has dragged on for 17 months.
More on the story here.
