06.10.09
Give it to me straight doc
The we hear about health care the more it keeps coming back, over and over again, to same thing. If we don’t institute a single payer health insurance system nothing is likely to change. Oh and this too, any fix the insurance corporations are for will do nothing to fix the problem, only make them more money. And they tend to lie, a lot.
While there’s been much written lately about the so-called “public option” it appears to be just a another band aid, that will not fix our health insurance system . This is not an issue about Democrats vs. Republicans, because most members of both parties have been taking money from insurance corporations for decades. It’s about finally doing what’s best for the American people, all of them. Single payer is not discussed by the corporate media, the president, and most members of Congress and that’s too bad. Because it’s a great solution to this problem.
I encourage everyone to read the two links below. The lay out in a way that’s very easy to understand – even I could – what the problems is and how to fix it. Our health insurance system is broken, it can no longer be fixed with a band aid solution. It’s long past time to start doing what the rest of the industrialized nations in the world do for their people. Everyone gets health care, no matter what.
The Facts About the Health Insurance Industry.
Finally, the cure is conceptually simple, but admittedly politically difficult. If the disease is an expensive and dysfunctional private, for profit health insurance system, the only possible cure is a single payer, Medicare for All reform. This option must not only be on the table, but must be passed into law. Our elected representatives must be supported to have the courage to objectively evaluate its benefits, and then given the backbone to pass it. This option already exists in the detailed legislative form contained in HR 676 by Congressman Conyers and already endorsed by 70 Congressmen and women. It contains five simple to understand solution components:
1. AUTOMATIC ENROLLMENT — Everyone receives a card assuring payment for all needed care by any willing licensed provider. This would eliminate the need for expensive marketing and sales campaigns and the broker system. Universal coverage will also shrink the need for workman’s compensation insurance as well as medical malpractice insurance.
2. FREE CHOICE OF DOCTOR AND HOSPITAL
3. DOCTORS AND HOSPITALS REMAIN INDEPENDENT and negotiate fees and budgets with public agencies. This is not socialized medicine.
4. A PUBLIC AGENCY PROCESSES AND PAYS ALL BILLS. This should massively cut the administrative overhead drain generated both by insurance companies, by employer HR departments, and by medical providers from the order of 40 % of costs to 10% of costs allowing an estimated savings of $50 billion in the first year and up to $250 billion annually which can be used to cover the currently uninsured without the need to add new taxpayer subsidy. Money is provided by this law to retrain displaced insurance company workers.
5. The system would be FINANCED BY PROGRESSIVE TAXES. This would lift the burden of health insurance costs from America’s businesses making them more internationally competitive; widely expand the risk poll, thus lowering the cost for every individual participant, and eliminate the need for expensive HR systems.
The information, discussion, and perspective presented here has been virtually absent from White House, Congressional, and media discussions of the need to reform the health care system. This seems to be largely because of the political and financial clout of AHIP. It is important to know that single payer reform, Medicare for All, is the only proposal in the public arena with broad, enthusiastic support from the men and women on the street who must understand these facts to be motivated to get involved.
[T.R.] Reid pointed out that we already have systems in place that are much like those in other countries that have health care that works. Our veterans are covered in a system much like Britain’s. Medicare patients already use a system like Canada’s. And it’s not all socialized medicine, either. Those whose employers pay for most of the costs use a system much like France’s. Germany actually has less government involvement in health care than the U.S. does.
So why are they able to cover anyone at a lower cost? Because they have chosen one system for everyone, Reid says. By avoiding our crazy-quilt of forms, payments and varied systems, they can get their administrative costs between 2.5 percent and 5 percent.
By comparison, costs in the U.S. are between 18 percent and 25 percent. If we could get our administrative costs down, Reid points out, we could save as much as $7 billion, enough to cover America’s uninsured.
In the U.S., 20,000 people die each year from preventable diseases. Reid tells of a young woman who had lupus and couldn’t afford the medication. She would have lived to 80 in other industrialized countries, he said. Here, she died a young woman.
Additionally, people in other countries don’t go bankrupt from medical bills. According to a study by Harvard Medical School, 28.3 percent of the bankruptcies in 2001 resulted from illness or injury. David Himmelstein, an associate professor of medicine and one of the authors of the study, says, “If you’re sick enough long enough, you’re in deep trouble in our society.”
The money that Americans pay for administrative costs goes to three main places:
- Companies pay large sums for marketing costs;
- Companies employ hundreds of underwriters who decide who to cover and how to save money on clients’ care.
- Huge salaries.
Greed, and enough elected officials with the guts to take on the insurance corporations, is all that stands in our way. Tell the President Obama to finish what FDR started.