Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Who has endorsed President Obama's effort to reform health care insurance? Doctor associations, including the AMA (a surprising first), nurses associations, several business organizations and large employers (including Wal-Mart), and yes, even insurance-related organizations like AARP.
Who stands opposed to health care insurance reform? The health insurance monopolies (American Medical Association confirms health monopoly fears) who are getting fabulously wealthy off the broken system of health care insurance they designed. That's the benefit of monopolistic control. They are the middle-men, the paper pushers, the arbiters of whether you even qualify for health care insurance (pre-existing condition exclusions), the choice of doctors you are permitted to see (the provider must be a member of their preferred provider group), what procedures or treatments your doctor is permitted to provide you (including preventive health care and end of life care), and when your medical care becomes too expensive (an arbitrary lifetime maximum benefit), terminate your policy to protect their bottom-line profitability. The health insurance monopolies are not your friends, they are the enemy of any meaningful substantial health care reform.
As Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) asked, "Why do we even need insurance companies?"
Americans can pay for their health insurance through taxes in a single-payer system. Eliminate the middle man who profiteers off the 30% administrative overhead markup (profit). Americans would have the freedom to see any doctor of their choice, not limited to a preferred provider group. Americans would not be denied health care for preexisting conditions or have their care terminated after reaching an arbitrary lifetime maximum benefit. Your doctor – not some insurance company bean counter bureaucrat whose job it is to protect the company's bottom-line of profitability – will decide what is medically necessary treatment. There would be no co-pays or deductibles. Americans' health care would no longer be tied to the outdated and inefficient model of employer-provided health insurance. This would allow Americans the freedom to change their employment, and provide them with the peace of mind of knowing that they have health insurance coverage even when they lose their job. Medicare is the most effective and cost efficient health care model we have. Expanding Medicare to everyone would be the simplest, most easily understood, most cost effective and efficient health care reform that Congress coud enact.
Alas, this is not what Congress proposes to give us. Congress wants to graft a "public option" onto the broken health insurance system created by the health insurance monopolies, in an attempt to encourage pricing competition as well as to impose some new regulatory reforms that prohibit or discourage the most abusive practices of the health insurance monopolies. Despite this "hybrid" model which allows the health insurance monopolies to continue and to compete for your business, they seek to kill even this modest insurance reform. The health insurance monopolies fear genuine competition from a non-profit government run "public option."
The health insurance monopolies, through their toadies in Congress, have succeeded in delaying any vote on a final health insurance reform bill into late September. The health insurance monopolies and their high-priced lobbyist/PR spokemen have planned a massive negative campaign media blitz during August to try to convince Americans that they really do not want the health care reforms that they have been demanding all of these years. Their Republican Party allies have as well planned a million dollar negative campaign media blitz of their own, aided by the mighty Wurlitzer of the right-wing noise machine of talk radio and FAUX News, and collection of bobble-head commentators. (The RNC is targeting Blue Dog Reps. Gabriel Giffords and Harry Mitchell, and "votes like a Blue Dog" Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick in Arizona).
What can Democrats do to counter this shameless assault on the intelligence of Americans? Brian Beutler posts at talkingpointsmemo.com Democratic Message For August: Insurers Are The Enemy:
Over the August recess, Democrats–with the support of the White House outside groups like the Service Employees International Union, and Health Care for America Now–will be taking a simple message to voters in their districts: insurance companies are the enemy.
"Hold the insurance companies accountable," reads a strategy memo distributed to members of the House Democratic caucus.
Remove them from between you and your doctor. No discrimination for pre-existing conditions. No dropping your coverage because you get sick. No more job or life decisions made based on loss of coverage. No need to change doctors or plans. No co-pays for preventive care. No excessive out-of-pocket expenses, deductibles, or co-pays. No yearly or lifetime cost caps on what insurance companies cover.
According to the memo, they've coordinated this strategy with the Obama administration and a number of sympathetic groups. "The Leadership is working in close coordination with the White House and outside groups (including but not limited to HCAN, Families USA, AFSCME, SEIU, AARP, etc.) to ensure complementary efforts during August."
And they'll be taking the message into the Hispanic community as well: "The Speaker's office will work to book Hispanic/Spanish speaking members of relevant committees on Spanish-language radio and TV. Democratic Leadership will also be available to assist with Hispanic-focused district events, including town halls, telephone town halls, and calls with Hispanic media reporters."
The memo, which you can read here, provides a clear look at the Democrats' strategy as they try to keep momentum for health care reform alive through the summer doldrums.
Make no mistake, this is war. You must keep up the fight for meaningful substantial health care reform. Call, write, e-mail, and visit your members of Congress. They need to hear from you directly. Don't allow the health insurance monopolies, their lobbyists/PR campaign, and their allies in the Republican Party and conservative media to poison the minds of Americans, to confuse them and distract them with their negative campaign media blitz of lies and deceit in a shameless assault on the intelligence of Americans.
NB: H/t to Sonoran Alliance for the graphic – finally useful for something.
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“Oh, wait, they’re not? They have a higher life expectancy than us? ”
That is absolutely, 100%, not true. The United States has the highest Natural life expectancy of any country in the world.
Being a Utah health insurance underwriter for http://www.BenefitsManager.net and http://www.DentalInsuranceUtah.net I have the opportunity to consult within many state insurance committee meetings. Some interesting changes took place in Utah with the passage of House Bill 188 that other states should pay attention to and perhaps the federal legislation. The bill created a state insurance pool requiring private health insurance carriers to come together and underwrite risk. Through governmental guidelines (which I have traditionally opposed in the past) they created a arena of underwriting rules that essentially guarantees the participating insurance carriers a ?no loss? or ?no gain? over each other. What this essentially means is that they pool the underwriting medical risk and spread it evenly among each carrier. All the sudden, we see guaranteed issued policies. We see rates drop by as much as 13% In Utah, our average monthly family rate is $867 for a $500 deductible plan. Some of the family rates within the ?Utah Insurance Exchange Portal? are approaching $700.00 now. To see more of HB 188 and see how Utah wrangled change without increasing taxes or rationing go to: http://www.prweb.com/releases/utah_health_insurance/health_care_reform/prweb2614544.htm
The private insurance sector can be corralled into cooperation where they can meet their goals. You have to understand that health insurance carriers are only looking for a 4-5% administration fee. That is it and they are more efficient as compared to a governmental portal that will cost more money. Take a look at Utah folks!
Yeah, because those Canadians are going broke paying for their country’s medical system.
Oh, wait, they’re not? They have a higher life expectancy than us? They don’t go bankrupt from medical costs? Your “oh, government medical plans will bankrupt us all” rings hollow.
Wow. That’s a lot of misinformation in one comment. Where to begin?
Let’s start with your assertion that 30-40% of Americans “pay no taxes at all” (your words), leaving 60% to pay for 100% of everyone in the U.S.
You are referring of course to the “income tax,” for which 30-40% of Americans owe no additional income tax after personal deductions and tax credits. This does not mean that they “do not pay any taxes.” They did. And They also paid state income tax, property tax, sales tax, fuel tax, etc. So your “woe is me I’m paying for everyone else” swansong (cue the violins) is entirely false and highly elitist. If you keep looking down your nose at your fellow citizens you are bound to run into a wall eventually.
Every American who works pays FICA (social security and medicare) which directly funds the Medicare program for which they would be a participant under a single-payer system, so yes, they are paying taxes into the system. FICA is also matched by their employer. The self-employed pay a self-employment tax which counts the same as FICA.
Many Americans are working poor. They have full-time employment or several part-time jobs that do not pay well enough for them to owe any additional income tax. More importantly, although they have a job(s) they cannot afford the cost of an individual health insurance policy. Their employers increasingly are not offering employer sponsored health insurance benefits, also because of the cost.
These are the uninsured who wind up in emergency rooms for medical care. You assert that they do not seek medical attention because the care is not free. They do not seek medical attention because they cannot afford it. Medical care is expensive. They must choose between paying the mortgage (or rent), paying the utilities, and feeding their family. They are not “freeloaders” as your elitist comment implies. They are making a rational economic choice how to spend their limited resources.
By the way, hospitals and medical providers frequently pursue collection, forcing these individuals into bankruptcy.
So who pays for this emergency room care? Insurance policy holders who pay a premium to cover the cost of providing uninsured coverage at hospitals. You are already paying for the uninsured through your insurance premiums. Paying for it through a broad-based tax would be cheaper (and the newly covered could receive routine medical care at a clinic or doctor’s office before their condition becomes an emergency, saving lives and relieving overcrowded hospital emergency rooms).
Your opinion that a single-payer system will run approximately 75-85% of gross income is not “humble,” it is delusional. Every other industrialized country in the world has some version of a single-payer (or multiple-payer) system that nowhere approximates the number you clearly just made up without any regard for fact or the truth.
There is another group of Americans who not only pay taxes, but they have an employer sponsored health care benefit or an individual health insurance plan.
Now here is the dirty little secret – or the GOP elephant in the room if you prefer – their insurance company either declines coverage for medically necessary care for which they thought was covered by payment of their insurance premiums (and deductible and co-pays), or their policy contained exclusions for the cost of that care in the first place. Two-thirds of the bankruptcy cases which I have dealt with involve individuals who were bankrupted by out-of-pocket medical expenses, even though they had medical insurance. Shhh! Don’t tell anyone! Many of them lost everything they had spent a lifetime working to obtain, including retirement funds and their home. With a single-payer system, medical expense bankruptcies will become a thing of the past – a truly good thing.
Your comment that you have seen only “arbitrary and capricious” numbers (a misapplication of this term of art) of $1 trillion dollars, from someone who just made up an entirely fictitious number, is sad and pathetic. The number of which you are so dismissive is the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scoring of the cost of the reform proposal. Hmmm, do I rely on the CBO which is the agency that gets paid to produce generally reliable economic projections, or some commenter on this blog who clearly does not have a clue what the hell they are talking about? An easy choice, even for you.
If only it were that simple, just have a single payer system paid for where everyone can get whatever health care they want, anytime, for free, in exchange for a tax on everyone. So, about 30 to 40% of the people in the U.S. pay no taxes at all, they are considered too poor to have to fund the government. That leaves 60% to pay for 100% of everyone in the US. I have seen only arbitrary and capricious numbers of $1 trillion or so, but have not seen an actual number-crunched calculation of the per-taxpayer cost for the thousands of new doctors and hospitals that will be needed to provide all this free care. Many people have NOT sought medical care (especially for little things like colds and flu) because they do not have free care. Now, everyone will be rushing to the doctor to talk. IMHO the cost to every taxpayer for a single-payer system will run approximately 75% to 85% of gross income.
Shhh! Don’t tell anyone about this elephant in the room, just get everyone fueled into a frenzy about the evil insurance industry so they won’t consider the real cost of single payer system to them until it’s too late.
The current system involving insurance IS awful, bloated, and rampant with greed. But when one is married to an alcoholic, it doesn’t fix it to trade that in for a pyromaniac.