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Fact check:
HMO's "undermine fair competition despite regulations." They "cherry-pick" the healthy and avoid the high-risk. They also cost up to 19% more than traditional Medicare despite their lower age category enrollees.
Myth: Everyone will have quality, affordable care.
Fact check:
The current system is unsustainable. It will worsen if Obamacare passes. In whatever form, the "international experience with public option schemes" shows they don't provide universal coverage - because insurers pick the best and screen out the rest.
Myth: Patients will get better care because of "innovation in the quality care physicians provide."
Fact check:
Quality won't improve. Today's dysfunctional system won't change. It's driven by profits, high costs, and for insurers denying expensive care or delaying it as long as possible.
Myth: Cost will be reduced.
Fact Check:
False because no provider bureaucracy savings will be achieved. "Adding a public option to the array of private insurance companies....will only exacerbate the waste and inefficiency inherent in a patchwork system...."
Final Comments
Health care is a fundamental human right no different than food, shelter, clothing, clean air and water, and other essentials to life and well-being, not something to be bought and sold as a commodity. Universal single-payer coverage is the solution, not America's dysfunctional for-profit model.
If Obamacare is enacted, it will cost more, deliver less, leave millions uninsured, millions more underinsured and leave a broken system in place. It will enrich the insurance, drug and large hospital chain cartels at the expense of universal coverage. It will solidify a class-based system delivering the best care money can buy. Others will get sub-standard treatment, and for millions none at all. The solution is everybody in, nobody out under a universal, single-payer system. No one should accept less or politicians who won't provide it.
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.
