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Tag(s): Government; Health; Health Care Socialized-Nationalized; Health Care Establishment; Health Care Legislation; Health Care Policy; Health Care Universal - Single Payer; Health Insurance; Health Policy Failures; Healthcare; (more...) Insurance Industry (less...)
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September 29, 2007 at 13:13:53

Sure, Guarantee Health Care, But Mandatory Insurance Doesn't

by Candace Talmadge (Posted by I Made This) Page 1 of 1 page(s)

www.opednews.com

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Hillary Clinton is just the latest presidential candidate to offer up a prescription for the ailing U.S. health care system. In basing her approach on the personal mandate, which means forcing everyone to purchase health care insurance, her plan makes the same mistake as most of the proposals floating around.

It equates health insurance with actual health care, and assumes that having said coverage will solve the problem.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Requiring all of us to buy health insurance is a scam that benefits no one except the insurance industry. If we have no choice except to buy their products or face legal/economic sanctions, what incentive do the health insurance companies have to serve their customers instead of themselves?

Zilch. Zip. Nada.

Take Massachusetts. Bay State residents are now by law obligated to buy health care insurance, but the insurers face no similar mandates to provide affordable policy prices, to cover pre-existing conditions or to quit the games that delay payments for months on end or deny it outright. California is moving in the same direction.

The rest of us should be so blessed. Where do I sign up to convince the government to require that everyone buy my columns while leaving me free to charge outrageous fees, refuse to write for certain people, and take all the time I want to deliver on my contracts or even not deliver at all, with no consequences?

No doubt on K Street in Washington, D.C.

Not only will the health insurance industry grow undeservedly richer if the personal mandate becomes law, other businesses will stop offering health insurance as a benefit, or require employees to foot the entire health insurance bill. Shifting the cost of health care coverage away from companies onto workers has started already under the banner of “consumer-directed” health care, an epic mislabeling on a par with “one size fits all.”

Health insurance and its associated industry are part of the problem, not the solution. Health care insurers spend at least 35 percent of their revenues on costs that have nothing to do with funding actual health care, according to Terry Brauer, CEO of Portland, Ore.-based HealthCare Management Consultants, Inc.

Such non-healthcare-related expenses include administrative overhead, advertising and physician relations, lawsuits over denial of claims, fraud fines, profits, etc. Let’s frame this in a more personal way. More than one-third of every health care insurance premium dollar we shell out does not come back to us as payments for actual health care services or products.

What a ridiculous waste of money. If we were ever serious about cutting the $2 trillion-plus we spend on health care each year, then private insurance would be one of the first places to trim the fat.

Does this mean going to a single-payer health care system? The longer this nation’s health care crisis continues, the better a single-payer system modeled on Medicare before the Bush administration tampered with it appears. Medicare’s administrative costs have been estimated at anywhere between 2 percent and 9 percent, depending on the estimator’s opinions of single-payer health care.

It doesn’t take a math genius to look at the numbers and realize that even 9 percent overhead beats 35 percent by a wide margin.

What we all want is guaranteed access to quality health care that we can afford. Political fixes that focus on insurance alone guarantee nothing of the sort.

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9 comments

I am a 47 years old,married and have a 17 year old daughter.My hobbies are bicyling, weight training and off road motorcycling.I have lived in a midwestern red state my entire 46 years.Now that I have reached middle age I have become interested in politics and its related fields of study.I dont often think of things being either liberal or conservative,I like to veiw political events in an objective manner and find the agenda or reason that a bill or policy is brought to bear.Simply put seeking ...

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Gary DensonI am a 47 years old,married and have a 17 year old daughter.My hobbies are bicyling, weight training and off road motorcycling.I have lived in a midwestern red state my entire 46 years.Now that I have reached middle age I have become interested in politics and its related fields of study.I dont often think of things being either liberal or conservative,I like to veiw political events in an objective manner and find the agenda or reason that a bill or policy is brought to bear.Simply put seeking ...

to see more of bio, click on member name

Corporate Clinton's

This notion that everyone is required to buy health insurance should signal all Americans to the character of Hillary Clinton. Hillary has obviously had a nice little chat with the insurance lobby and this is her little way of repaying them for their generous campaign contributions.

I think the Democratic party should ask her to give up her bid for president and ask her NAFTA passing husband to stay out of party affairs as well.

by Gary Denson (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 214 comments) on Saturday, September 29, 2007 at 2:34:00 PM

Kevin Gosztola goes to Columbia College in Chicago where he is studying film. He hopes to become a documentary filmmaker. He is currently working as a production assistant on a documentary called "Seriously Green" which traces the development of the Green Party throughout the 2008 election. He has a passion for journalism and writes articles or press releases in his spare time. Kevin Gosztola is also a student activist who believes in questioning the way America's systems work(its electoral sys...

to see more of bio, click on member name
Kevin GosztolaKevin Gosztola goes to Columbia College in Chicago where he is studying film. He hopes to become a documentary filmmaker. He is currently working as a production assistant on a documentary called "Seriously Green" which traces the development of the Green Party throughout the 2008 election. He has a passion for journalism and writes articles or press releases in his spare time. Kevin Gosztola is also a student activist who believes in questioning the way America's systems work(its electoral sys...

to see more of bio, click on member name

Yes!

While the idea of a First Gentleman sounds intriguing, Bill's not the guy I want to fulfill that position. More importantly, this is just one of the reasons that I don't want Hillary to fulfill the position of president. Ever.

And I will speak out against her even if she is the Democratic nominee in 2008.

Nobody's shaming me into that "lesser of two evils" game ever again.

by Kevin Gosztola (207 articles, 111 quicklinks, 68 diaries, 804 comments) on Saturday, September 29, 2007 at 4:20:44 PM

from Chicago, very left of center ... favorite quote "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross" -- Sinclair Lewis
chris ferryfrom Chicago, very left of center ... favorite quote "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross" -- Sinclair Lewis

now turn your head and cough

Thanks for your article, which offers me a few more reason to believe the medical “care” in this country is none existent except for the profits. I recently heard comments regarding access to doctors if you want a couple more nails in the coffin of healthcare.

I recently heard that if you call a doctor for an appointment and you want to have a mole looked at you will probably wait 6 to 8 weeks, but if you want an appointment to get botox injections there is only a one or two day wait. And don’t every expect to find a doctor that you can email to ask a question because in both cases the reason is money. Doctors don’t get reimbursed to answer email question neither do doctors collect enough money to look at a mole. It’s not just fixing the corporations but the mindset of the people who run the corporations have to change and I do not see that happening.

What we have in this country is:

Corporations, politicians (which includes the money class whether or not they are politicians), and slaves – the corporations control the politicians and the politician control the slaves

Now turn your head and cough…

by chris ferry (0 articles, 5 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 12 comments) on Saturday, September 29, 2007 at 3:50:28 PM

My name it means nothing, my age it means less. My deeds of activism are mine to enjoy and share as I feel necesary, not as some clown in a small forum's administration thinks I must..This place gets worse each and every visit.
Member banned on June 3, 2008 for repeated abuse of editors.
ardee D.My name it means nothing, my age it means less. My deeds of activism are mine to enjoy and share as I feel necesary, not as some clown in a small forum's administration thinks I must..This place gets worse each and every visit.
Member banned on June 3, 2008 for repeated abuse of editors.

A sea change is required

both in the attitudes and opinions of our citizenry who see health care administered by government as communism, and in the definitions we have as to the reasons for a government.

For-profit health care will always be more conscious of the bottom line than of the patients needs and requirements. Medicare is the most efficient disburser of care in this nation, having only a 3% overhead. Those who raise the spector of long lines and even longer waits for service are just buying into insurance companies propaganda. Much of it is out there yet those of us who have witnessed first hand the way Germany and Canada support their citizenry with a fine program of care understand the lies.

Government is charged with promoting the General Welfare and thus a case must be made that health care is exactly that and thus a responsibility of our government, not of a greedy and callous HMO.

by ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2377 comments) on Saturday, September 29, 2007 at 4:01:02 PM

DrColes

The Problem With Health Cate IS The Government

Since the government does NOT earn money. Who will pay this bill? YOU.

http://tinyurl.com/2znnvl

The problem with health care in America was caused by the government. See http://www.inteliorg.com/

by DrColes (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 23 comments) on Saturday, September 29, 2007 at 8:08:37 PM

Nonesense

Your Reagan like rant has no basis in fact,Doctor. The real problem with health care is that it is a for profit entity, and puts the corporate bottom line above the health of the people.

How then do you explain that Medicare efficiently doles health care with only a three percent overhead making it , by far, the least expensive option available?

How then do you explain the hundreds of millions of health care dollars spent on executive wages and bonusses, while the HMO's refuse to save a patients life if the procedure is too expensive?

How do you dare to blame a government that basically has a hands off policy on free enterprise, all the while our nation is 37th among all industrialised nations in providing health care?

How do you avoid condemning a system which allows 45 million of our fellow citizens, including eleven million children, to exist without any health care whatever?

I am simply tired of such knee jerk, blame the government for everything, rhetoric. Could it be, Doctor, that you are far more worried about your personal income that the efficiencies or lack thereof of a government run system?

by ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2377 comments) on Sunday, September 30, 2007 at 9:03:37 AM

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I am a retired opera singer. I was a leading soprano with the New York City Opera for ten years. I am a strong supporter of Dennis Kucinich and worked for his campaign in 2004. I believe that he is the ONLY honest man in congress. He has been working against this insane war since before it began. I am 72 years old and I have been so frustrated with the media, the Congress and the American people that they don't tell the truth.
CaronomeI am a retired opera singer. I was a leading soprano with the New York City Opera for ten years. I am a strong supporter of Dennis Kucinich and worked for his campaign in 2004. I believe that he is the ONLY honest man in congress. He has been working against this insane war since before it began. I am 72 years old and I have been so frustrated with the media, the Congress and the American people that they don't tell the truth.

Clinton, Obama, Edwards, it's all bunk!

When will we all wake up and just elect Dennis Kucinich? He has the right health care plan - the way God intended - a not for profit , national health care plan that covers all - Medicare for all. Plus, he voted against the war from the beginning; he alone had the courage and intelligence and common sense to introduce a bill to impeach Cheney.

Now if we can only get the do nothings in Congress to follow through on his ideas we will soon be in good shape to rebuild our country.

If we don't toss out the two top bums in the White House now, they will most certainly get us into another war. They have a plan to stop the elections, can't you feel it?

Make loud noises to your representatives about impeachment of Cheney and Bush and any other of their cronies that we can grab. It's your responsibility to demand that they do their duty to defend the Constitution.

This country is now run by big business and the corporate media and their whores - the candidates and the shills on the msm.

The Clinton health care plan is particularly infuriating. Like Mitt Romney in Massachusetts, she would force us all to buy health care from the big pig insurance companies. How enlightened, how big hearted, how thoughtful, how completely like the whore she is to big business.

And the other plans are also punk. Edward's plan is too complicated and Obama's is too nothing. I get the idea with Obama that he is in over his head here. Maybe in a few years he would make a good president but he's been in Congress for five minutes and that just won't do.

Soo, take a look and a listen to Kucinich. He's the one.

by Caronome (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 219 comments) on Tuesday, October 2, 2007 at 1:14:35 AM