Comment by “Bronxdude“ posted on http://www.huffingtonpost.com

The average American refuses to accept that the Republican Nation is at war with the working-class, which is why republicans support the status quo and vehemently oppose single-payor healthcare, public education, government oversight, minimum wage hikes, worker rights, access to higher education, middleclass tax relief, and, in general, any legislation that would jeopardize the continuation of a credit-dependent, employer exploited, unhealthy, downtrodden, underpaid, debt-laden, undereducated and permanent class of laborers. Similar to exploited sharecroppers, it’s in the best interest of republicans to keep the working-class hopeless, oppressed, unhealthy, undereducated and debt-laden. Republicans staunchly supported the bailout of Wall Street to protect their own assets, but opposed the bailout out the automobile industry, which employs thousands of middleclass Americans. The republican aristocracy opposes any kind of governmental oversight that will interfere with their pursuit of exploitive capitalism; republicans would like to abolish the Departments of Agriculture, Transportation, Interior, Education and The Food and Drug Administration, because these agencies advocate for workers. Just like feudal lords, the Republican Nation requires a formidable army to protect their financial interests, which is why republicans defend unrestrained military spending. According to the CBO, the Iraq War will cost $2.6 trillion over 10 years; health insurance for every American would cost $1.2 trillion over the same period. Republicans want to keep America angrily divided by class and race. Universal health insurance provides hope and would elevate the standard of living for every American, something republicans don’t want.

Well said, bronxdue. I couldn’t agree more.

Today on C-Span’s Washington Journal, a caller told a story of how he was forced to see numerous doctors at different hospitals in the area in where he lives, some as far as 100 miles away, to get a diagnosis. The caller then faulted health insurance companies for preventing the practice of having “diagnostic tests done under one roof.” “So in essence,” the caller noted, “the insurance companies are the ones controlling what tests you can get, when you get them, how you get them and if they’re accepted or not.”

In a remarkable moment of candor, C-Span’s guest — Republican Congressman Tim Murphy (PA) — agreed:
MURPHY: Yeah and that brings up the point here that with regard to one of our big frustrations with insurance companies is they control the market place, they control what’s done, a lot of times doctors not making the decisions here. And you recognize the frustration.

Watch here:

From ThinkProgress.org

A public insurance plan will help heal a broken health care system
BY MICHAEL BLOOMBERG

The principles that President Obama has outlined for national health care reform are driven by a goal that I share: universal access to affordable health care. Last week, I went to Washington to speak with members of Congress about an idea that can help make that goal a reality: a public health insurance option.

Today, most Americans get their health coverage from private insurers. A public health insurance option would create a competitor to private insurers that could potentially drive down costs across the board. I support the concept of a public plan, because if it’s done right, it means introducing exactly the kind of competition our system needs.

Choice and competition are almost always in the best interests of our economy. When I started a small business 28 years ago, there were other companies that offered financial information to banks and businesses. But we found a way to do it better. That gave our customers more options, and it strengthened the marketplace of financial information.

The public option in health care – which President Obama is supporting as a central part of his proposed reforms – grows out of the same idea. If you like the coverage you have, you keep it. But if you don’t have coverage – or if you lose your coverage – you’d have another option. And virtually everyone agrees that a well-managed public option has real potential to provide – for less money – the same benefits that private insurers provide.

There are two reasons for this. First, the public option is likely to have lower administrative costs than private insurance plans. We know this based on our experience with Medicare, which spends a lower percentage of every dollar on overhead than private insurance plans do, on average. And second, if the public plan proves popular, it will be able to use its market share to negotiate lower prices for consumers. These two steps would also positively affect the rest of the health insurance market, making it more efficient, innovative and customer-oriented, which is exactly what we need.

A public option would be particularly beneficial to areas where just a few insurance companies control most of the market. This is especially true of cities. According to the American Medical Association, 94% of metropolitan areas in the United States are dominated by one company or a small group of companies. This kind of anti-competitive concentration protects private insurers from ever having to feel the urgency to provide more for less. When you don’t have to find ways to cut costs and produce a better product, you tend not to do it. The public option offers the opportunity to force the system to innovate, evolve and improve.

To create and sustain a more competitive market, it is critical that the public option operate under the same rules that private plans follow. That means it could not be unfairly subsidized by the government. Working through the details of these rules will not be easy, but it is critical that Congress not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We need a reasonable solution to a fundamental problem that is hurting millions of Americans and weighing down our economy.

Creating more competition – which has produced major cost savings in other industries – makes the most sense.
Nearly everyone agrees that the status quo is not acceptable. Not only are costs crippling many family budgets, but nearly 50 million Americans do not have insurance – and yet we pay more for health care than any other nation.

If an effective public option is put forth that makes health care more affordable and accessible for New Yorkers and all Americans, I’ll do everything I can to help it become a reality.

New York Times
Thursday, July 2nd 2009, 4:00 AM

New York Times, June 20, 2009

Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll

The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.

See Americans favor a plan for government-run insurance to compete with private insurers, a Times/CBS poll finds.

Sen. Bernie Sanders
Independent U.S. Senator from Vermont

Posted: June 8, 2009 04:08 PM

Health Care Is a Right, Not a Privilege

Let’s be clear. Our health care system is disintegrating. Today, 46 million people have no health insurance and even more are underinsured with high deductibles and co-payments. At a time when 60 million people, including many with insurance, do not have access to a medical home, more than 18,000 Americans die every year from preventable illnesses because they do not get to the doctor when they should. This is six times the number who died at the tragedy of 9/11 – but this occurs every year.

In the midst of this horrendous lack of coverage, the U.S. spends far more per capita on health care than any other nation – and health care costs continue to soar. At $2.4 trillion dollars, and 18 percent of our GDP, the skyrocketing cost of health care in this country is unsustainable both from a personal and macro-economic perspective.

At the individual level, the average American spends about $7,900 per year on health care. Despite that huge outlay, a recent study found that medical problems contributed to 62 percent of all bankruptcies in 2007. From a business perspective, General Motors spends more on health care per automobile than on steel while small business owners are forced to divert hard-earned profits into health coverage for their employees – rather than new business investments. And, because of rising costs, many businesses are cutting back drastically on their level of health care coverage or are doing away with it entirely.

Further, despite the fact that we spend almost twice as much per person on health care as any other country, our health care outcomes lag behind many other nations. We get poor value for what we spend. According to the World Health Organization the United States ranks 37th in terms of health system performance and we are far behind many other countries in terms of such important indices as infant mortality, life expectancy and preventable deaths.

As the health care debate heats up in Washington, we as a nation have to answer two very fundamental questions. First, should all Americans be entitled to health care as a right and not a privilege – which is the way every other major country treats health care and the way we respond to such other basic needs as education, police and fire protection? Second, if we are to provide quality health care to all, how do we accomplish that in the most cost-effective way possible?

I think the answer to the first question is pretty clear, and one of the reasons that Barack Obama was elected president. Most Americans do believe that all of us should have health care coverage, and that nobody should be left out of the system. The real debate is how we accomplish that goal in an affordable and sustainable way. In that regard, I think the evidence is overwhelming that we must end the private insurance company domination of health care in our country and move toward a publicly-funded, single-payer Medicare for All approach.

Our current private health insurance system is the most costly, wasteful, complicated and bureaucratic in the world. Its function is not to provide quality health care for all, but to make huge profits for those who own the companies. With thousands of different health benefit programs designed to maximize profits, private health insurance companies spend an incredible (30 percent) of each health care dollar on administration and billing, exorbitant CEO compensation packages, advertising, lobbying and campaign contributions. Public programs like Medicare, Medicaid and the VA are administered for far less.

In recent years, while we have experienced an acute shortage of primary health care doctors as well as nurses and dentists, we are paying for a huge increase in health care bureaucrats and bill collectors. Over the last three decades, the number of administrative personnel has grown by 25 times the numbers of physicians. Not surprisingly, while health care costs are soaring, so are the profits of private health insurance companies. From 2003 to 2007, the combined profits of the nation’s major health insurance companies increased by 170 percent. And, while more and more Americans are losing their jobs and health insurance, the top executives in the industry are receiving lavish compensation packages. It’s not just William McGuire, the former head of United Health, who several years ago accumulated stock options worth an estimated $1.6 billion or Cigna CEO Edward Hanway who made more than $120 million in the last five years. The reality is that CEO compensation for the top seven health insurance companies now averages $14.2 million.

Moving toward a national health insurance program which provides cost-effective universal, comprehensive and quality health care for all will not be easy. The powerful special interests – the insurance companies, drug companies and medical equipment suppliers – will wage an all-out fight to make sure that we maintain the current system which enables them to make billions of dollars. In recent years they have spent hundreds of millions on lobbying, campaign contributions and advertising and, with unlimited resources, they will continue spending as much as they need.
But, at the end of the day, as difficult as it may be, the fight for a national health care program will prevail. Like the civil rights movement, the struggle for women’s rights and other grass-roots efforts, justice in this country is often delayed – but it will not be denied. We shall overcome!

From Health Care Is a Right, Not a Privilege
Huffington Post, May 8, 2009

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Medical bills are involved in more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, an increase of 50 percent in just six years, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.
More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts, the team at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University reported in the American Journal of Medicine.
“Using a conservative definition, 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92 percent of these medical debtors had medical debts over $5,000, or 10 percent of pretax family income,” the researchers wrote.
“Most medical debtors were well-educated, owned homes and had middle-class occupations.”
The researchers, whose work was paid for by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said the share of bankruptcies that could be blamed on medical problems rose by 50 percent from 2001 to 2007.
“Unless you’re Warren Buffett, your family is just one serious illness away from bankruptcy,” Harvard’s Dr. David Himmelstein, an advocate for a single-payer health insurance program for the United States, said in a statement.
“For middle-class Americans, health insurance offers little protection,” he added.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5530Y020090604

It seems that healthcare providers are in favor of a system that would ensure universal coverage. The details of any plan will have to be worked out, of course.

The real villains aren’t the providers… the insurance companies, HMO’s, PPO’s, etc. are the ones making all the money, and increasing their premiums by 8%, 15%, 25% or more each year. That’s why businesses, especially small businesses, are either passing along higher costs to their employees, or dropping their plans altogether. I have painful personal experience of this.

Personally I’m in favor of a single payor system with optional private insurance, but that’s a pipe dream not likely to be realized any time soon.

In the meantime, the insurance industry must be scrutinized, reformed and then regulated. Their increases must be capped, and their denial processes opened up and subject to regulatory review.

If we are able to get a public insurance plan out there, it will compete with the privateers private insurers and they will be forced to lower their rates and keep them low.