Time for a Thurvey. Thursday survey. If you wish to comment on the question simply click on "comment" below, type your comment in the comment window, click on the anonymous button, and click publish. Include your name with you comment if you want the world to know who wrote that brilliant commentary.
The Thurvey question:
Is health care insurance reform needed in America or is it a contrived issue? On what do you base your opinion?
or
Where do you get your information regarding the health care insurance legislation? Do you feel like you know what is in the proposals?
Healthcare reform is desperately needed. Medical coverage is one if not "the" major causes of bankruptcy. Very few people realize that they are one diagnosis, and one fine print clause in his or her insurance from being truly and totally desperate. The family savings totally wiped out, and wondering how to get care. I am talking about well-to-do people. Poor people are left out from the beginning.
ReplyDeleteIf it can't be fixed in the emergency room then many poor don't have anywhere to turn.
For profit insurance will not be able to solve this problem. The only way for an insurance co. to turn profit is to squeeze the bottom line. That means that they need to maximize having "healthy" people on the rolls while simultaneously excluding, if not completely then as much as they can, "sick" people. The result is that the people who need it the most can't get it. I am not saying that insurance companies protecting the bottom line is wrong. It's just how they work. They wouldn't exist if it wasn't protected. I am saying that the insurance profit model is ill-suited to be the financial backbone of a health system based on covering as many people as possible.
fyi I get my health insurance news from NPR.
That was a really good post Anonymous. If my posts had that kind of quality I would definitely put my name.
ReplyDeleteA bit about cooperatives..
The idea of cooperatives in their current form as the fix all for health care is ridiculous. Cooperatives exist now. They can happen without legislation and have been somewhat successful on a small scale. The major issue facing cooperatives is that they do not write and sell their own policies, they only negotiate group policies for the individuals in the cooperative. While purchasing health insurance in a group, in this case a cooperative, is cheaper than buying insurance on the individual market, it does little in the way of stifling the increasing cost of health insurance. Your cooperative group insurance rate is likely to continue to increase much like your current employer based or individual insurance unless other steps are taken. Cooperatives may provide a small amount of relief to individuals and families struggling with purchasing health insurance on the open market, but they do not solve the bigger problem of increased costs and accessibility.
There are also non profit insurance companies that act much like cooperatives except for the fact that they write and sell their own policies. These organizations do good work, but are rare for two reasons: 1) There is much profit to be made in the health insurance industry 2) It is very difficult for non profit insurance companies at the beginning of their existence to compete with United/Aetna/Cigna/BCBS (To be fair some of these companies have not for profit and non profit sections of their company) as far as price and service goes so most don't make it through their infancy. Another problem with non profit health insurance companies is that they are ineffective in insuring individuals with pre existing conditions, because for obvious reasons they must budget much more carefully than their for profit counterparts.
After all this rambling my main point is that cooperatives and many of the other reforms being discussed represent little more than a tweaking of the status quo. The time for tweaking health insurance (since that is primarily what we are talking about) has passed. The only groups of people that should oppose a government option are those getting paid by the insurance industry and those Americans that are scared of Nazi socialized health insurance. I for one am for it.
I believe we need healthcare coverage/insurance reform. To have so many people without access to healthcare - preventative and urgent -- is a drain on our society and a cost to our government, healthcare facilities, and economy. I do not feel like I have as much information as I need. I understand concerns about how much it will cost; however, no one is calculating how much it ALREADY COSTS. Control is currently in the hands of large insurance companies, which make a fortune, and are in the habit of denying coverage initially just in case healthcare providers or patients won't press their case. Think the health insurance companies are lobbying on this issue? Think they have contributed any $ to members of Congress? It is screwed up, and I am afraid we will not see significant change, primarily because of the clout of large insurance companies and the fear tactics of some who manage to get people whipped up to fight against their own best interests. Amazing. You would think we would wise up.
ReplyDeleteMy info on healthcare reform comes from many sources, tv news, internet news, Time, newspaper and ignorant emails sent by people who have no idea what they are talking about. I have not read the entire bill but have compared different parts of the "real thing" to the "summaries" in these emails and haven't found any of them to be entirely accurate and most are outright lies, used as scare tactics.
ReplyDelete