The US healthcare system is designed to maximize profits, not health.

[guillaumeb]

And that fact is why the US is ranked 37th in the world, and below countries with a single payer system.

Healthcare expenses cause millions of bankruptcies every year, and many of those filing actually have health insurance.

But Big Pharma is massively profitable, and contributes massively to politicians. Plus, Big Pharma spends more on advertising that research. And this advertising, and these so-called free speech contributions allow the healthcare industries to control and frame the debate.

Single payer is not inventing the wheel, it already exists.

[elleng]

1. Right. Wasn't always so.

'Nixon signed into law, the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973, in which medical insurance agencies, hospitals, clinics and even doctors, could begin functioning as for-profit business entities instead of the service organizations they were intended to be.'


For-Profit Health Care Used To Be Illegal.

'In 1973, Nixon did a personal favor for his friend and campaign financier, Edgar Kaiser, then president and chairman of Kaiser-Permanente. Nixon signed into law, the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973, in which medical insurance agencies, hospitals, clinics and even doctors, could begin functioning as for-profit business entities instead of the service organizations they were intended to be. And which insurance company got the first taste of federal subsidies to implement HMOA73 … *gasp* … why, it was Kaiser-Permanente!'

http://healthoverprofit.org/2017/03/19/for-profit-health-care-used-to-be-illegal/

[guillaumeb]

2. Thank you for the link.

And even non-profit insurance companies routinely deny care to their customers.

[elleng]

3. You're welcome.

HOWEVER:


*This text conflates two separate issues: the development of Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) in conjunction with alleged cozy ties between Kaiser-Permanente and the Nixon Administration, and the legal permissibility of for-profit healthcare. However, as for-profit health care existed prior to 1973, the Health Maintenance Organization Act clearly did not create or enable that phenomenon.

For-Profit Health Care Existed Decades Before the HMO Act of 1973
The growth of employer-sponsored health insurance was instrumental to the development of the current for-profit healthcare insurance system in America, which arose largely as a result of federally mandated wage freezes that occurred during and after World War II. This progression was described in a history of American Healthcare by Elisabeth Rosenthal, abridged in a Spring 2017 issue of Stanford Medicine:'>>>

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/healthcare-profit-1973-hmo-act/

[FBaggins]

4. This is closer to "fake news"

First of all... Democrats had a lock on both houses of Congress and the bill passed with overwhelming support from Democrats. It’s hard to pin that on Nixon.

And for-profit healthcare was NOT illegal prior to the act.

On edit - oops... I see you corrected in a later post.

[wasupaloopa]

7. Kaiser health care was originally company paid health care for Kaiser Steel company employees.

When the Eagle Mountain Mine closed and Kaiser Steel closed in Fontana, CA the company sponsored insurance was no longer viable.

[Wounded Bear]

5. We don't have a healthcare "system." We have a health care industry.

[guillaumeb]

8. A massively profitable industry.

And the profits come at the expense of the public health.

[wasupaloopa]

6. We need to speak honestly when we debate health care. Drama is not needed.

How are we going to get to universal health care unless we lay all the facts out on the table and then form our best ideas?

It is not a matter that we want universal health care. The matter is how we get there.

People have their favorite ideas like single payer but that may not be the best way to go in 2019.

We cannot scrap our current system and adopt something new overnight. What ever we do has to pass through Congress and be signed into law. Then it has to pass all Court challenges.

Let’s elect a Dem government then get to work studying all the relevant data.

[guillaumeb]

9. The longer it takes, the more families will go into bankruptcy.

Like climate change, the clock cannot simply run and run.

[wasupaloopa]

10. It will take how ever long it takes. We have no control over

it now.

What we do will be for people who come after us. In every great movement those who lead usually do not get the benefit of their work.


Just a personal note. The ones who will bring us universal health care are not the ones who complain. It’s the doers who get things done. They are realists. There are working as we speak.