Barbara Ehrenreich: Healthcare vs. the Profit Principle

[marmar]

from The Nation:


Healthcare vs. the Profit Principle

Barbara Ehrenreich


It's always nice to see the President take a principled stand on something. The man formerly known as "43"--and now perhaps better named "29" for his record-breaking low approval rating--is promising to battle any expansion of government health insurance for children, and not because he hates children or refuses to cough up the funds. No, this is a battle over principle: private healthcare vs. government-provided healthcare. Speaking in Cleveland recently, Bush boldly asserted:

I strongly object to the government providing incentives for people to leave private medicine, private health care to the public sector. And I think it's wrong and I think it's a mistake. And therefore, I will resist Congress's attempt ... to federalize medicine....In my judgment that would be--it would lead to not better medicine, but worse medicine. It would lead to not more innovation, but less innovation.

Now you don't have to have seen Sicko to know that if there is one area of human endeavor where private enterprise doesn't work, it's healthcare. Consider the private, profit-making insurance industry, which Bush is so determined to defend. What "innovations" has it produced? The deductible, the co-pay and the pre-existing condition are the only ones that leap to mind. In general, the great accomplishment of the private health insurance industry has been to overturn the very meaning of "insurance," which is risk-sharing: We all put in some money, though only some of us will need to draw on the common pool by using expensive healthcare. And the insurance companies have overturned it by refusing to insure the people who need care the most--those who are already, or are likely to become, sick. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/ehrenreich

[antigop]

1. Thank you, marmar! I appreciate your healthcare posts. n/t