Health Care vs. the Profit Principle - Barbara Ehrenreich

[ProudDad]

"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 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 health care vs. government-provided health care. Speaking in Cleveland this week, 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 health care. Consider the private, profit-making, insurance industry that 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 health care. 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."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-ehrenreich/health-care-vs-the-profi_b_55941.html


Grrrrrrrr......

[area51]

1. Great article. (n/t)

[trof]

2. K&R

Ehrenreich's "Nickled and Dimed" was a real eye opener.
She's good.

[nashville_brook]

3. quote from article -- "patients...deserve only the amount of care they can afford."

But Dr. Reddy -- who is, incidentally a high-powered Republican donor -- has a principled reason for his piratical practices. "Patients," the Los Angeles Times reports him saying, "may simply deserve only the amount of care they can afford." He dismisses as "an entitlement mentality" the idea that everyone should be getting the same high quality health care. This is Bush's vaunted principle of "private medicine" at its nastiest: You don't get what you need, only what you can pay for.

If government insurance for children (S-CHIP) isn't expanded to all the families that need it, there is no question but that some children will die -- painfully perhaps and certainly unnecessarily. But at least they will have died for a principle.

[ProudDad]

8. That is EXACTLY what we're up against

"He dismisses as "an entitlement mentality"

And he's not the only one. All of the repuke candidates would agree 100% with this statement.

The Dems, with the exception of Dennis Kucinich (and Gravel) are all afraid of voicing anything that can be construed as being counter to that statement.

And at some level, they still believe that bullshit. They've got theirs, we gotta get ours...

Just as Clinton did when he "ended Welfare as we know it" -- in other words turned it from a right to avoid starvation and homelessness for the worst off among us into another subsidy for our corporate masters.

I'm afraid that unless we can put enough pressure on the eventual Dem "winner" we're NOT going to get true, Universal Health Care with the cost containment we could accomplish with Single-Payer -- another give-away to the health insurance mafia and big pharma.


This IS the GREAT IDEALOGICAL BATTLE being waged in the world from the beginning.

Do people have any rights as a virtue of BEING or must people EARN every benefit as a privilege once they've "proved their worth"?

For the last 30 years the latter has been in the ascendancy. I pray that anti-humane era is beginning to end. I hope we can again head in the direction we were heading from the early 30s until the late 60s; That people have a right to decent housing, enough food to eat, health care and meaningful work to do.

[nashville_brook]

10. Capitalism promised it would "play nice" in human endeavor, and we ALL believed it...

Free Market Capitalism was supposed to make everything in the whole wide world better.

now we see that Capitalism can't play nice because (hello!) it's in it's NATURE to destroy everything in its path. and (hello!) we've been shouting this from the rooftops since Ronnie Raygun took office (and way before). no one listened. we were ridiculed.

i feel like the Lorax. I want to lift myself up by the seat of my pants and not look back.

[CTyankee]

4. Every Democrat in the 08 Presidential race has some version of expansion

of health care in the public sector, so you know they have poll tested and focus group tested on this issue and know that the voters have caught on to the private sector scam. Plus they are or know someone who is, without medical coverage (and not yet 65). Surely, the Republicans running for 08 must know this, too.
Only the little diehard group of Bush supporters are violently opposed.

But we need about 100 more "Sicko"s and lots more news coverage of this issue. And the experience of people in Canada and Western Europe should be more widely shared in the media. It is criminal that we still have to fight on this but hopefully, and with the enlightened self interest of the business community, we can move forward to (gulp)univeral health care.

[ProudDad]

9. Unfortunately, only one has the RIGHT answer

that removed the for profit health insurance mafia from the equation.

And that candidate, my candidate, Dennis Kucinich, is probably not going to win the Presidency...

So...we gotta keep max pressure on the "front runners", those anointed by our corporate masters as the eventual "winners" of the 1600 Penn. Ave Horse Race to help pass and SIGN HR 676 - Single-Payer Universal Health Care...

http://www.house.gov/conyers/news_health_care.htm

[Douglas Carpenter]

5. great article

[midnight]

6. . During clinton's first administration their was discussion to

change health care. Now there is discussion of single payer. It seems to me that because our delivery of health care is tied to a huge money industry that profit will always trump health care delivery. It(health insurance) is disguised as a money management tool to help cut out waste, but it is not that at all. It is an agency to prevent those in need of therapeutic treatments, and health care from getting health care. It is a carefully crafted business that here in Wisconsin has blocked any oversight by govt. agencies ie. health care commissioner from overriding the insurance co. favorite phrases-not medically necessary, and of course-experimental. Talk about talking some one to death.

[Vinca]

7. It's not "federalizing" medicine, it's "federalizing" the payment

system and we already have that operating in Medicare and Medicaid. What a complete and total dolt.

[welshTerrier2]

11. the 1,2, 3's of health care math

we get much too tangled up in discussions about socialized medicine and inefficient government services and privatization and all the other crap.

health care math is elementary, Mr. Dear Watson ... let's look at just how basic it can be ...

right now, we spend some amount on health care. if we want to provide health care to more people, the logical possibilities are very limited:

1. we could spend more money
2. we could provide less care to those who currently receive care so that we can provide more care to those who don't
3. we could somehow lower health care costs
4. we could spend money to cover expenses but eliminate the extra margin we pay to cover corporate profits in the insurance industry.

since I have no idea what the actual rate of return is in the health care sector (hopefully someone can provide this), let's say the profit margins are between 5 and 10% just for argument's sake.

this means, if we spend $10000 on health care, roughly $9250 would go for care and an additional $750 would be charged, beyond actual expenses, to reward insurance industry stockholders. suppose, though, that we could eliminate the insurance profits entirely and use that excess money to provide care to those who can't afford it? that would yield at least a partial solution to universal care.

but then take the next step, suppose we did see health care as a right. suppose we didn't ration health care by price anymore. suppose we eliminated or reduced other budget categories, the defense budget comes to mind, to make up the difference. by taking the profits out of health insurance, lowering costs by going to single payer, and perhaps even shifting budget priorities, we already have all the resources we need to provide quality health care to all. if the profit rate in the health insurance field is greater than the 7.5% I used in my example, the math becomes that much easier.

and one last factor that gets far too little press: we need to break the physician lobby stranglehold on the number of available physicians. many who are rejected from medical school have excellent grades and would make excellent doctors. by keeping the supply of doctors low, they are jacking up the prices of health care. if the problem is occurring because of available medical school capacity, we should make it a national priority to address that issue.

those calling for solutions that do not include eliminating the profit motive from health care and that do not include taking spending away from other budget line items to fully fund quality health care for every single American are trying to sell you something that clearly is not good for your health.