Can someone explain the word "Insurance" to Hillary?

[Labors of Hercules]

As in "that which is provided by private FOR PROFIT insurance companies to: 'compensate the insured for expenses or loss incurred for medical reasons, as through illness or hospitalization'."

Both plans simply provide government negotiated insurance that is a step toward Universal Health Care... To call EITHER of these plans "Universal", far less "Universal Health Care" is a bald misrepresentation.

Because in a Universal Health Care System, there are no "insured", there are no individual "expenses" and there is no "loss incurred".

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

1. She should have adopted the phrase "universal health coverage" from the start

More precise, and sounds just about the same.

[quinnox]

2. Obama and Hillary both don't have universal health care

I don't know why they are both afraid to go there. Kucinich is right and Nader is right on this one.

[Labors of Hercules]

4. Insurance companies are a huge economy unto themselves...

providing hundreds of thousands of jobs.

[LisaM]

3. She knows that, and she has said single payer is the goal

but that she knows from bitter experience that you can't achieve it overnight. We all want single payer. I like Kucinich, but if you believe that he would be able to jump in and implement it were he elected, well, I'm sorry, but I think you're kidding yourself.

[Labors of Hercules]

5. Yet she keeps arguing that Obama's plan won't work

because it isn't Universal. Her attacks on this issue have been so forceful as to make it impossible not to think the pot is calling the kettle black.

[LisaM]

7. Look, as I understand it, he wants to let young healthy people opt out

and then pay at the point of treatment. But if young healthy people opt out, no system will work.

In all the countries where a single payer system works, some portion of wages goes towards the system, and that includes young healthy people. Their proposals are different.

[enid602]

6. no

In the Netherlands, 70% of health care is administered through the government, and the balance through private insurance companies. That's the same percentage as here in the US. France, Belgium and Italy also have multi-payer programs. Even Canada changed its laws a few years ago to accommodate sales of private health insurance. As has HS in the UK. You see, your argument, much like your candidate is hollow.

[Vinca]

8. What 70% of healthcare is provided here by the government?

I'm confused. Medicare, Medicaid and the VA can't possibly account for 70% of the population. I have a family member with diabetes who can't buy insurance at any price and doesn't qualify for any type of government program. As far as I'm concerned, rewarding the blood-sucking insurance industry for the problems they've caused is obscene. Even Hillary, in her speeches, talks about the insurance companies who don't cover you when you need it. I'm sorry some insurance company workers would lose their jobs if we adopted true universal, single payer, health care, but I don't know why. The insurance companies don't think twice about denying coverage and allowing people to die. They gleefully raise premiums until they force you out. And all the time the billions and billions of dollars roll in.

[enid602]

10. Raw Story

I got it from an article in 'Raw Story.' http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/18/213620/164/418 /... Actually, the article says "private insurers in the Netherlands cover around 1/3 of the costs, about the same as in the United States. The Dutch system has long had a hybrid public-private arrangement, as has Germany, France and, actually, the US. The US spends more on government-provided insurance than it does on private insurance." So it's really saying that private insurance pays 33%, and not that the government pays 70%. I guess some of the costs are paid by private citizens here. At any rate the article does say that 'over half' of the expenses here are paid by the government. Sorry for the mis-quote.

[burythehatchet]

9. You're mistaken. The term universal has been injected into the dialogue as though

it should be the goal. Universal insurance is making a bad problem worse. No, the correct goal ought to be Single Payor.