Health Care Payment System...some random thoughts...

[SHRED]

We need an inclusive payment system for the entire nation.
The hospitals, Doctors, and etc... stay private.

The health insurance industry (along with the pharmaceutical corporations) has screwed us and screwed us hard.
There are an estimated 50 million without insurance and thus not "contributing" into the pool at all.
If you are older or have pre-existing conditions you many times cannot get insurance much less affordable insurance.
We are the only nation that allows its citizens to go bankrupt due to our outrageous health care costs.
60% of all bankruptcy's are due to health care costs. Many times by those who thought their current plan covered them.
Nearly 45 cents on the dollar you pay in premiums goes to insurance corporation overhead and advertising.
You want to retire at 55? Not if you don't have some sort of retirement benefit which most places have gotten rid of.

We need an affordable payment system.
I don't give a rat's ass if it is from the public or private sector but we need one where we all contribute a little instead of us with insurance carrying the load. To include those 50 million (most are working class) who are not currently contributing would be an enormous relief to the system.
We need a payment system that does not allow anyone to go without good care and one that does not tolerate losing one's life savings over unforeseen accidents or long term care.
We need to get the straight story about how the rest of the industrialized world does it and why we are the only nation who is ruled by the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations.

The Republican "solution" is to limit corporate loss by setting malpractice caps at 250 thousand dollars as if that is the cause. Wrong leg hacked off? Accidental chart reading and wrongs meds given resulting in paralysis? 250,000 and that's it.
This is no solution at all. The health cost crisis is way beyond any settlement, someone who attempts to fight against the team of lawyers defending the insurance corporates, might eventually get.

The mindset here, since Reagan ushered it in, is that government can do nothing right. This has allowed for deregulated, big money, monopolistic control of our country. While I blame the Dems for their part it is mainly the Republican and Libertarian parties that cheer this on.

We have "socialism" in this country, it's called corporate socialism.
They socialize the means and cost of production and then privatize the profit with their offshore tax schemes and outsourcing of jobs.

How do we get a mindset here where the people understand that we are the government? A representative democracy is all we have and we need to look at it in ways to affect positive change for the people.
We need to quit the negative tearing down of our system while turning a blind eye to those who we do not have control over and that we cannot vote out...the big multi-national corporations and CEOs that have bought our government off with no loyalty our sense of nationalism.

We, as a nation, are in crisis and we need something inclusive and affordable.
We need our government to protect us from this predatory corporate behaviour that has ruined any chance at affordable health care
This will be a hot topic for '08.

MORE:
http://www.pnhp.org/

[warren pease]

1. Next time somebody starts yammering about how the govt. can't do anything right...

...consider telling them something like this:

There are some things, say air traffic control, that are too important to be left to a cost-cutting, chiseling, downsizing, profits uber alles model of US-style capitalistic excess. Or would you prefer to be suspended seven miles in the air when the pilot comes on the intercom and tells you that Glutco Air Traffic Solutions has just laid off 40 percent of its workforce, including most of the people who staffed the operation at the airport you're heading to.

Why would anyone think that the kinds of people who ran Enron, WorldCom, Dynegy, Qwest, Peregrine, Andersen, Britsol Meyers Squibb, Merck, Adelphia, and the rest of the felons whose business practices were so outrageous that even BushCo couldn't cover for them, are the right people to decide life-and-death issues for health care insurance subscribers?


Some random facts:

This is the only country in the world in which lack of medical insurance can be a capital crime.

This is the only first world country that doesn't have some form of universal access, single-payer national health care system.

In a 2000 World Health Organization study, the US was tied with the island of Fiji for 54th place on an index measuring fairness and access to quality health care for all citizens.

Medical expenses account for more than half of all bankruptcies in the US.

The US spends more than twice as much per capita on health care ($4,171 in 2000, more than $6,000 now) than the next most expensive country (The Netherlands, according to a OECD Health Data 2000 study).

At least 25 percent of these per capita expenditures (some estimates range as high as 40 percent) are squandered on paper pushing, shareholder return, executive salaries and perks, member benefits verification, advertising, PR and other routine business practices which don't do a single thing to provide actual health care.

In 2000, the American health care system was a $1.3 trillion business. Which means that at least $325 billion, and as much as $520 billion, was wasted on non-medical items. In contrast, Medicare spends about 2 to 3 percent of its total budget on administrative costs.

CEOs at the top 15 managed care companies made an aggregate $63.3 million in salary alone in 2001. They, along with eight additional high-level execs at these same companies, held stock options worth $109 million at the end of 2001.

For a thorough dissection of the current health care joke, facts and figures on how other countries handle health care, case studies, single-payer proposals and an enormous volume of reference material, go to: http://www.pnhp.org


Anyone who thinks they're living in the country with the world's best health care system is either uninformed or delusional, and should be told the truth for their own good. After all, their ignorance, and that of tens of millions like them, gives the federal government cover and allows them to continue perpetrating this deadly fraud on all of us, while further enriching the for-profit health care system that gives them all those nice big checks every election cycle.


wp

[SHRED]

2. great post

thanks