Cockroaches and Health Care

[iamjoy]

so we have heard a lot about the problems with health insurers no longer writing child only policies, raising premiums, etc and people are blaming health care reform.

Well, the way I see it, the problem is that health insurance companies don't really want to have to pay out claims, they just want to collect premiums because that's how they make money. So, once you start trying to prevent them from their preferred business model, it is only natural that they will start finding other ways to maintain their profitability.

But, blaming Health Care Reform isn't really fair. It has merely made the heartless game of the insurance companies more apparent. It's kind of like a filthy building that has cockroaches. If you turn a light on, you see all the roaches scatter. The light didn't cause the roaches, the roaches were there anyway. So, HCR is the light and the insurance companies are the roaches.

[SheilaT]

1. As was explained to me by a representative

of the billing department of the hospital I work in, insurance companies are in the claim denial business.

[dflprincess]

2. And the Insurance Profit Protection Act that was passed

just digs the insurance companies in deeper.

We needed reform that would give us access to care like people in civilized countries have. Instead we got a mandate to keep buying the same shoddy product from the same crooks who have been cheating us for years.

[TheMadMonk]

3. A big part of the problem is deep in the American psyche.

The meme that every man should do for himself on top of the meme that every man with the will CAN do for himself in America.

And central to that is the idea that there should be no impediment to making a profit.

It makes it so easy to paint any form of welfare as an unnecessary drain on public coffers, by tying welfare to various stereotypes: Unwed mothers; African Americans; illegal aliens; anchor babies; the ungodly; etc., the ignorant can easily be riled up, time and time again, to vote to cut their own throats, because they're convinced it's not legitimate business that is profiteering, but welfare queens, et al that are preventing proper distribution of profit.

[kenny blankenship]

4. But they're Our System now! We have to keep them healthy no matter what it takes.

You would gamble with the lives and health of 300 million Americans? If insurers have muffed it and need bailing out, bail them out. If insurers need more money next year by God they will have it! And the next year, too, if they say they need it. We've imposed this legislation on the insurance corporations -God knows they didn't want it- and now we're responsible for their well being forever after. We made an incidental relationship into an essential relationship by force of law. Their welfare is the task of every living American. Have you no sense of responsibility?

Don't you see? They're Our Uniquely American System, and we have to keep them healthy.

We HAVE to keep them healthy. What are we here for, if not for them?