[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4TsaHmtgfA[/youtube]
See, this is what Republicans are protecting when they oppose healthcare reform.
Speaking of which, more than 400 caregivers of seniors and people with disabilities will be rallying this afternoon outside Cigna’s downtown Seattle office, demanding that Cigna end its opposition to a public option. Demonstrators will meet at City Hall Plaza, 600 4th AVE, and then march to Cigna’s offices at 700 5th AVE.
The question we should be asking is why we have to use the insurance principal to pay for health care. Insurance is meant to cover random adverse events, not routine things like caring for illness and injury. Insurance is meant to cover risk of peril, and, with health care, there is very little risk: it’s certain that, at one time or another, we will all need health care. It’s like jumping off the Empire State Building – there is no risk at all because the outcome is certain: death.
The best way to bring down the cost of health care is to abolish health care insurance. Without the insurance teat to feed on, the health care industry will be forced to lower prices. Maybe then the public option will succeed.
[Deleted — see HA Comment Policy]
The insurance industry certainly needs reform, but they are not the only group that has caused patients problems with healthcare.
The MD’s efforts to outlaw competition, especially that of midwives, has probably costs many lives. It has been shown that midwives have lower maternal death rate, lower infant death rate, fewer interventions and deliver children at lower costs, but the MDs fought for years to make it difficult, if not illegal, for midwives to practice and that effort continues in many places today.
These are the stories the Democrats are not talking about.
Lengthy policy exposition speeches do not do the trick.
Politically incorrect @ 1,
“Insurance is meant to cover random adverse events, not routine things like caring for illness and injury.”
Your assertion is incorrect. You describe one model for insurance (which is typical of homeowners insurance). There are other models of insurance in common use as well. Calling one model “correct” and the other “wrong” is childishly naive.
yeah so don’t murray, cantwell, baird, inslee, dicks, smith, larsen and obama have people to watch the youtubes for them and tell them about these fucked up stories from the front?
nope apparently they don’t, and obama doesn’t either. the dems are all policy wonky at best, they’re 99% afraid to call the other side liars or to question motives, so they’re doing a pretty crappy job selling this health reform thing, always on the defense, arguing about death panels heck they should be tagging insurers as death panels and putting that out in a million ways; but no, they act “nice” … they even allow insurers to put up tv ads saying senator cantwell is for bipartisan, responsible reform….paid for by big pharma it says, right under her face….so not only do our dems not sell it they allow themselves to be used by the big pharma and other folks trying to keep their scam profits.
The health care dilemma is but one of the most lurid results of an overall decline in business ethos over the last half century. It’s the same as the management of the large banks having transformed them from reliable stewardship of people’s assets to the fervent practice of a single act of prestidigitation: taking other people’s money and making it disappear.
Obama pretty well nailed one point in his speech last week: The insurance companies now use their actuarial skills to maximize profits at the expense of their policyholders, because Wall Street rewards them for so doing, and would destroy them if they didn’t.
It’s become pervasive throughout the “private sector”. Look at it this way: If the munitions, aircraft and other companies that supported our participation in World War II had indulged in the sort of profiteering we see now by the likes of Halliburton, Blackwater et al (or whatever the hell they’re calling themselves this week) the Axis would have won.
@3 The same might be said of nurse anesthesists as an alternative to MD anesthesiologists.
More progressive provider organizations (Group Health being an example) make extensive use of CRNA’s, nurse midwifes, nurse practitioners and physicians’ assistants. This does not, however, eliminate the need for people with the comprehensive training associated with an MD degree.
@1 Politically idiotic says:
Umm, after we abolish health insurance, who will be able to pay the doctors bills? If I have cancer, I would pay anything to get the cure and would go bankrupt faster.
Your assumptions are childish and at the third grade level. Health care does not conform to the usual business model becuase it IS life or death. You fail to grasp the very basics of the health care debate and your “libertarian” solution is simply a lot of BS.
I think there is a middle-ground here on insurance….
High Deductible Catastrophic coverage.
I agree if American’s paid out-of-pocket more, it would lower cost. No doubt about it.
For example, Chiropractors are known to give 20%–50% discounts for C-A-S-H!
This is precisely what HEALTH SAVINGS ACCOUNTS are designed to do.
IT’S YOUR MONEY!! Negotiate for C-A-S-H the best rate…it’s to your benefit as a consumer.
The Single Payer Krowd really wants something for FREE that the rich guys pay for them.
It’s apparent the motivation.
Insurance is a RISK MANAGEMENT TOOL.
Going “naked” with no coverage is an option many Americans have elected to do….knowing the risk.
The Loons on the Left are using Health Care as another giant step down the Socialistic Path.
No thanks!
@10 Politically Incompetent is basically pushing the mantra about “competition” and “the wisdom of the marketplace”–in other words, if nobody can afford to pay more than, say, 200 bucks to get a brain tumor removed, sooner or later somebody will step up and offer to do the job.
Over the long term, he might be right. That’s the same reason why prices of housing and some other things have fallen during our current economic downturn, and why prices really dropped in the early 1930’s–nobody had the cash to buy anything. So yeah…eventually doctors will get hungry enough for business that they’ll do procedures for less, and might even be motivated by a modicum of charity from seeing people out there who’re foregoing treatment and suffering and dying because they can’t afford it. Some time after that, as fewer people choose medicine as a career goal, maybe the universities will lower their admission standards and charge less tuition. Maybe eventually the price of used Beechcraft Bonanzas will drop to $1.98. This whole process will likely take a very long time, and before it’s all done things might get a trifle messy.
Thinking about such a prospect, you can’t help but wonder if there’s a better way.
@11 There’s a certain validity to that, and in fact at the other end of the scale of urgency of care. A number of individual doctors and group practices have started offering “health maintenance” plans in which the client pays a reasonable monthly fee for office visits as needed for non-acute care and regular checkups. If this could be made affordable to poor people (perhaps through some sort of subsidy) it would go a long, long way toward dealing with the problem of people showing up in the ER sick and desperate because up to that point they made the “choice” to feed their kids instead of going to the doctor.
Single payer like every other industrial country is the only way to go. We all need health care sooner or later. Letting the insurance industry in the game was a mistake from the beginning.