Healthcare Info
Our healthcare system is corrupted
by its dependence on for-profit insurance.
This has resulted in a broken system.
Our For-Profit system has naturally evolved to provide less care for
greater cost - because maximizing profit is the goal, not providing
health care.
Making the greatest profit for the investors is always the bottom
line for any profitable venture. That's why we have non-profit systems
for education, fire departments, and other public systems.
Every American should have access to a system that eliminates for-profit
insurance. The savings from converting to a non-profit medical
payment distribution system would insure everyone.
All this means is that insurance corporations won't be taking a cut
off the top. Insurance companies provide no healthcare at all, they
simply collect our money, skim off thier profit of about 30%, then
negotiate the least amount they can pay your doctor while limiting
your coverage. It's a horrible system.
Paying outrageous profits is wrong practically and morally. On the
other hand, Medicare operates on about 5% overhead. That's honest,
effective healthcare.
Read my Healthcare Fact Sheet below. For example: In one HMO, 19%
of the Medicaid dollars were skimmed to pay the three owners' salaries.
- We spend more on health care per person than any nation in the
world, but we have 41 million people uninsured, 10 million of which
are children. Here we are, the proud USA, the richest country in the
history of the human race, and we
have 20 million children living in poverty and nobody talks about
it. 20 Million. Imagine them as a crowd. I cannot.
- Roughly 1/3 of every dollar spent on health care goes directly
to insurance profits. According to the U.S. Government Accountability
Office (GAO), that amounts to $100 BILLION a year. These savings
in a single payer plan would insure everyone in the nation with
no deductibles, full Rx benefits, full mental health coverage, and
you would choose your own doctor - without any increase in total health
spending. We are the ONLY industrialized nation in the world
that does not have a national health care system.
- The number of uninsured has risen rapidly. Only massive Medicaid
expansions - 10.5 million nationally since 1989 - have averted a much
larger increase in the uninsured.
Here
is why Americans are dying so that insurance companies can make higher
profits - I've put the essential exchange below. Nixon agrees
after Ehrlichman explains the denial of care for profit approach.
Nixon signed that into law the next day in the HMO Act of 1973. The
Republican Party is primarily responsible for all the unecessary deaths
due to this law. This is they system they want to preserve today.
Ehrlichman: “Edgar
Kaiser is running his Permanente deal for profit...All
the incentives are toward less medical care, because …the less
care they give them, the more money they make.”
President Nixon:
“Fine.”
Ehrlichman: “… and
the incentives run the right way.”
President Nixon: “Not
bad.”
Some commentary by me:
I don't see how any reasonable thinking person can ignore the horrible,
brutal immorality of this situation. Our health care insurance system
was actually specifically designed to maximize profit by denying care:
that's it's goal and why it was created and its been very good at
it. People ought to be in jail for engineering that system since I
consider it a crime against humanity - the people of the United States.
Nothing has changed since the law was passed - the current crop of
Republicans don't want everyone covered, let alone in a non-profit
way. Democrats at least want full coverage for everyone, but doing
it in a for-profit insurance system is a terrible approach.
They must be forced by the public to implement a Single Payer insurance
system. That is what Medicare is, and it works pretty damn well -
except for that rip-off prescription drug program that President Bush
installed. - Ted
|