Healthcare Info The for-profit insurance company, Blue Cross of Massachusetts, employs more people to administer coverage for about 2.5 million New Englanders than are employed in all of Canada to administer single payer coverage for 27 million Canadians. Abuses of greed are rampant. In one managed care plan in Florida, 19% of all Medicaid dollars paid went to the three owner's salaries. Canadians get more doctor visits and procedures, more hospital days, and even more bone marrow, liver and lung transplants than Americans. 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.” From Ted: 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