Contrary to popular opinion, universal healthcare is not a right. Don't despair, though, because there are many ways of skinning a cat.
It’s been fashionable of late to reduce all manner of social struggles and conflicts to the question of human rights. This shouldn’t be surprising because the concept of human rights has indeed become one of the central concepts in modern political theory, and for good reasons.…
Article comments
26 - Dave Nalle
Bliffle, I'm not sure that you actually completed that high school math class. First, private insurance has administrative costs more like 26%, not 40%. And administrative expense is certainly not the only component of cost. What if all the costs for Medicare (especially fraud) are far higher than for private insureance except for the administrative costs?
Your hypothetical formula cannot be correct because it doesn't take enough of the variables into consideration.
Dave
27 - roger nowosielski
Looks interesting. It's a cop-out. We're being sold down the river by a the son of a preacher man.
28 - roger nowosielski
I can't argue, Cindy, about the details as to what's needed and what would do the right kind of job. I'll leave that to better minds and number crunchers like Bliffle. My conclusion of the series should be forthcoming any time now.
Where are you, Dave? Are you listening?
29 - Bliffle
We are gradually being overwhelmed by a healthcare insurance system that is unregulated, monopolistic, and out of control. It threatens to engulf the entire USA business community.
Healthcare costs are at 18% of GDP and will go to 30% within a few years. The annual rate of cost increases 6%.
What is to stop it from consuming 60%, then 100% of the US economy?
On july 10, 2009 Bill Moyers Journal had an excellent interview with Wendell Potter, formerly a top exec with Cigna, about just how they go about excluding 'clients' from getting the healthcare for which they have already paid premiums.
Wendell Potter
"Last month, testimony in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation by a former health insurance insider named Wendell Potter made news even before it occurred: CBS NEWS headlined: "Cigna Whistleblower to Testify." After Potter's testimony the industry scrambled to do damage control: "Insurers defend rescissions, take heat for lack of transparency."
In his first television interview since leaving the health insurance industry, Wendell Potter tells Bill Moyers why he left his successful career as the head of Public Relations for CIGNA, one of the nation's largest insurers, and decided to speak out against the industry. "I didn't intend to [speak out], until it became really clear to me that the industry is resorting to the same tactics they've used over the years, and particularly back in the early '90s, when they were leading the effort to kill the Clinton plan."
Moyers
Assessing a "Public Option" for Health Care
This week on the JOURNAL, Bill Moyers spoke with Wendell Potter, a former health insurance executive who left the industry to become an advocate for health care reform. Potter discussed the industry’s history of denying care to members and its extensive efforts to prevent the federal government from creating a “public option” for health insurance to compete with private plans. Potter said:
“The industry has always tried to make Americans think that government-run systems are the worst thing that could possibly happen to them, that if you even consider that you're heading down the slippery slope towards socialism... I think that people who are strong advocates of our health care system remaining as it is, very much a free market health care system, fail to realize that we're really talking about human beings here, and it doesn't work as well as they would like it to... They are trying to make you worry and fear a government bureaucrat being between you and your doctor. What you have now is a corporate bureaucrat between you and your doctor... The public plan would do a lot to keep [health insurance companies] honest, because it would have to offer a standard benefit plan. It would have to operate more efficiently, as does the Medicare program. It would be structured, I’m certain, on a level playing field so that it wouldn’t [have an] unfair advantage [over] the private insurance companies. Because it could be administered more efficiently, the private insurers would have to operate more efficiently.”
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The 2009 ''Health Fair'' in Wise County, VA [or Remote Area Medical (RAM) Clinic, as locals call it ] will be held on the weekend of July 25 - 27.
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30 - roger nowosielski
"What is to stop it from consuming 60%, then 100% of the US economy?"
Nothing! It's business as usual, the American way.
31 - Cindy
I have to disagree with this...
I think that people who are strong advocates of our health care system remaining as it is, very much a free market health care system, fail to realize that we're really talking about human beings here, and it doesn't work as well as they would like it to...
...As far as it not working...it's working for them. That's all they need to know.
It's not that they don't understand that what's being discussed is human beings. Based on talking to them, it is always that they don't really give a shit about human beings.
32 - roger nowosielski
Correct!