Roadblocking the Ambulance of Health Care Reform

I have a simple message for all those who denounce the reform of our health care system as a government "takeover" and warn that government "death panels" will decide whether or not older Americans (like this one, who just turned 70) will live or die.

With a combination of gross distortions and outright lies, you are roadblocking the ambulance of health care reform (Full disclosure: I stole this metaphor from the AARP. See (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNrUAve-opU)

While you conjure up the specter of government "death panels," an estimated twenty thousand Americans are dying every year because they can't afford health insurance. (Five years ago, a study by the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, put the figure at 18,000 a year.) And if you really want to know what a death panel looks like, rent The Corporation (2004), a film by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. In this film, a former executive for a health insurance company tells a Congressional committee that under orders from her superiors, she denied coverage for treatment of a life-threatening condition that did indeed take a life. Is that the system you're dying to keep?

While you darkly warn of a government takeover, more than forty million Americas enjoy the benefits of a government system that long ago (44 years , to be exact) took over the task of providing basic health care to all Americans older than 64. Though the conservative charge against this system was led by the patron saint of the Republican party, Ronald Reagan, who warned that it would turn America into a socialist swamp, 94 percent of all seniors -- ninety-four percent -- are satisfied with the quality of care it delivers for them, and no legislator of any stripe, not even the most fiery red, dares to attack it.

Listen to Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican National Committee. "We need to protect Medicare," he says, "and not cut it in the name of 'health insurance reform.'"

Michael, let's get something straight. Health care reform will not cut Medicare. It will build on it by extending its benefits to all Americans who need them but cannot now afford them.

Cost? While you say we can't afford to reform health insurance, more than fifty million Americans (at the latest count) live without it, go hungry or heatless or bankrupt without it, and in thousands of cases literally die without it.

Do you have eyes and ears in your head, Michael? Can you hear the siren and see the flashing lights? Then please get out of the way. Now.

Comments

[surely]

I don't understand why people are flocking to defend private insurance companies, an industry that provides no actual service but makes trillions of dollars limiting access to health care. Are there really that many people who are happy with their private insurers? If the real customers in the health insurance industry are employers, are the consumers of the system, the employees, really served?

It is high time that health care be independent of employment. I know from experience how devastating it is to have an employer go bankrupt and discover that the owner had been cutting costs by not paying employee insurance premiums and suddenly find myself without coverage in the middle of a health crisis through no fault of my own. I never want to be in that situation again, but it could happen to anyone at any time.

The last time Congress addressed health care, nothing happened, and the Bush administration completely ignored the problem for eight years. We cannot wait any longer. My suspicion is that private insurers are promoting misinformed passionate responses to health care reform legislation to try to derail any changes. We cannot let them win.

[Billl]

Please start over on health care reform.

The only way to lower government’s costs while delivering high quality health care is to use “governments unfair advantages” by taking the job of raising and distributing money away from the insurance companies and using only government owned hospitals, operated by government employed doctors and care providers, for dispensing all government funded services.

A national sales tax is the cheapest way to raise money to pay for public health care.

To preserve a vibrant private health care industry all government mandates should be removed from private insurers and care providers.

The private system should no longer be required to deliver services to patients who can not pay.

Tort reform would do wonders for private health care.

Costs for all programs funded by The United States Government including Medicare and Medicaid, would be hundreds of billions of dollars cheaper annually if delivered through the new public system.

Everyone selecting public care would receive all care and medications free no restrictions, no insurance and no co pays required.

Businesses selecting the public option for their employees would no longer have any requirements to pay for or be involved with health care in any way.

Going back and forth between free public, and user purchased private care, may suit some people, and it would provide unlimited choices, ultimate freedom, and always free public care would be available when it is needed or desired to everyone who asks for it no restrictions.

[Robert Cortez]

There's no reason to start over.

The insurance industry needs to be regulated. Their profits are obscene by any measure, but particularly by the way they "earn" those profits. They deny claims, raise rates, raise deductibles and co-pays. They cancel policies when someone gets sick. They refuse to insure those with pre-existing conditions. Those practices must be stopped.

We must have a public option to compete with the private insurance industry. This is most important for small businesses and self employed who don't have an affordable option with realistic coverage.

Starting over is a win for the insurance industry while millions more will lose coverage and be denied claims.

Don't listen to the lies and distortions of the radical right who are just ignorant shills for the private insurance industry and the pharmaceutical companies.

Want a real eye opener from an Insurance Industry insider? Watch this video. http://bit.ly/PfTmU

With almost 20 years inside the health insurance industry, Wendell Potter saw for-profit insurers hijack our health care system and put profits before patients. Now, he speaks with Bill Moyers about how those companies are standing in the way of health care reform.