Private Health Insurance

...

The public option was never a coherent, well-defined policy tool. It's an amorphous concept that stands as a symbol of reform and as a perceived antidote to the greed and callousness of the insurance industry.

it is ludicrous to imply that private insurance companies don't ration care by flat-out refusing procedures that people genuinely need or desperately want.

What I'm afraid of is that this bill makes private insurance larger and stronger -- and thus, gets us further away from curing the main problem of our health care system: perverse incentives.

The truth is, death panels already exist. Every day in this country, life and death decisions are made by insurance companies, whose only motivation is profit.

The president singled out insurance companies for special criticism in his speech on Wednesday. So why did health insurance stock prices go up the next day?

Obama created the space for the Democrats to work. He outlined a lot of stuff, but did not get specific in the semantics. He opened up the lane once again for prima donna Congresspeople to drive in for the layup.

We need to see President Obama's teeth Wednesday night. I want to know that there is some steel behind the cool facade.

The New York Times recently reported that the Obama administration is heeding a list of six lessons from previous efforts to reform health care. Unfortunately, the three most crucial lessons were left off the list.

The trick in reforming the health insurance system lies not in taking away profits from insurance companies, but in changing the paradigm in such a way that their greed would guide them to provide better health care.

Ideology and propaganda will squash any consideration of a well-executed public insurance option in America, no matter how compelling the case may be.

When I see talking heads, "experts," and politicians talking about healthcare, I want them to answer the people's, and only the people's questions.

Like keeping new goldfish in their bag, conservatives illogically terrified of change will need to get acclimated to the new healthcare system.

Big Health has Big Influence in Washington. Their empty promises carry a lot of weight, and the industry's influence may succeed in sinking the public option for good.

I received a mass email that exhorted the recipients to pray because of the disaster to befall on us if health care reform is passed. I went through every charge and answered it.

To get to the heart of America's healthcare challenge, we must end the longstanding system of pay-to-play politics by fundamentally reforming the role of private money in federal elections.

The real problem for private insurance companies isn't that they can't compete with a public plan. It is that they can't compete and continue to do business they way they want to do business.

The result of leaving health care reform to the insurance industry is that health insurance premiums have gone up six times faster than wages in the past nine years

Anxiety and uncertainty about our health care will be once and for all gone. Even pharmaceutical companies will cut billions in costs because they'll have no need to advertise, lobby, or provide gifts.