Can $133 Million Ounces of Prevention Beat a Pound of Cure?

An ad I'd like to see to drive home the urgent need for health insurance reform would proclaim, in the baldest way, that the health-insurance industry is burning through lobbying money now to protect their obscene profits for prosperity. According to John Harwood of the New York Times, they spent $133 million dollars in the second quarter of this year alone.

$133 million to convince politicians to back off finally curbing health-industry profiteering.

That money would buy:

• 220,000 CT scans or MRIs.
• 1, 330, 300 visits to a family physician
• 4,433 hips replaced
• 604 early-stage breast cancer treatments

One of the few groups rank-and-file Americans mistrust more than Congress is the health-insurance industry. Let's steer the debate back to that target with a little good old-fashioned righteous indignation.

Follow Trey Ellis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TreyEllis

Comments

[Dap]

You're exactly correct Mr. Ellis, people need to stand-up or continue to be slapped down.

[DocTwain]

The private health insurance cartel devours $350 BILLION dollars a year in excessive "administrative costs," including PROFIT, that otherwise would be spent on health care. http://www.pnhp.org.

How many MRIs would that buy?

Every one of those dollars was sucked out of our pockets in needless graft.
The private insurance industry ought never to have come into existence.
We needed single payer in Truman's time, and we need it now.

(If you follow the link, you'll find that it is more than enough to insure all 47 million Americans currently uninsured.)

[lgillooly]

There has to be a popuists movement against the Insurance Companies. They add NO value to our healthcare and yet make billions of dollars. They focus on the young and healthy and do everything they can to NOT have to pay claims. This is an insane way to deliver healthcare.
The 133 million they have spent on lobbyists this year comes from policy premiums. Not 1 dollar of it helped a sick person.