National Health Care - Don't Let The Insurance Companies Scare You!

As the health care folks start making noise about how "we can do better than government run health care", I have to wonder why they haven't? I am not alone. Paul Krugman asks the same question in his column in the NYT today.

It's a valid question and the answer is simple as I see it. Private industry cannot provide health care an efficiently and cheaply as a government run system. Why? They have to factor in the "profit" to any cost they incur. Without that "profit" they are out of business, and they get that by marking up costs and denying procedures to sick people. Not a very nice thing to do.

Jon Stewart asked the real question on his program last week when he grilled Newt Gingrich as to why we couldn't trust the government to run health care but we could trust them to run the military. That reframes the issue in a way anyone can understand.

We have one of the least effective health care systems in the world, and we have millions of American's without any insurance or access to health care at all. How difficult is it to see that the private insurance industry has no incentive to do anything about this? Remember that "profit" item?

American businesses suffer under the weight of providing health insurance for their employees and that cost goes up every year without any predictable limits. Our country's competitiveness is being hindered by our poor system of providing health care and other countries do not have to deal with this. Yes their taxes may be higher, but they can predict those and factor them into their cost.

It's time we got serious and ignored the propaganda being spewed by the insurance industry and start listening to small businesses and the citizens of the country. A government provided health insurance or health care is both practical and efficient. It works for every other industrialized country and it can work here. All we need is politicians with a set of balls who can turn down contributions from the health insurance industry and make a change.

Back in the 1950's the doctors and hospitals teamed up with insurance companies and scared the public with threats of "socialized medicine". That planted a seed of fear that still persists long after most doctors see that the current system is broken.

As a citizen without health insurance, this is of vital interest to me and I admit that from the start. Our great system of health care has consistently denied me coverage as an independent worker because of "pre-existing conditions", in other words just about anything at all that has ever affected my health. I am tired of waiting for some kind of affordable health care and tired of avoiding the doctor to prevent adding any more reasons to deny me coverage in the future.

Health care in this country is only for those with the money to afford it. Even the insured have to fight to get treated properly and that is just WRONG! So write your alleged representative in Washington and tell them to do the right thing, we need national health care NOW.