Yeah, what good are they?! (health care debate)
Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times recently asked “What do we need health insurers for anyway?” Frankly, I’ve been wondering the same thing. (Some of you may have heard me express my lack of sympathy for a multi-billion-dollar-industry-that-produces-nothing before.) Throughout the ongoing debate about health care reform in this country, money seems to be the underlying issue. Who will pay for providing care to those who can’t pay for it themselves? How do we control the costs for people who are facing insurance premium increases? If the government steps in, how will it pay for its intervention? And, seemingly the biggest question among conservatives, Why should I have to pay for the bum down the street?
I formed my opinion on this debate in 1997, shortly after I aged out of being a military dependent and learned what the rest of you already knew: the private healthcare system sucks. I grew up with socialized healthcare, and I credit my survival to the excellent (and aggressive) care I received. I have seen a system that works, right here in the U.S., and opponents would be hard pressed to disavow me of my belief that the U.S. Government can manage it.
And, since the government already picks up the slack for the most medically vulnerable (read medically expensive) in our nation (the elderly, disabled, and children in poverty) through programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP, anyway, why not let it take the healthy and robust people on board, as well? If we diverted all those billions of dollars we pay in insurance premiums every year to the government coffers (well, knowing the Government, perhaps to a special health care program that cannot be pillaged), and eliminate the cap on earnings that is taxed for Social Security, I think we could pretty much pay for the plan.
March 5th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Too deep for me, and I don’t want to involve myself in the debate, but it pretty much goes with my naive belief that mandatory insurance in general (and health insurance in particular) should be illegal.
March 8th, 2010 at 6:51 pm
With the jobs that I’ve had that provided heath insurance coverage it seemed like every six months to a year the coverage was juggled around. Sometimes coverage for certain things were dropped and other times co-pays were raised. I don’t think there was ever a time that things were added or co-pays reduced, and the same for Kurt and his employer. Chiropractors are no longer covered with his plan.
Shouldn’t the idea of health insurance be that if you’re sick, no matter what it is or if you’ve had the illness before or continually had an illness for several years, that you’ll be covered and able to see your doctor? Despite having insurance, we currently don’t have that. There is also a lifetime cap on our insurance. Meaning a person is only allowed to cost the insurance company X amount before they no longer cover that individual. It’s a high amount, but I can see how if someone got cancer that could get tapped out. That’s what happens when companies are allowed to demand a profit on health care.