3 posts tagged “health care reform”
I have hated insurance since as far back as I can remember. To me, it seemed like a legitimized mafia practice. Pay me in case something bad happens. Oh, and if something bad does happen, good luck getting us to do anything about it! I hate insurance because it has changed the medical industry as well. Medicine is now practiced based upon the bottom line rather than the care of patients. Costs have skyrocketed because hospitals know that they can get the money from insurance companies rather than patients. If you are a patient and you have a severe illness, you can't expect to be treated unless you demonstrate the ability to pay. Do you know what really hammers this idea home? Should you get really sick, insurance companies will ACTIVELY seek to remove you so that they don't have to pay out! This practice is acknowledged by our government:
The Department of Health and Human Services put a spotlight on that practice Tuesday in its continuing campaign to build support for an overhaul of health insurance.
“When a person is diagnosed with an expensive condition such as cancer, some insurance companies review his/her initial health status questionnaire,” the HHS said in a posting at HealthReform.Gov. In most states, insurance companies can retroactively cancel individuals' policies if any condition was not disclosed when the policy was obtained, "even if the medical condition is unrelated, and even if the person was not aware of the condition at the time.”
“Coverage can also be revoked for all members of a family, even if only one family member failed to disclose a medical condition,” HHS said.
The department cited recent research by the staff of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which found that three large insurers rescinded almost 20,000 policies over five years, saving $300 million in medical claims.
“Simply put, these insurance company employees are encouraged to revoke sick people’s health coverage," HHS said.
Do you want to know the lengths to which they will go? I will offer you two examples, one which would seem obvious given what these corrupt assholes are doing, and the other that should terrify any clear-thinking person.
WellPoint and Assurant told the committee that they automatically investigate the medical records of every policyholder with certain conditions, including leukemia, ovarian cancer, brain cancer, and becoming pregnant with twins, the committee staff wrote.
In November 2006, after a Texas resident was found to have a lump in her breast, Wellpoint investigated her medical history and concluded that she had been diagnosed previously with osteoporosis. The insurer rescinded her policy and refused to pay for treatment of the lump, the committee staff wrote.
Under the current system, something as relatively simple as seasonal sneezing can jeopardize your financial security, HHS argues, citing a 2001 study for the Kaiser Family Foundation.
“Even when offering coverage, insurers can exclude whole categories of illnesses related to a preexisting condition. For example, someone with a preexisting condition of hay fever could have any respiratory system disease – such as bronchitis or pneumonia – excluded from coverage,” HHS said.
In a truly disgusting practice, it was revealed that Blue Cross REWARDS their employees for dropping policy holders who become ill with anything serious:
But documents obtained by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and released today show that the company's employee performance evaluation program did include a review of rescission activity.
The documents show, for instance, that one Blue Cross employee earned a perfect score of "5" for "exceptional performance" on an evaluation that noted the employee's role in dropping thousands of policyholders and avoiding nearly $10 million worth of medical care.
WellPoint's Blue Cross of California subsidiary and two other insurers saved more than $300 million in medical claims by canceling more than 20,000 sick policyholders over a five-year period, the House committee said.
What is the bottom line on all this? The bottom line is that it is all about the bottom line for insurance companies. They will gladly take your premiums, but when it comes time to honor their obligations, they will find a way out of them. It is a truly disgusting practice, but I believe it to be systematic of how things in our country operate in our modern age. It becomes increasingly difficult to believe that the rich and powerful don't run this country in a manner that only fosters their own interests. I firmly believe that the average citizen has no say in our government anymore.
If the only way we compared the two systems – U.S. versus Canada – was with statistics, there is a clear victor. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to dispute the fact that Canada spends less money on health care to get better outcomes.
Yet, the debate rages on. Indeed, it has reached a fever pitch since President Barack Obama took office, with Americans either dreading or hoping for the dawn of a single-payer health care system. Opponents of such a system cite Canada as the best example of what not to do, while proponents laud that very same Canadian system as the answer to all of America’s health care problems…
As America comes to grips with the reality that changes are desperately needed within its health care infrastructure, it might prove useful to first debunk some myths about the Canadian system.
Myth: Taxes in Canada are extremely high, mostly because of national health care.
In actuality, taxes are nearly equal on both sides of the border. Overall, Canada’s taxes are slightly higher than those in the U.S. However, Canadians are afforded many benefits for their tax dollars, even beyond health care (e.g., tax credits, family allowance, cheaper higher education), so the end result is a wash. At the end of the day, the average after-tax income of Canadian workers is equal to about 82 percent of their gross pay. In the U.S., that average is 81.9 percent.
Myth: Canada’s health care system is a cumbersome bureaucracy.
The U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead. Think about it. It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn’t when everybody is covered.
Source: Denver Post
Not so incidentally, single-payer systems run by the U.S. government can approach Canadian efficiency. Medicare and Social Security run at less than 3% overhead.
Myth: The Canadian system is significantly more expensive than that of the U.S.
Ten percent of Canada’s GDP is spent on health care for 100 percent of the population. The U.S. spends 17 percent of its GDP but 15 percent of its population has no coverage whatsoever and millions of others have inadequate coverage. In essence, the U.S. system is considerably more expensive than Canada’s. Part of the reason for this is uninsured and underinsured people in the U.S. still get sick and eventually seek care. People who cannot afford care wait until advanced stages of an illness to see a doctor and then do so through emergency rooms, which cost considerably more than primary care services.
What the American taxpayer may not realize is that such care costs about $45 billion per year, and someone has to pay it. This is why insurance premiums increase every year for insured patients while co-pays and deductibles also rise rapidly.
Myth: Canada’s government decides who gets health care and when they get it.
While HMOs and other private medical insurers in the U.S. do indeed make such decisions, the only people in Canada to do so are physicians. In Canada, the government has absolutely no say in who gets care or how they get it. Medical decisions are left entirely up to doctors, as they should be.
I am the last person to ever defend Canada on anything. In fact, for some unknown and unwarranted reason, I hate Canada. Go ahead and blame South Park if you want, but that isn't the case. I will be the first to say that the healthcare system is better than what we have in the United States. It CERTAINLY isn't perfect, but I am saying that it is better than what we currently have.
For some perspective, it's important to understand that I hate the medical industry. I loathe going to the Dr. unless I am about ready to keel over. I had an interesting discussion recently with a friend in Thailand (originally from the U.S.) where we discussed this issue rather heatedly. I came to be of the opinion that unless you have to deal with the medical industry in a serious capacity (ie. some life-saving/changing/etc. surgery), then you can't truly see how broken our system is. I think that once you have that perspective, you can then toss aside any preconceptions you may have and begin to truly wrap your head around the issues at hand.
The problem with Washington is that it is controlled by special interest groups. They are entrenched in the fabric and operations of this country. What upsets me about all of this is that it prevents (at worst) - hampers (at best) - any sort of reform to the operations of the government. A government that is clearly in need of changes to its modus operandi.
The latest example of all of this comes from Obama's recent meeting with the American Medical Association. He was at the meeting to promote his health care reform initiative. On one side, there was the AMA, representing 200,000 doctors in America. They want limits on how much money a patient can sue them for for medical malpractice. Doctor's pay an exhorbitant amount of money for malpractice insurance, and naturally, they would like that lowered. Obama wasn't necessarily keen on that idea, and when he expressed such:
Obama and the AMA
"I want to be honest with you. I'm not advocating caps on malpractice awards," the president said, greeted by a smattering of boos, a remarkable public response to a popular president accustomed to cheering audiences.
The group actually booed him. While I find it remarkable that a group consisting of 0.07% of the population (roughly-considering rough total pop. estimates) can get an audience with the President (groups like that certainly donate heavily...), I must admit that it takes some large cojones to push forward your interests at the expense of those of the populace. It is this discourse however, that makes this country great. Understand that I feel that they pay too much for insurance as well. I feel that the real problem lies with the insurance companies however.
On the other side, we have the scums of the earth. I am sorry, I mean trial lawyers. Though he offered no support for limiting lawsuits, Obama raised the antennae of trial lawyers' groups just by mentioning the issue. These plagues upon modern societies had issues with anything that may potentially close the vent on their bread and butter. To be fair, I hate lawyers, so it is impossible for me to be impartial in this. I can't stand groups that segregate themselves from society, protect themselves, and change the laws of this country in such a way as to force their existence (Christ, have you read something as "simple" as a website terms of service? Something that should be 3 paragraphs, but is actually 48 pages of fine print!?)
The Center for Justice and Democracy, which says it advocates for injured consumers, attorneys and others, released a letter to Obama signed by 64 survivors of medical malpractice saying they were "extremely concerned that the rights of medical malpractice patients may be stripped away as part of your national health care proposal."
"The notion that 'defensive medicine' is leading to higher health care costs is not supported by empirical data or academic literature," Les Weisbrod, president of the American Association for Justice, the main lobby for trial lawyers.
I can't stand that reform is being halted (not even reform that I completely agree with, mind you) by special interest groups. Change needs to happen. I am not saying that Obama's plan is some cure-all, in fact I most certainly don't think that,- but the bottom line is that something has to be done. And his something is better than the status quo. I don't want the same things out of Washington. Obama instilled a sense that change is on the horizon, in Americans. I don't want it squandered by the entrenched bureaucracy.
