Nothing. PNHP's Oliver Fein:
Insurance companies play no constructive role in providing health care.
They do not give you a physical exam; they do not perform your surgery. What they do instead is fight claims, issue denials and screen out the sick, diverting huge sums away from much-needed care.
The savings rendered by cutting out private insurance companies and establishing a single-payer plan would be sufficient to cover everyone who lacks insurance now and to upgrade insurance for everyone else.
Our nation spends twice as much per person on health care as other industrialized countries do, but our health outcomes are significantly worse.
What gives? How can we spend more and get less than the rest of the world? The answer is that most of these countries have taken a fundamental step that we haven't: the elimination of U.S.-style, for- profit private health insurance.
We should take that step. Obama should have proposed a single-payer plan in the first place. Not that the path would have been politically easy. But single payer would have been easier to defend than the expensive, overly bureaucratic, patchwork mess that he is trying to sell to the American public.
"Easier to defend" to the public, perhaps. But not to the people who own Versailles
and both parties.
- lambert's blog
- Login or register to post comments
- 1+[encrypted]+#b94+
Printer-friendly version
Front page
Comments
My father was in government health care for 15 years...
got pretty high up in the hierarchy, too.
He says there are two systems that would meet Obama's three criteria (bear with me, he was a huuuuuge Obama supporter):
1) Hillarycare from the 90's (which he says would probably have worked, but since it was never tried, was a bit of a question mark in his mind); and
2) Medicare for All.
He says that nothing else will work, and since he is an expert in government-funded healthcare systems, I believe him. And since we don't have a "HRC 676" (Hillarycare for All) bill in Congress, I know what I'm backing.
Never vote for people who hate you.
ERA Now!
The Widdershins
Sorry, meant to add this...
in my father's day, insurance companies were merely claims processors. Part of his job was forcing them to adhere to government guidelines regarding how much to charge Medicare for that service.
Never vote for people who hate you.
ERA Now!
The Widdershins
my dad was an obama supporter too
and has an economics degree, and worked in the insurance industry before he retired. his opinion is that it's so badly broken as to not be worth trying to fix, and that medicare for all is the only way left to go.
The more I think about it, the more I'm glad Weiner didn't get
to offer his amendment. I think it would have served to act as a safety valve: a chance for single-payer supporters to see their goals of a floor vote realized, only to have that floor vote fail, dissuading them from continued action by convincing them Congress could never be made to pass single-payer.
Since single-payer is now, again, the idea that has never been voted on, the pressure will continue to build unchecked. Hopefully, there will be no more safety valve attempts, and the pressure will eventually burst the vat, so to speak.
Nothing is true; everything is permitted.
I take the opposite view
When push came to shove it would have been nice to see where the Dems who are supposedly on "our" side really stand. There are way too many instances of Dems saying nice things but failing to deliver that I see Weiner as have been nothing more than a source of cover. Say nice things but don't do shit about it. It's like compassionate conservative in practice: I hear what you are saying, and agree with what you need, but I ain't gonna do shit about it. Far too many people are buying the game that both the Dems and GOP play where each side panders rhetorically to their base, but they deliver only to the corporate leaders. Not getting them on the record means not forcing them to practice what they preach. That, in turn, continues to give hope to lefties that the Dems really give a shit when they don't. Institutionally, they don't really give a shit.
Only tyrants rig elections.
The solution is to bypass the Democrats and the Republicans.
Hence all the talk around here lately of a third party. I think the political conditions are ripe for one.
Nothing is true; everything is permitted.