Whatever, Dood. Mandatory insurance plans aren’t “progressive.” As I argued before, it makes little sense to bring us health care “reform” that only chains all of us into a system that is clearly not working. You just love how fair your car insurance is, don’t you? And you’re totally happy with insurance companies telling you what medical care you can have, over the objections of your doctor, right? So of course Hillary’s new plan will bring us a peachy keen and superprogressive Paradise, if we can all just agree that for-profit insurance companies provide the best health care imaginable.
I’m being a tad unfair, this diary is by a supporter and I haven’t read Hillary’s actual plan. But any plan that isn’t “universal single-payer nonprofit” isn’t good enough for me. Period. Edwards and others who want my support should take note.
Front page
Mandatory plans are bogus
Why should I be forced to buy insurance and pay for their overhead? It’s cheaper to pay for everything than it is to pay for all the paper shufflers who are in the business of denying sick people care!
That’s why Medicare for all is the best solution. For patients, and for doctors.
Edwards’s plan, which at least pits no-overhead Medicare-style coverage against high-overhead, care-denying private plans, is second best.
HillaryCare shows that she’s unwilling to fight the insurance companies, unlike Edwards. That’s why she ’s a Democrat The Beltway Can Love.
We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan
The Edwards vid
I put up the Edwards vid in the sidebar because he shows very clearly what Hillary is unwilling to do, and also because Leah and I were talking about something similar….
I hope nobody objects, or construes as an endorsement?
We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan
Insurance is just not the model for health care
As CD and lambert and everybody else not actively employed by the insurance industry understands, they really do exist only to say “no,” or “wait” or “pay us now AND pay us later” and generally make life miserable for everyone involved.
The notion of “health insurance” was devised after all in the 1940s—a time when “medical care” was nothing remotely like it is today. Hell, antibiotics hadn’t even been invented yet, and it was still far from uncommon to pay for a doctor visit with a chicken or a bag of potatoes. “Doctor” was not a line of work you went into with the expectation of becoming wealthy.
Sure there needs to be a level of standards imposed. Some doctors and other medical providers are, alas, crooks, and will bill for services not needed, not done right or not done at all. These must be policed against.
And it’s time to talk about rationing of a rational sort. We have rationing of healthcare today, it’s just done by standards of wealth rather than health.
I have never met anybody in my life who says “I sure hope I spend my last several years or decades in a nursing home with my mind and memory shot to hell. I want to be treated with every antibiotic known to man to be kept alive as long as possible in that condition.” And yet we do it as long as the money holds out despite the misery of the patient and family if any.
Of course that’s one of the easy ones. What do we do about younger people with debilitating/life threatening conditions—where’s the cutoff line for hugely expensive treatments that will only buy another year or month or day? That one’s gonna be tricky to solve, indeed may never get to a state of absolute equality irrespective of income. There are always bribes.
But it’s nice to see Edwards still out ahead of the curve. It may be Obama who shoves Hillary out of the insurance circle though if he keeps on talking the way he has recently.
What Edwards said
AP:
And shorter Xan:
“Today, health care is rationed: By wealth.”
We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan
Mrs. Clinton is a fucking coward, at BEST!
She truckles beseechingly, shamelessly, and endlessly to the Insurance Industry, Rupert Murdoch, and the Chimperor and his minions.
This morning I heard her interviewed on an NPR program called Latino USA. The hostess asked Mrs.C if, since she thought the idea of a fence was a good idea for the southern border, shouldn’t she also support a border fence with Canada.
The bitch waffled more than the cellulite in her bulging tuchas.