"A study reported in The American Journal of Medicine this month found that 62 percent of American bankruptcies are linked to medical bills. These medical bankruptcies had increased nearly 50 percent in just six years. Astonishingly, 78 percent of these poeple actually had health insurance, but the gaps and inadequacies left them unprotected when they were hit by devastating bills."
"A 2004 study by the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, found that lack of health insurance causes 18,000 unnecessary deaths a year. That's one person slipping through the cracks and dying every half an hour."
—Nicholas D. Kristof in The New York Times, Sunday Aug. 30, 2009
[Kristof has always been a reasoned columnist, focusing more on realities than opinions. Click here to read a more recent and totally lucid and convincing column on the healthcare debate.]
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9 comments:
why not just make all insurance companies a utility
then regulate the hell out of them? like the power companies used to be regulated...
remember when PEPCO bills were low
and stock-holders and CEO's still got dividends and bonuses
and the gov't was not visible..
and "we-the-people"
borrowed and spent (on credit) against our future?
well here we are:
it's "pay-back" time
for all the gimmes and
greed (stealing)
(I still got some US GOVT ball point pens from 1960!
Very few people dispute that the US health care system needs attention. But something like 75-80% of Americans are satisfied with their coverage and distrustful of the government's ability to fix anything.Most would like to see the cost come down. There are a number of free market changes that would positively impact the system including: wide open competition amongst insurance companies, elimination of costly government mandates, eliminate government control of payments to medical personnel, tort reform, encouragement of high deductable and cheap insurance for those who want it, tax deductable medical savings accounts etc.,etc.
heck "wide open competition" lowers prices? like when that
moron judge ruled to break up Ma Bell?
and
"free market systeM" when and where was/is that?
ever been to an annual meeting of, say
any gropup of companys like all the insuarance companies meet and ever notice how prices are pretty much fixed within a narrow range?
the only things competition does is drive the independents out and consolidates product-lines so the output and prices can be fixed/raised!
the problem ain't with health care the problem is that the individual has opted out in favor of Big Brother
what's that old saying?
Garbage in
Garbage out
tort reform, you say? who's gonna get all them scum-sucking lawyers to go for this? ever hear of
http://www.alllaw.com/legal_organizations/
etc
Ed,
There are rules and penalties for price fixing including jail in the US. Now as for one of the largest group contributors to Democrats, the "scum sucking lawers", I agree it would be difficult to achieve with Pelosi/Reid/Obama in control.
Here is an update on Government run healthcare from our UK cousins across the pond.
Sentenced to death on the NHS
Patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help end their lives, leading doctors have warned.
By Kate Devlin, Medical Correspondent
Published: 10:00PM BST 02 Sep 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6127514/Sentenced-to-death-on-the-NHS.html
lets face it - in the health care industry, there are "death squads' ...
but in the unregulated style of the bush/cheney era, its a slow, insidious, and cruel death ... all underscored with a desire to profit from the misfortune of others ...
'death squads', in part, are the existing insurance companies who have the right to deny people coverage for pre-existing conditions, to drop you from coverage when there is personal economic crisis that prevent on-time payments, and the unaffordable rates they charge for coverage at a time when your health may be suffering and you may be trying to come to grips with catastrophic illness [and the truth is, whatever illness we have as we age puts us in touch with the 'big' issue] ...
and if these astroturf yoddlers at town hall meetings don't personally know someone who has fallen to bankruptcy at the hands of health care - they're lying - statistically its impossible not to be within a degree of separation - unless you've got your head up the bum of rightwing radio - and if they know and they still don't care, they're part of the squad and complicit in the heartless cruelty that is plaguing millions in this country ...
but its not only health care - its the easy money, quick profiting insurance companies that play on our fears and need for protectionism at any cost ...
it jus might be "bigger" or simpler than just "the health care system needs attention"
"health"-control the least of our problems.
though I am a-political
I can yet
"boogie" with the best-of-them!
study from which this
http://www.ellensplace.net/fascism.html
came has been around for a-while..
what's that old saying"
"what's past
is
prologue"
(now to watch "Red Nichols and the Five Pennies"
What the problem? It wasn't Obama as Hitler. It was Hitler criticising Obama. Socialists have no humor.
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