Health Care II

To accomplish anything politically you must have a villain. Justified or not, you need the American people to hate someone, some group, some company or some industry. Bush had Sadam, Reagan had the federal government and the current democrats have the health insurance industry. (It used to be the oil companies but as prices came down the anger subsided so did that political card.)

Here's some number:

Number of people in the United States - 306 million
Number Americans without health insurance - 47 million
Percentage of uninsured who are illegal - 20% * Do we want to pay for their insurance?
Percentage of uninsured making $50,000+ - 40% * These people are making a value judgement.
Percentage of uninsured eligible for Medicare - 30%

Leaves 10% or roughly 5 million Americans - The President and the democrats want to totally overhaul the entire health care industry to cover the 5 million Americans who don't have and cannot get health insurance. It makes more sense to target these Americans and find a way to provide them the coverage they need.

Some Heath Insurance Myths:

1. Insurance companies cancel policies when claims get excessive - By law, all health insurance policies are guaranteed renewable.

2. Insurance companies reject groups with excessive claims - By law, they cannot reject a group but can "rate up" but the max increase is around 2 times.

3. Insurance companies don't compete - Companies are constantly changing their models and rates to try to take business from other companies

I watched the Sunday news programs and it seems the theme that the proponents of this health insurance bill is "insurance companies discriminate against people with pre-existing condition." Let's set the record straight, the system does not work without excluding pre-existing conditions. Otherwise people could wait until they got sick to buy coverage. That would be like buying insurance after an accident or after your house burns down. In addition, discrimination is what insurance do! They put people in discriminate groups so they can assign the proper rate. Otherwise everyone pays the same rate and their is no incentive to act responsible. If they did not, the person with 3 DUIs pays the same as the perfect driver, the person with a brick home next to a fire hydrant pays the same as the wooden shack in the middle of the woods or the 21 year old healthy man pays the same as the 85 year old diabetic smoker. If that was the case the 21 year old would not buy the coverage and the system does not work. A better solution would be to count both group AND individual health insurance policies towards the continuity of coverage. If someone has maintained coverage then no pre-existing exclusion would apply. If the individual had coverage prior to illness through any policy, the pre-existing condition clause would not apply. This way they could not buy coverage after the illness was present.

If you really want to honestly address the problems in the health care industry you need to look at ALL the problems. I will admit that there are problems but, just as the the mortgage crisis, there is more than one problem and they all need to be addressed. Tort reform must be part of any health care reform in the U.S. Either the medical malpractice rates are driven up or the provider practices defensive medicine and runs excessive tests to cover themselves due to excessive lawsuits. Juries can feel for the loss by the patient, see a big bad insurance company with unlimited funds on the other side and find for the patient regardless of the facts. To ignore this aspect of the problem is protecting the politician's supporters at the cost of all Americans.

When I listened to the President in his prime time press conference the one thing that caught my ear was when he said people "will get the care that works." What bothers me in this statement is who will determine what works for any given situation? Every case is different and doctors and hospitals use every bit of information they have to determine the correct course of action. Is this going to be taken out of the providers hands? Is the government going to say, "No, this is the procedure that needs to be followed"? I don't know about you but I hear the first step to rationing which is an inevitable outcome of this legislation in order to control the spiraling cost.

I am by no means an expert on Health Care reform and even if I read the bill I would not be able to understand everything it says but there are people out there who have read the bill and have interrupted the legal jargon and here is the link to the one such ANALYSIS. Here is also a link to the actual bill if you want to reference the analysis HR 3200. What I am confident of is that the President and democrats do plan on taking over the health care in this country over time. The current bill does not dissolve insurance companies but it does make it illegal to start a new plan from an insurance company after the bill is enacted. The President even stated this goal in an interview. I find this idea quite bold for a government who has never balanced the budget. I just never trust their number. When they originally passed Medicare, the actual costs were 600% higher than estimated. (I cannot confirm this figure)