Getting Real with HealthCare: Decapitate The Health Insurance Companies

Cut their heads off… What? Too gruesome?

I am talking about the 1300 Health Insurance Companies that are “for profit”. I am talking about killing health insurance companies, disbanding their entire reason for being… to suck the life and every dollar possible out of you, Mr and Mrs America. I know that some of you rednecks are going to town halls to fight Socialized medicine, even though your grandparents are living because of “Socialized medicine”.

One thing I wish you would do as you scream from the top of your lungs how you want the government to keep its hands off your Medicare, can you please put the few remaining untainted brain cells together and decide what you really want and not what the TV Fools are telling you what you want. This is no “right vs left” or “Dem vs Rep” or “Liberal vs Conservative” argument, anymore. It is simply a bunch of rednecks who have been brainwashed into believing that what is good enough for your Senator (and the president and other government officials) is not good enough for you. That what is good enough for your sweet little old grandmother is actually Socialism. That the VA benefits that your cousin gets after serving in that shithole we created called Iraq (which was no shithole before our intervention) is not good enough for every American. Or that the fire department or police force is just more Socialism.

Give me a break. How many rednecks are actually this stupid?

Stop listening to their lies and understand that they have “plants” in with the Biggest media outlets that give them little to no reason to explain this rationally to you. Instead they use scare tactics that border on ludicrous and the so-called Progressives fall for it just like the so-called Conservatives do. Like good little Sheople following their own tainted Shepherd.

From AfterDowningStreet quoting a portion of an article in FAIR by Kate Murphy:

While a recent New York Times/CBS poll (6/20/09) has found yet again that the majority of Americans believe the government would both provide better coverage and keep costs lower than private insurance companies, a single-payer plan as an option for healthcare reform continues to be underrepresented in the media (Extra!, 6/09). A single-payer plan would allow the delivery of healthcare to remain private, but the government would pay for it out of a single federal health insurance fund. Like Medicare or Canada’s healthcare program, it would cut out the middleman by bypassing private health insurance companies. But such companies are well-represented on the boards of directors of media conglomerates—a factor that may help explain the blackout of such a popular possibility for reform.

When a director from one company sits on the board of directors of another company, that’s known as an interlocking directorate. For example, directors of the New York Times Co. also sit on the boards of several other large companies, including Chevron, Verizon and Ticketmaster. These directors are expected to act in the best interest of each company they direct; when one of the corporations in question is a media company, this can pose a conflict. Would someone who sits on a media company’s board object to coverage that damages another company that board member directs? Extra! has pointed out this conflict in the past (e.g., 9–10/01), noting that “even if these board members do not attempt to influence coverage of their businesses, their presence likely suffices to make media executives think twice about covering certain stories.”

A recent FAIR study of nine major media corporations and their major outlets, Disney (ABC), General Electric (NBC), CBS, Time Warner (CNN, Time), News Corporation (Fox), New York Times Co., Washington Post Co. (Newsweek), Tribune Co. (Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times) and Gannett (USA Today) found connections to six different insurance companies. Five out of the nine media corporations studied shared a director with an insurance company; two insurance companies—Chubb and Berkshire Hathaway—were represented by more than one media corporation director.

Let’s break it down as simply as possible. There is one major middle man (Health Insurance Companies) that needs to go and it is the same one that is causing the greatest issues in this debate. But it isn’t JUST the health insurance crooks that benefit immensely from your illness. There are the integrated News/Health Insurance agencies called the interlocking directorates discussed above. And there is Big meds. Just follow the money:

PHARMA CEOS MAKE HUGE SALARIES

Unsilent Generation – One aspect of the health care reform battle which gets little attention is the cushy environment of the drug company executive. Fiercepharma blog, which tracks the industry not long ago ran a listing of all the dough these CEOs make.. . . Figures are for 2008.

1. Bill Weldon – Johnson & Johnson – $29.4M
2. Miles White – Abbott Laboratories – $28.3M
3. Bernard Poussot – Wyeth – $25M
4. Jim Cornelius – Bristol-Myers Squibb – $25M
5. Richard Clark – Merck – $19.9M
6. Robert Parkinson – Baxter International – $16M
7. David Vasella – Novartis – $15.1M
8. Jeffrey Kindler – Pfizer – $14.8M
9. Frank Baldino – Cephalon – $14.5M
10. John Lechleiter – Eli Lilly – $13M

The argument isn’t that we must simply get rid of the Health Insurance Monsters and their 10-25% profits or overhead. We must also begin to rethink the issues of healthcare being “for profit”. And, please, don’t argue that Doctors need to make a lot of money, I am not arguing that. I am talking about the “PROFIT” motive. Think about “profit” as suggested in this wiki article:

Accounting profit is the difference between price and the costs of bringing to market whatever it is that is accounted as an enterprise (whether by harvest, extraction, manufacture, or purchase) in terms of the component costs of delivered goods and/or services and any operating or other expenses.

The problem isn’t controlled salaries for Doctors, etc, (which is part of the “costs”), but is more related to the other egregious profits that are generated by Health Insurance companies and Medicine producers. To solve the problem, we need to work on various fronts, but Health Insurance is the quickest way to immediate savings. Single Payer is taking out that middle man and if you are going to argue from a “conservative” standpoint, you better add this term to your vocabulary. Truly, the most fiscally conservative solution is Single Payer, Not-for-profit healthcare. This is unarguable. AND, it is the most scoailly liberal stance (so all of you that are sufficed by the “Public Option” need to realize that you are simply feeding the beast).

President Obama and every Congressperson understands this, too. Their argument is that we need some hybrid as to not cause too much disruption, but let me explain that none of the “Public Option” plans will fix the problem. Why, because the problem is the “profit” motive. Of course, those people are getting their fair share of Health Insurance campaign donations, so they aren’t about to rock the boat (which is amazing since they get the same type of Tax payer paid coverage for themselves and their families… speaking of hypocritical). Let me add something that Russell at Single-Payer Action wrote that explains some of this quite well:

In Defense of Disruption

What do:

Rush Limbaugh

Barack Obama

Newt Gingrich

Nancy Pelosi

PhRMA

Families USA

America’s Health Insurance Plans

AARP

Harry Reid

Mitch McConnell

and Fox News

have in common?

They are all freaked out by single payer.

They have all bought the corporate line:

The market has a central place in health insurance.

In contrast, the majority of doctors.

The majority of nurses.

And the majority of the American people are not freaked out by single payer.

To the contrary.

They favor single payer.

They all agree — the market has no place in health insurance.

Single payer would eliminate the 1,300 private payers (insurance companies).

And replace them with one public single payer.

As Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine puts it:

Single payer is not only the best option.

It’s the only option that will control costs and cover everyone.

…

There really is only one real answer:

A single-payer system will not ration health care or put the government in charge of your doctor. The real rationing of health care is happening now, where tens of millions do not have any access to health care at all. With a single-payer system you will not have to worry about being out of network or at a preferred provider or any of the other hoops that the insurance industry has fashioned.

President Obama said in a speech six years ago that the only reason single-payer proponents should tolerate delay is “because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.” All that has happened, and nothing is happening. There are bills to bring a single-payer system in both the House and the Senate, but they get short shrift. Even though they would save money and cover everyone, there is no big-money constituency pushing for their passage. Instead, insurance industry lobbyists have thrown all they have at preventing real reform.

How can someone, or a family, be able to pursue life, liberty and happiness without health care? Can you imagine having a child and not having health coverage? Health care in this country should run similarly to how we pay for the fire department and police — there is no public option for these services with wealthy people having a private system that guarantees them better care. There is no reason for health care to be on a two-tier, separate-and-unequal regime.

A single-payer health care system is efficient and effective. Everybody in. Nobody out.

It’s time for real health care reform.

Well, there is always this solution (I have highlighted their work before here and here):

THE PUBLIC HEALTHCARE YOU DON’T HEAR ABOUT

Coburn Dukehart, NPR – some of what I saw at the county fairgrounds in Wise, Va., last month left me wordless.

For two-and-a-half days, about 800 doctors, nurses, dentists and optometrists treated 2,700 uninsured and underinsured people, most from Appalachia. No one was asked for an insurance card. There were no co-pays. And there were no bills.

A Tennessee-based group called Remote Area Medical, or RAM, arranged the volunteer help, brought in donated equipment and supplies and paid for everything else. . .

What: Health care providers saw 2,715 patients and performed 2,671 medical exams, 1,088 eye tests and 1,850 dental exams. They extracted 3,857 teeth and put in 1,628 fillings.

Who: Patients came from 16 states; 30 percent were repeat patients.

Of the patients, 51 percent are uninsured, 40.3 percent are on Medicaid or Medicare, and just 7.3 percent have employer or private insurance. Fewer than 1 percent of patients have dental or vision insurance.

Twenty-six percent of the people are employed, 40.6 are unemployed, 4.7 percent are retired and 4.8 percent are children.

Cost: The organizers paid about $250,000 out of pocket to run the event, and they provided an estimated $1.5 million worth of care. . .

Close to 4,000 teeth ended up in buckets. Some 20-year-olds had every tooth pulled. A 4-year-old had every tooth filled. Out of the hundreds treated, only 11 had dental insurance.

I arrived home from Virginia with a badly infected finger. It was swollen, red and painful. So I drove to the doctor, presented my insurance card and wrote a check for $15 for the co-pay. My doctor took a scalpel to the infection and sent me to the pharmacy for antibiotics. All that took an hour. . .

I have never felt so privileged to have a good job and good insurance and easy access to care without long drives and long nights and a yearlong wait.

The next RAM free clinic begins Tuesday in the Forum, the former basketball arena outside Los Angeles. Doctors, dentists and optometrists will work 12 hours a day for eight days. Organizers expect to treat 10,000 people.