No Mandate for Private Services

I keep hearing folks say that it is unconstitutional for the United States Government to mandate that we, the American people, purchase the services of a private business. Several states’ Attorneys General have promised to sue the Federal Government if the insurance reform bill in front of the House of Representatives passes.

OK, I have a fix, at least for the mandate part. How about if we do not insist that everyone buy health insurance. How about if, instead, we say the following:

You, as an American Citizen, do not have to maintain Health Coverage on yourself. But if you opt to not carry coverage, and something happens to you, such as an unforeseen illness or injury, then you will be required to pay cash, up front, out of your own pocket or forgo any treatment for said illness or injury.

You see, right now, if you do not have coverage and something happens, you can go to a public hospital, get treatment, and simply not pay the bill. That debt then reverts to the rest of us, and our tax dollars pay for your treatment. You will have to be required to pay cash up front because we cannot take the chance that you will simply SAY that you will pay on an installment plan and then just disappear or allow your payments to lapse.

So you pay up front or you simply fix the problem yourself. That way we all can be sure that those of us who have insurance aren’t being double billed.

Health care, some more.

There seems to be a lot of talk about insurance coverage portability. This talk comes from the same folks who are adamantly against any kind of single-payer coverage, let alone the so-called public option. I have to say, the idea of portability WITHOUT a single-payer plan is just smoke. If you work for a company that provides you with coverage from Humana, and you leave that job to work for a company that uses Humana, then should be able to reasonably expect to get some kind of portability. You don’t have it now. If the company you work for has 2000 employees and the company you move to only has 50, you will pay more for the same coverage, even though it is from the same company. They have some kind of convoluted explanation for why this is, but you have to live in a fantasy world to begin to believe it. If you, however, move to a company that uses Aetna for coverage, you cannot expect to be able to carry your same coverage with you. The two different insurance providers are not going to offer the same plans or the same prices. The only possible way we can remove the ties between our insurance coverage and our jobs is to go with a single-payer plan, like most of the rest of the industrialized world has.
Consider, also, that the only real way to provide health care fairly, as a right, is to do away with the for-profit health insurance companies. I know, that would put a lot of people out of business. But, I don't remember anyone crying when Texas Instruments invented the calculator and put numerous abacus companies out of business. How do we pay for it? I'm glad you asked. My family pays just over 5 thousand dollars a year to my health insurance provider. It then pays out dividends to its shareholders, 18 million dollars a year to its CEO, and who knows how much more to the rest of its executives. Far far more than any government worker makes, you can be sure. Then, to ensure that their bottom line is nice and healthy, they deny me services like the (apparently) recreational colonoscopy my doctor wanted me to have.
If we take that 5 grand a year and instead pay it to the federal health care plan, we can probably push a lot of that 5k back into my bank account. There are no government employees pulling down an 18 mil a year salary. Nor are there any making anywhere near what probably the top 20 execs at just my insurance company make.
If my insurance provider can make the kind of profit required to justify the salary of its top executives by charging me 5000 a year, then I have to assume that the government can provide me with coverage for far less. Of course, it would also require that they hire honest people to administer. Maybe I am living a fantasy, too.
Some will say that this reeks of socialism. Yes, it does. So do public schools and hospitals, police forces, fire departments, military, and any number of other benefits we have that most of us pay for and all of us use.

Get your own Health Insurance

It seems awful strange to me that the same people in the media who are gung-ho about spending billions of US tax dollars to obtain the freedom of the Iraqi people (people, by the way, who have never paid a dime in US tax) are the same people who are viciously against spending our tax dollars to ensure the health of every American. These same people are the ones who told all of us, back in 2002, that if we were not on board with the invasion of Iraq that we were un-American. That if we disagreed with President Dick Cheney’s plan to depose Saddam Hussein we were terrorist sympathizers, and possibly terrorists and traitors ourselves. I would like to remind everyone that on 9-11-2001, Iraq did not attack us.

I would also like to remind everyone that there are a lot of Americans with inadequate or zero health coverage. Either due to the fact that their employer does not offer it, or because they cannot afford what their employer offers. On top of that, there are uncounted people slogging through every day in a job they hate just so they can have health insurance. THAT’s gotta be good for your health.

Of course, one can go out on an individual basis and get insurance, but it is pricey. What I found was $644.00 a month for a family of three. The deductible is $2500.00 per person. That is the middle of the road one. You can get it for about fifty bucks a month cheaper if you want to jump that deductible up past ten grand. You can drop the deductible too, but the monthly payment begins to rival Bernard Madoff’s monthly rent.

I have also heard people say that you can go to the emergency room if you don’t have insurance. You certainly can. Let us look at my case. I had epididymitis. Don’t ask me what it is, I haven’t really a clue. It is definitely painful, in an area you do NOT want painful. At least if you are a guy. Which I am.

What it is not is life threatening. Or so they said, anyway. Seemed pretty threatening to me, considering where it was painful. Since that is the case, I could have gone to an ER and sat for three days while they got around to looking at me. Once they discovered that I had no insurance and was unable to pay, they would have sent me on my way. The only way an ER is bound to treat an uninsured person is if that person’s life is in imminent danger. And even at that, all they really HAVE to do is stabilize.

Funnier (strange, not ha-ha), I work with a guy who, in the last year, had a pacemaker installed, paid for by Medicare. He is staunchly against the government being involved in health care. It seems that there is not a lot of thinking going on there.

I have noticed that a lot of the folks against any kind of reform have what they believe to be good insurance. I say they believe to be because that may just be the case. A lot of people believe they have good coverage right up until the point they have to use it. Then that coverage becomes either stunted or nonexistent, depending on the provider’s policy of dumping undesirable patients.

By the way, I do have insurance, the previous example was just for example purposes. My doctor wanted me to have a couple of tests run to be certain of what was wrong with me. My insurance company refused, so my doctor went to plan b: throw various pharmaceuticals at it and hope one takes. Nice.

This for six thousand bucks a year.

At least it wasn't some government flunkie telling me no.