Comments on: Is Obama’s Plan A Backdoor Attempt At Single Payer Healthcare?

By: chris

chris — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:07:52 +0000

It has come to this point because yea the private companies need profit to stay in business but not multimillion dollar profit where the money goes to CEO’s pockets and not on patient care, lowering costs which are always rising and offering better services. There is no type of health insurance that everyone can get as there is too much money in health insurance and no restrictions big restrictions on how they operate due to the amount money that is spent in the industry with 2.26 trillion spent in 2007. If there was health care reform and this gives competition against the health insurance companies then hopefully more people will be insurance and able to receive health care.

By: Kristin

Kristin — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 01:07:15 +0000

HMO’s were the brainchild of Ted Kennedy. Funny how this new bill is supposed to be in his honor. The man who drove drunk and killed a young woman, and got away with it!

By: rev

rev — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:37:21 +0000

Currently, I greatly enjoy my ’socialized’ police, schools, libraries, roads, fire department, and teachers. I would love to see the for-profit HMO’s go away. They were only instituted under Nixon because he knew that his conservative cronies would make tons of money by injecting themselves between the patient and doctor, and thus take a cut of our money. Canada’s health care system, as well as several others in the world, are superior to our own bloated system. I sincerely hope to see single payer health care in my lifetime. And if they were to legalize marijuana and tax it, this income would easily pay for health care for all.

By: mtb

mtb — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:25:54 +0000

Real insurance WAS based on risk (hence the term “risk-pool”). That business model is gone. Insurance companies are now simple financial transfer and investment companies. Risk pools were much lower margin…no multimillion bonus packages for execs. They did not have investors expecting huge growth in stock value. Insurance companies collect subscription fees and pay claims, in order to experience increasing profits, they must increase fees and reduce payments. Managed care was created to recycle payments back into the system as another fee (I know, I was there as this came into being and was adopted by every company…it looked like a clever way to recapture revenue, but we weren’t thinking about health). The business plan became very simple: capture fees, invest in the highest-yeilding (and, of course riskiest) assets we could, claiming those investments as “reserves” against future claims, and then deny or delay payment of those claims, and blame the doctors for jacking up their prices (because we always paid less than the claim).
Health Insurance is a diversion from the real issue of health care. It diverts money and attention from medicine…because that is precisely the business insurers are in.