It’s a fact: Health care insurers are in it for the money. Payouts for health-care are minimized to benefit stockholders. Insurance company CEOs and other top executives literally rake billions of dollars off the top, funds that are put into health care yet will not be providing health care. Vast amounts of money leak out the pipeline between consumers and health providers, diverted to middlemen who add absolutely nothing of value to the system. Even without fraud, which seems pretty unlikely in this era of fraud, the health insurance paradigm represents a massive and unnecessary burden on our health care system. Yet no side of the debate in Washington addresses this fat section of the health care costs pie chart. Instead, the debate seems centered around how can we force every citizen to contribute to this particular slice of the pie!
Washington makes an enormous error in calculating the cost of health care, and everyone seems to just follow along. The real cost of health care is the sum of payable invoices of health provider services actually provided, with the additional costs of medicines prescribed and health related equipment sold or rented. This sum is far lower than the cost of insuring every citizen, in the event that they might need (or will eventually need) health services. Yet the plan moving towards legislation will force the uninsured to purchase “acceptable insurance” or pay huge fines and even face jail time (up to a year!). No costs are lowered, in fact the drug companies get protection from both having to lower prices and from lawsuits in the event that their product causes damage. The proposed plans are universally so ridiculous, so obviously pandering to large corporate interests, so psychopathic and so sociologically wrong – it makes me sick!
Acceptable insurance should be no insurance, and no need for it. Insurance does not provide health care, it takes from it.