The Need for Healthcare Not Health Insurance

Why the Insurance Industry should be irrelevant on this Issue

Anyone who has read this blog is familiar with my background. Even though I write articles here, and try to add commentary on various other sites, my profession is in Manufacturing. My background originated within the Maintenance end of the industry. However, through the years, I have moved to the manufacture of finished goods. As a Manufacturing Supervisor, I am directly involved with the day to day operations of our facilities. Through the years I have seen, and been a part of, the changes in the way we build our products.

The other day, I was in a conversation with my counterpart, in the Maintenance Department. His name is Jim. He is a decent guy, down to earth and definitely has his own ways of getting things done. In our conversation, he pointed out to me, how complicated technology or innovation has actually made the way we do things today. For instance, we have a system that is run by a computer. This computer takes the data we feed it, distributes this data to the running parts of the equipment and turns the equipment on. Before the invention of the computer we would just turn a switch on. In other words, we have added another layer of activities to operate a mechanism that a simple “flip of a switch” used to handle. So now, we have an extra layer of troubleshooting, that must take place, along with additional materials and labor when, all we had was one simple switch just a few years ago.

Now I know you are asking yourself what this has to do with Healthcare and Health Insurance. I believe that Health Insurance has become that computer. Years ago, if you needed Healthcare, it was as simple as “flipping a switch” to obtain it. Once the advent of Health Insurance, we added a layer that now controls the Healthcare machine, not you or I as it used to be years ago. Please explain to me why Insurance Companies have to make a profit at the expense of the health of Americans? Oh, I understand they have to pay their bills and such but, what says they have to make a profit to the excesses they do today when their whole inception was to help in the provision of effective Healthcare to the citizenry. Not only do they feel they must make a profit but, sacrificing the lives of the average American to obtain those extra billion dollars for their executives, is now the norm? Then maybe Jim was on to something when he said technology or innovation has not made our lives easier.

I found the following article, from the Firedoglake Blog very enlightening when it comes to what is at stake for the Health Insurance Industry;

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/03/03/health-insurance-industrys-300-billion-victory-over-the-public-option/

Health Insurance Industry’s $300 Billion Victory Over the Public Option
By: Jon Walker Wednesday March 3, 2010 9:27 am
When Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and the entire Republican Senate caucus stepped up to kill the public option in the Senate, it is important to remember that the health insurance industry won a victory—a victory worth $300 billion. As Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) now try to crush attempts to revive the public option inside a reconciliation measure, they are battling to protect that extra $300 billion that will flow to AHIP as a result. The public option was never just a “sliver” as Obama tried to claim. It was about a fundamental moral right and the role of government. But what it was also about was a huge amount of money.
The CBO projects that the relatively weak public option–the one limited just to the exchange in the House health care bill–would secure roughly one-fifth of that market, equal to around 6 million people (PDF). The CBO concluded that, as a result of those 6 million customers, the public option will take in $298 billion (PDF) in direct premiums, exchange subsidies, and risk adjustment payments from 2013-2019. However, with the public option removed, but the individual mandate remaining, that $300 billion will instead go straight to the private insurance corporations’ books. If, like I personally suspect, the CBO slightly underestimated the popularity of the public option, and it manages to secure instead roughly a third of the customers on the exchange, that would be roughly $500 billion that the public option would take from the private insurance companies.
I often hear the argument that the public option was not important because only 2% of Americans would be using it. That’s true, but it is important to remember that roughly a third are currently insured by public programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Tricare. Of course, of the roughly half of Americans with private insurance, the bulk of them get there coverage through employer-provided, self-funded plans. Plans in which the employer bears the risk and holds the premiums. The insurance companies are only subcontracted to provide administrative functions. That 6 million people the public option was projected to cover would be a significant share of the potential market for private insurance companies to actually cover and noticeably expand the amount of money they would have earning float revenue.
It is important to remember the sheer scope of the private insurance companies victory if they stop health care reform from having even a relatively weak public option. It will be a victory that will provide them with an extra $300 billion of our money. No doubt some of that same money will be used in the future to fight efforts to enact real health care reform.

All of us here in the United States of America need access to affordable and comprehensive Healthcare. Not Healthcare Insurance. The Health Insurance Industry started as a level that helped to enhance the healthcare access but, now is hindering it. Sadly, the political system that is admired around the world is being used and abused as a tool to obstruct, thwart and prevent the very device we are envied of.

Personally, I believe a Public Option, Single Payer or outright Medicare for all, is the only way, we as a nation, can ensure our citizenry will have the best Healthcare access in the world. Relieving American businesses, of the burden of Healthcare provision, for its employees would make our labor work force second to none in quantity, quality and affordability when competing with the Global Markets. By having one giant pool that business and the public alike, pay into, would help control costs while providing Healthcare for every American citizen. I fail to understand why American Businesses do not stand up against the Heath Insurance Industry and their Lobbyists to demand this competitive edge. But, I guess so many people are in bed together, for nothing more than the almighty dollar and political gain that caring about a human life comes second. Unless, of course, you rant about wanting your country back from a black president, (no racial intention there, right?) you cheat on your spouse while waving your Bible proclaiming pro-life as you support the death sentence. Life in the womb must be more important than outside, huh? WOW! I think I just came up with the topic for a future article. Hhmm…

That’s How I See It.