Quote:
Originally Posted by MMM
The problem we have in America is that we have a gigantic private health care insurance industry.
I think Americans reading this need to take this into serious consideration.
We have a gigantic private heath care industry.
This industry does not exist in any other industrial country in the world.
Not in Japan, England, France, Canada, Germany...the list goes on.
Only in the US.
Legislation destroying this unneeded industry is obviously unpopular for those that work in it...so what do they do? They make their industry as indestructible as possible by appealing to US elected officials.
The Supreme Court of the US has recently ruled that Corporate Money = Free Speech, so we cannot expect an end to this ridiculous situation.
But thankfully we are moving in the right direction. Perfect? No. Better? Yes.
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Many countries have a giant private health care industry. See the below link.
Health care system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
To your point though, the United States is alone among developed nations in not having a universal health care system. Health care in the U.S. does, however, have significant publicly funded components. Medicare covers the elderly and disabled with a historical work record, Medicaid is available for some, but not all of the poor, and the State Children Health Insurance Program covers children of low-income families. The Veterans Health Administration directly provides health care to U.S. military veterans through a nationwide network of government hospitals; while active duty service members, retired service members and their dependents are eligible for benefits through TRICARE.
Together, these tax-financed programs cover 27.8% of the population and make the government the largest health insurer in the nation.
Your words: "unneeded industry"
Wrong.
So the "unneeded industry", Private Health Insurance, should be replaced with "government run Health Insurance" ONLY?
Destroying the private health insurance industry is not the answer, which is the path this legislation is taking us on. At the same time the U.S. is writing themselves IOUs on a bill that initial CBO evaluation BEFORE the Docfix amendments and double counting hasn't been added in, and that obviously has fuzzy math (See my previous post in this thread with CNN Video on CBO).
Again all for reform, but this bill isn't right in many ways, unsustainable, and will eventually break the working parts of the system. It doesn't address the root cause of the problem, not private health insurance companies, but health care costs.
You can not reshape the American system to be like the countries you write of without completely gutting the private and public insurance existing systems. Its simply not possible. Work with what you got without a trillion dollar price tag that still doesn't cover everyone, is unsustainable, and will eventually break not only the existing system, but also slowly losing what differs America from the rest of the world.
Before today, corporations and unions had to set up political action committees, filed separately with the IRS, that would receive donations; and they did. Unions and corporations spend millions of dollars on elections. Now however, the accounting firewall is gone, and big retail or the Service Employees International Union, for instance, can spend their corporate money directly on candidates.
I still didn't see how this bill helps you out personally in your struggling condition as you mentioned. As far as I can tell, this hurts small business and doesn't address the cost of personal premiums fees.