Apparently the Democrats were in such a hurry to pass healthcare reform, they forgot to actually change anything. All they did was make it illegal to self insure. Dennis Kucinich released a statement on his website today
“Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. They are driving up the cost of health care. Because their massive bureaucracy avoids paying bills so effectively, they force hospitals and doctors to hire their own bureaucracy to fight the insurance companies to avoid getting stuck with an unfair share of the bills. The result is that since 1970, the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of administrators has increased by 3000%. It is no wonder that 31 cents of every health care dollar goes to administrative costs, not toward providing care. Even those with insurance are at risk. The single biggest cause of bankruptcies in the U.S. is health insurance policies that do not cover you when you get sick.
Well surely his party would be doing something to address this. After all, they passed healthcare reform didn’t they?
“But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care. In H.R. 3962, the government is requiring at least 21 million Americans to buy private health insurance from the very industry that causes costs to be so high, which will result in at least $70 billion in new annual revenue, much of which is coming from taxpayers. This inevitably will lead to even more costs, more subsidies, and higher profits for insurance companies — a bailout under a blue cross.
While I personally think the solution is in the private market, not in the government’s hands. Congress disagrees, but they don’t seem to be doing any sort of actual reform with the bill. This bill simply feeds the problem. The problem that exists with the insurance industries constant search for a reason to deny your legitimate claim. Wouldn’t it be better if they had passed a bill that required all health insurers to charge the full amount of expected future health expenses in their premiums and that all those future expenses are guaranteed to be covered and that health insurance companies had to offer insurance to everyone, even if at a greater cost for higher risk individuals? It would greatly lessen the risk of bankruptcy associated with catastrophic illness. That is reform.
A lot of people wanted the full bill to pass, but they forgot that this is what they were inevitably doomed to receive because the ones who they voted for convinced them to vote for them on the dime of health insurance companies. The silver lining of this bill is that we don’t have to worry that those insurance companies may have to lay off their employees.
