Not Enough Health Care to Go Around

Read up, it's a good article.

Under the current system, the winners are the insurance companies. By shrinking coverage to healthier and wealthier people - by charging more for it - insurance companies are raking in huge profits, because these people will not get sick as often. What this is about is maximizing insurers' profits at the expense of consumers. Both healthy, rich people, who pay higher premiums for the same service, and sick, poor people, who receive no coverage, are worse off. If we socialize the risk by way of a universal health care plan, costs will dramatically fall and everyone will be insured. Under that system, the losers are the insurance companies. Boohoo.

Senile

John McCain:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain outlined a proposal on Thursday to revamp the U.S. health care system by providing Americans with a refundable $2,500 tax credit as an incentive to buy insurance.

What world is he living in where $2,500 a year is enough to provide you with health coverage? Is he out of his mind? If you're lucky that can cover you for a few months at most. All these "voluntary" programs do is ensure that people opt out, which leads to 1. premiums rising because of the greater risk inherent in a smaller coverage universe, and 2. more expensive emergency care because of less reliance on cheaper preventative care.

If he's trying to play to the frothing-at-the-mouth free market fundamentalists who run the party, he's got it all wrong. If that was the case his plan should be: cut taxes, give you more money to pay for health insurance.

Universal Health Insurance

I do not often write about personal experiences, but this is ridiculous.

It has been almost exactly one year since my last annual check-up, so I called my doctor to schedule one for this year. His secretary informed me that my health insurance only entitled me to a general check-up every two years.

I am not on Medicaid or Medicare. I am not self-employed and barely making enough to afford the cheapest insurance I can get my hands on. I work for one of the largest corporations in the U.S. - probably the world - and I know that I have some of the best health insurance that can be bought, yet why is it that it cannot afford to send me for an annual check-up? If I always had to receive an annual check-up as a child - they wouldn't let me into school/summer camp without one - why should it be any different now? I understand that young adults are at a lower risk of getting sick, but is it not more important to identify possible future complications early on and treat them before they become serious and more costly?

This is part of what is so dysfunctional about our healthcare system. By making it more difficult to give preventative care we increase the burden on the system and shift it exclusively to the end-user healthcare providers, hospitals and doctors. Meanwhile, healthcare plan providers escape with larger and larger profits. This is exactly what is so wrong about Bush's healthcare proposal and the reason it is DOA. It seeks to encourage this behavior by making it economically easier for young people to purchase low-quality, high-deductible healthcare.

Furthermore, I was informed that if I wanted to pay for the check-up out of pocket it would cost be approximately $500. I am lucky enough to be able to afford that if I needed to, but I realize that this is not the case for most of the country. It is unsurprising that a majority of the personal bankruptcies in the U.S. result from medical expenditures.

We are far past the time where such an antiquated and costly health system that lines the pockets of few while denying needed coverage to most can be justified. The best parts are universal healthcare can cover everyone and is cheaper. Let's get a move on.