It's starting to get embarrassing...you know, all that bravado we try to imagine Americans having, standing up to the British and all to achieve our independence. We're running scared and it's not working, we're dying that infamous thousand deaths (as opposed to one) that cowards die.
As the biggest stakeholders in an effective health care system, we have been cowed, managed, and beaten down by the THREAT of not having health insurance at all, not having access to doctors at all, not being "insurable."
The survey we haven't seen doesn't need to be performed. The biggest "satisfied" customers of insurance are those who belong to union-negotiated plans and those employed by the government. It is the power of the sheer number of customers that creates that power. However, we're afraid. We're afraid that the old guy with breathing problems next to us will raise our rates. We're afraid that we'll wait on the mythical "long lines" that Canada has as people waste away for their piece of the national health insurance pie. We're afraid that insurance companies won't want us.
The hysterical fear of some is compounded by the intense indifference of others. Young people assume there will be some insurance available for them.
Insurance companies that don't offer a product that helps pay for needed medical care at a reimbursement rate that actually provides the peace of mind that battling disease will not be worsened by battling health insurers, should be out of business. You'll probably see them go from one failure to the next and hop on the next bandwagon...long term care. They will do no better than they are doing now.
Solution requires that we stop being afraid, a doctor who says he/she can't afford to practice, then don't. Look at your plan, how many oncologists are available to you as participating providers? How many gynecologists? How many hematologists? Okay, now for the fun part, how many optometrists? Dietitians? Weight managers?
Doctors who want to charge sky's the limit, should know that backing universal health care as a means of financing their greed through the government pie is not going to work without lowering the cost of their services.
There's a fun part here as well...as insurers divulge that rate increases and premium dollars are more than 50% attributable to the outrageous cost increases in health care attributable to the greed of those white coated providers, finally physicians are saying who are they to judge our performance? That's what consumers who have been declined insurance have been asking for years with no help except the recitation of loopholes (we are not commenting on medical care just that we won't pay for it).
Listen, we're 34 according to Wikipedia (and 42nd according to other indices) in life expectancy, stop being afraid!
