http://www.opensecrets.org/lobbyists/clientsum.asp?year=2007&txtname=America%27s+Health+Insurance+Plans
is a cite to a website that reports dollar amounts paid by health insurance companies to lobbyists to act on their behalf in Washington.
More importantly, as we all buy into "empowerment" and "individual choice and responsibility," it's time for a reality check. Why are people buying into this marketing ploy that attempts to bring up the image of cowboys, forging their way to settle America? In reality, both the cowboys and the health insurers are teaching us a different lesson: Real action takes GROUPS.
While the insurers promote individual choice and responsibility and we go along with it, the health insurers hire people to represent their interests in Washington. Why? Because acting in a group is more effective than acting alone.
The AMA is a powerful group of doctors. Why?
Oh, and the cowboys? Yup, the first thing was that settlers tried to organize towns--form groups.
It is beyond time for consumers to realize that cutting consumers loose to individually shop around for their best deal is really DISempowering. If you really believe that you can get a better rate of INSURANCE for yourself than your employer representing hundreds if not thousands of employees, if you REALLY believe that preventive care will REPLACE your need for help paying for medical expenses, if you REALLY believe that the fraud in the government run medicare exceeds the fraud perpetrated against individual consumers daily, then you are hopelessly disconnected.
Task a day insurance: Do a little PRACTICE WHAT THEY PREACH assessment of your free market economy heroes. Start with the President: Is he paying for his own health insurance? Is he saving money so that he can responsibly have the US meet its financial obligations?
Then move on to your insurer: Are they sticking to their end of the bargain and covering RISK or are they collecting premiums to cover known costs of preventive care? If you need a life coach, get one. When people need medical care they need help paying for it, that is the only justification for the entire health insurance industry. Do not leave out your medical providers: If prevention is the answer to insurance costs, why not have better training for doctors so that they don't commit malpractice instead of entertaining their whining about the cost of malpractice insurance? If we are charged more because we are fat, old, smoke and otherwise unhealthy, then it's completely fair that they are charged more for being bad doctors. That will solve one expensively studied and debated issue: Limits on recovery for malpractice.
