Health insurance: Keep it Simple Today and Acknowledge the Problems before us instead of what could happen if we dare to change. As Obama takes office we will see more and more of the YOU BETTER WATCH OUT variety of article warning how our system will be "socialized" and how big gov'ment will take over if we expand Medicare type insurance to every citizen. Every time I read an article like that which warns consumers that our health services environment will CHANGE from "market-based" to politically based IF we dare to push for a change such as the "Medicare" type of change being pushed forward now, I first become angry.
After twenty years of dealing with insurers from the early days of HMO's promising to "regulate" themselves to the current days of health insurers who spend less than $.50 of every premium dollar paid by consumers on health services for those consumers as they support their own salaries, businesses and lobbying efforts in order to preserve and expand their power in determining public policy about health services even as the environment of actual insurance, you know, the product that helps people pay for health services IN THE EVENT they get sick becomes worse and worse in terms of less coverage for more money. I also become angry when I read about physicians threatening not to take on Medicare patients if they don't get their pay increases and low and behold their millions of dollars spent on lobbying work and their pay raises get included in the latest Medicare bill. I also feel myself get angry at how frightened we are that for twenty years consumers have bought and given into every threat by our health services industry that our care will suffer or will be unavailable or will be unaffordable if we don't give into demands made by industry stakeholders.
This is not a case of don't fix what ain't broke, it's broke and it's getting worse. So what are the worries of a "political" angle to health services? Truly there are a couple. The first is that the huge group of civil servants at federal and state and local levels who enjoy benefits packages that are so far superior to the common citizen will fail to be able to prioritize the importance of specific changes that are most urgent to citizens so that we'll hear about technology developments and preventive services rather than the devastating financial and longevity effects of "insurance" that does not effectively "insure" leaving premium paying individuals up a creek if they get sick.
Second, government and politics is about numbers and concerns about capturing the greatest NUMBER of citizens should NEVER be considered without an EQUAL consideration of the QUALITY of the insurance being made available to citizens. Bad insurance looks good politically because we cut the number of uninsured, but it does not solve the misery caused by our current environment where insurance does so poorly at its single task: Helping people pay for cost of needed medical services IF a person becomes sick.
Finally, we run the real risk of hasty legislation like the bailout that throws money, creates MORE government jobs and further expands bureaucracy with little to no improvement "trickling down" to common citizens. However, this does not excuse the scare tactics employed by those like the commenter above who warns that YOU BETTER WATCH OUT, THINGS WILL GET WORSE IF WE TAMPER WITH OUR SYSTEM.
