Pointing Out The Obvious: Health Insurance Companies Lack Competition.
In their fight for a good public option, Health Care for America Now has unleashed a new campaign that addresses the core problem of affordable health insurance coverage - namely, where are you gonna go? There's no competition:
“Health insurance companies are exempt from antitrust regulations, and as a result, a small number of very large companies have almost total control of the health insurance marketplace. These big insurers aren’t competing for our business by lowering costs. Instead, they are driving up prices as high as the market will bear because they know we have nowhere else to turn,” said Richard Kirsch, National Campaign Manager, Health Care for America Now.
“We need the choice of a public health insurance option in the marketplace to inject real competition. Private insurers will have to work a lot harder to get costs under control and put people’s health before their profits if they know consumers have a viable health insurance alternative that’s not beholden to Wall Street.”
In May, Health Care for America Now released a national report (pdf) and state-specific reports detailing the extreme consolidation in the health insurance marketplace, and during a conference call debuting the report, Senator Chuck Schumer said, “This is the starkest evidence yet that the private health care insurance market is in bad need of some healthy competition. A public health insurance option is critical to ensure the greatest amount of choice possible for consumers.”
They have no competition and that is precisely the way they want it to stay.
They should be in a different line of work altogether.
HR 676, single payer is the minimum.
Get the Wall Street Mafia out of health care.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
My main concern with single-payer is how it might effect R&D. Right now that's profit driven, and if such profits are not allowed or are limited by their employer (if their employer is the state), that would either stifle new development or merely allow the profiting to continue and shifting the profit driven motive from one medical delivery system to another, so only the name on the door changes.
The only thing that pops to my mind is allowing for generous tax cuts to those who make such discoveries.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
I could be wrong but the way I understand it is that the government grants finance 90% of the R$D now. The insurance and pharma companies just purchase production rights. That's the way I heard it anyway.
It's just that my understanding of single payer means our taxes would go to the government to basically do everything from run the hospitals, the doctors and the pharmacies with insurance companies either having nothing to do with it or selling niche policies.
Pharma companies often have their own researchers, although others like you said may just purchase the production rights. Although medical universities also do a lot of research, sometimes focusing more on that than educated new doctors. If one can claim one or more prize winning researchers on staff that attracts more private grants as well as public as you said.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
...would impact pharma R&D. It would just eliminate the health insurance industry. Pass a law limiting how much pharma can spend on marketing, and its all good.
pharmacology departments, which have little to do with Medical schools and the formation of medical doctors (for the most part).
In fact a big deal of bio technology and pharmacological research is carried out with public grants, since most pharma industry is focused on "profitable" drug research (read drugs to give old guys boners), and they won't touch other drug development unless the risk is taken out of the equation: i.e. they want the public coffers to pay for most of the initial research.
Big pharma could disappear tomorrow, and most people's lives would be unaffected: most recent drugs by big pharma are nothing but slight re-formulations of old drugs done in order to extend patent and copyrights. In fact you can get the generic for the old drug, that performs similarly to the "new" drug for orders of magnitude cheaper.
I joined two different issues and you didn't separate them.
1) - payment for health care. Currently there are employer based systems, the majority. There are private insurance self pay. There is Medicare which is Federal single payer for people 65 and older. There is Medicaid which is State single payer for the poor. And there is the VA but I will leave that until point 2.
A single payer Federal plan would join all of these together under one plan, much like Medicare. In fact some versions are called Medicare, or Medicare 'plus' for all. Single payer is way the Canadians do it.
2) - the delivery of health care. This currently is private except for the VA which is has its own facilities, though like everything in the government after Reagan there has some privatization. There is no proposal (except from me) to have the government run the health care system. This is way it is done in Britain and Finland, to name just two.
The government subsidizes research heavily both on a Federal and State level.
My concern is the profit motive in paying for health care does not work to advantage of the people who need the care. I will go one step farther and say that the profit motive in paying for health is barbarism.
I am out alone in saying that the profit motive in health care altogether should be eliminated but I will stick with it.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
Make private health insurance illegal.
Make
private healthinsurance illegal.Fixed that for ya!
but the ad needs to point out why there's no competition. It needs to state that McCarran-Ferguson needs to repealed. We need to call all our public servants in D.C and tell them to get behind repealing the Act.
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It's time to "Ma Bell 'Em". These Corporations have become a monopoly, of sorts. They've all but come out and admitted that no matter the outcome from Congress, IF these Corporations are left in tact, THEY WILL HIKE RATES!
ABOLISH THEM!
Universal Health Care covers EVERYONE for LESS!
Congress only pays $503/YEAR for Gold Plated Services paid for by We, The People.
All the while this same Congress actively seeks to keep We, The People from what we're already paying for.
All the while that same Congress seeks to reward Corporations for joining in the cause to DENY THE PEOPLE THEIR HEALTH CARE.
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Starve the WAR Beast...
... Feed Americans.
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if leading by example is a test of leadership , we're screwed . End the WOT , the WOD , cease empire building , cut the MIC by 75 % ( at least ) nationalize all natural resources , banks , health care , tax all corps who have offshored jobs and HG's to avoid paying taxes , in short if you want to live ( play ) here , you pay here ! . Untill that time its all BS .
every time you throw a little mud , you lose a little ground .
...would love to see govt "compete" with health insurance companies!
...get to see who's better. ...nothing like a "good fight" if you ask me! (as long as it's fair)...(giggles)
Govt cant seem to do shit but...let em try! (just don't force me)
I'll evaluate whether govt offers a good product (and decide myself) if I wanna join up with the govt plan (or go private)...
Govt offering some competition?
I'm skeptical but, sure! why not?, give gov't a shot at it!!?
p.s. ..I'm "pretending" (just for a minute) that gov't and corporations and banks and insurance companies have nothing to do with each other. ...it's temporary though.
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
the problem now is that YOU don't get to decide who you're "gonna' join up with."
You have to go with whatever insurance your employer provides, or whatever company will deign to take you on as a risk - at whatever price they say. And, if they don;t like whatever disease or problem you develop - they are the ones who decide if they'll pay for your care.
So, really....none of us currently really has a choice. Except to forgo health insurance altogether and take our chances ....or do like the Repugs, and just Pray.
"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of Stupidity" - Frank Leahy
with all you say.
There are so many regulations that only the big insurance companies can play. choices are way too limited (in so many ways)
Somethings gotta change...that's for sure...
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
Richard Kirsch, who said,
"Health insurance companies are exempt from antitrust regulations"
...and that actually, (the reality of the situation is)
Insurance companies are "exempt from the law" ...because of a regulation (that makes them thusly exempt).
It's a (libertarian thing) though ...you might not understand....
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
You seem to have a slipshod definition of libertarianism is that flip-flops from extreme corporatism as in the Paulists and the the views of the anarchist, whenever the mood hits you.
The problem is our so-called "anarchists" have the same type of slipshod definition for themselves.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
How can you possibly say that when Ron Paul wants to audit the fed?
"The Fed" is the "King" of all corporations...the most powerful bank in the world! (the place where the global corporations keep their money!)
I question your application of "extreme corporatism" to Libertarianism!
It just doesn't stick, when you consider that Ron Paul is Burnbanke's worst nightmare!
Democrats and Republicans are the ones who recieve dirty corporate cash...(not libertarians)
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
The Fed isn't the corporations.
Whether you believe the Fed is the government regulating the corporations through the bank, or the corporations running the government through the bank, in either case removing the government out of the equation all together gives the corporations unfettered strength. They're either going to run the system or run the regulators out of town.
Besides which the SEC has more influence over the corporations, and the Department of Justice in enforcing the Sherman anti-trust laws, and the FTC. The Federal Reserve only manages the money level with reserve setting power, and the setting of rates for loans from the government to banks and what banks can charge each other.
You sound as silly as those people who used to worry and fret and blame everything on the Trilateral Commission, or on the "Secular Humanist" conspiracy, or even dare forbid, the Illuminati or the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
govt contractor with a monopoly on our money supply.
they are part of the "industrial complex." (top of the pyramid!)
we have military, pharma, agri, insurance and BANKING industrial complexes.
Paultards want to work from the "top down" thats all!
even though money is the ROOT of all evil! ....may as well start at the top!
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
Actually the expression goes, "The love of money is the root of all evil."
What you did is what's called a vicious abstraction, a material fallacy.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
And you just contradicted yourself. First you said the fed was a corporation and now a government contractor, so in effect working for the government.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
you see "deregulation"...
I see "regulation"
thats my main point. (love is another matter)
nighty night y bad!
...and yes ..The Fed is an "independent" unaccountable govt contractor with a monopoly. ...that has never been properly audited!
I guess "The Fed" holds the (noteable) "distinction" of being the ONLY govt contractor...who's "contract" (FED RESERVE ACT) ...is written in an amendment to the constitution!!! Interesting huh?
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
libertarians would bother to read the US constitution and the charter of the Federal Reserve. You guys sure do love to talk about the Fed, but the more you do, the more is clear you have no idea whatsoever what you guys speak of.
Seriously....
I would specifically point to Article I, Sec. 8, cls 5 and 18.
The Federal Reserve regularly reports to Congress. Half the time we see someone like Alan Greenspan or Ben Bernanke is during such reports.
And the the bad economic period we've been through in the past year, similar to earlier ones under boosh I and ray gunn, were not due to the dearth or plethora of regulations, but rather failure to enforce them, and even starving the agencies responsible of money and manpower.
I would argue that the canard that was misquoted isn't quite true, since Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics would probably say money is the means of aiming at the what might be considered a good goal, and to my mind that would be a reasonable amount of independence through the power to purchase and/or the power over others, although with his Golden Means he would likely look down upon a surfeit of wealth.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
I remember Wendell Potter on Bill Moyers referring to a wave of consolidations in the insurance agencies leading to a small number of national corporations owning them all, but not regulated but only at the state level.
Does anyone remember the number of corporations? I seem to remember five; the problem is that's the number of owners of the MSM, so I presuming the number is different.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Bill's show said 4
That could be right, since that would mean I was only one off.
And of course PBS is online, and there may be a way of finding the answer that way too.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Me go sleep now zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Everyone is talking about how the aggressive stance the insurance industry took with their AIHP report that was basically an extortion letter to America [Nice premiums ya got there... sure would be a shame is they happened to go UP, now wouldn't it?] is backfiring in that its pissed off dem congress people enough to where they are talking about repealing the insurance industry's anti-trust exemption.
I can't shake the feeling though that if the insurance co's do something that makes congress do something... then that thing congress did is EXACTLY what the insurance industry wants.
What would it all the current policy holders if anti-trust was suddenly repealed? Wouldn't there be massive restructuring of the industry? Wouldn't that kinda give the companies an excuse to cut off who knows how many millions of chronically sick people?
I dunno, maybe I'm just paranoid, but you have to admit, I got good reason to be paranoid after congress let Goldman walk away with 70bil with no strings attached.
When you get down to it the Insurance companies are not even necessary , what service do they perform ? They are greedy useless middle men ripping off the public and making a killing doing it is all they are , just another mechanism for the wealthy Wall Street Casino class (which includes many of our "Representatives" in DC ) to extract money and wealth from the middle and lower class .
Of course insurance companies aren't neccessary. That's the point. They have evolved into a legalized form of the old protection racket. Like said criminal activity they, (the insurance companies) take the money and provide little or no services. What did you expect? They are crooks.
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every time you throw a little mud , you lose a little ground .
....I saw the add tonight and said, "Good!"
I am not very much surprised because the proceedings which had undergone in past couple of days are too exuberant for insurance index policies and i want to ask why not implement the "Public Option" with a mandate for it to fall under the control of a co-op after five years of operation. This way the resulting co-operative would have the requisite scope and scale to compete effectively in a National market place.
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