What do you want out of healthcare reform?
With a deadline of late 2009, Congress still has a long way to go to consolidating the multiple health care bills into one cohesive reform package. We will get some kind of reform. The question is, will it be what Americans actually need?
A huge swath of this country is currently uninsured or under-insured. Millions of people do not have access to the system -- until they get so ill they have to go to the emergency room. ERs do not move with speed. Nor are they the ideal place to end up. The level and breadth of illness found in hospitals is extreme. As it should be. It's where people go when their physician cannot treat their illness.
The part about health care reform that makes me so angry is that insurance companies are trying desperately to protect profits. Once again, I have to ask why insurance companies should make money off of other people's pain and ill health? I'm not opposed to insurance companies making money - if they would then return the profits to the companies and individuals contributing to the insurance pool each year.
One of the main complaints is that government intervention will bog down the process and make it more difficult to get proper care. Have any of you had to pre-authorize a surgery (that you found out about less than 24 hours before it was to take place)? Have you had to get a referral from your primary-care physician to see a specialist? Have you been told that while you have insurance, the company will not pay for a procedure your doctor insisted you needed? Well, then, aren't insurance companies bogging down the process and making it next to impossible to get the care you need?
What is it you want from health care reform? I want to be able to go to the doctor and know my insurance company will pay for it. I want to be seen as an individual - not a slate of tests and procedures my doctor and insurance company have agreed to. I want to know my kids will be seen in a timely fashion, whether its for a routine well-check or a severe illness. Mainly, I want to know that our $16 billion a year spending isn't going to fatten some CEO's wallet. That's my money at work; it should work for me.
A huge swath of this country is currently uninsured or under-insured. Millions of people do not have access to the system -- until they get so ill they have to go to the emergency room. ERs do not move with speed. Nor are they the ideal place to end up. The level and breadth of illness found in hospitals is extreme. As it should be. It's where people go when their physician cannot treat their illness.
The part about health care reform that makes me so angry is that insurance companies are trying desperately to protect profits. Once again, I have to ask why insurance companies should make money off of other people's pain and ill health? I'm not opposed to insurance companies making money - if they would then return the profits to the companies and individuals contributing to the insurance pool each year.
One of the main complaints is that government intervention will bog down the process and make it more difficult to get proper care. Have any of you had to pre-authorize a surgery (that you found out about less than 24 hours before it was to take place)? Have you had to get a referral from your primary-care physician to see a specialist? Have you been told that while you have insurance, the company will not pay for a procedure your doctor insisted you needed? Well, then, aren't insurance companies bogging down the process and making it next to impossible to get the care you need?
What is it you want from health care reform? I want to be able to go to the doctor and know my insurance company will pay for it. I want to be seen as an individual - not a slate of tests and procedures my doctor and insurance company have agreed to. I want to know my kids will be seen in a timely fashion, whether its for a routine well-check or a severe illness. Mainly, I want to know that our $16 billion a year spending isn't going to fatten some CEO's wallet. That's my money at work; it should work for me.
Posted by Anna at 10/22/2009 8:26 AM 
Categories: Health
Tags: health insurance health care health insurance companies uninsured health care reform congress health care
Categories: Health
Tags: health insurance health care health insurance companies uninsured health care reform congress health care
On this issue, both parties have really dropped the ball. The reforms proposed by the democrats do not address the underlying issues (moral hazard, the need for tort reform, the "prepaid card" mentality, etc.)
But republicans, in opposing reform, are also quite misguided. They claim to be supporting a free market system, but our system as it stands is not free market at all. It's socialist with a private sector intermediary...which may actually be the worse of all possible worlds.
Does it make sense that American companies provide health insurance to their workers? If we were going to start a system from scratch...is THIS how we would set it up? The only reason that companies started providing health insurance was that it was a way to circumvent the wage and price controls put in place during World War II. After the war, Congress encouraged the process by giving big tax breaks to companies for providing insurance.
So...how is it "socialist" to have government-run national health insurance like the UK and Canada but "free market" to have large private corporations perform the same service via private insurance companies in order to get a federal tax break? It would seem that the corporations are an expensive and unnecessary middleman.
A better solution might be to socialize the insurance for big, catastrophic diseases like cancer or ALS -- the random events that insurance is designed to protect against -- while regular, routine medicine is paid for out of pocket, bypassing insurance altogether. This would make for a more efficient system in which you wouldn't have to fill out 10 pages of forms in order to get someone to look at your sore throat.
This was the direction George W. Bush was going when he pushed for HSAs. It was one of the few good ideas the man had...too bad no one listened to him.
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