Health Care For Dummies

The essence of health care is quite simple, to the contrary of the ones on the right and left that continually make it a complex function. This is what happens when Congress doesn't want to fix a rotten system because there is too much money to be lost to lobbyists and big business. Obama also is behind in the game because he failed to get the simplest message out to the masses. His original plan was long on talk short on information. Who ever told him of this strategy should be fired. I understand they didn't want to fall into the trap that the Clinton's fell into in the early 90's, but the message here is keep it simple with lots of information, not necessarily facts. The facts can always be supplied later when you at least have some consensus.

What needs to happen is regulation of insurers so that they don't go about cherry picking the best most healthy patients. What also needs to happen is that everyone should have an individual mandate to be properly insured. The most important part is the individual mandate, this prevents people from playing the system only when they get sick. There also needs to be an employer mandate as well, so that they don't just arbitrarily cancel policies. The only affordable way to get these two important issues is the public option. It creates effective competition, while holding the cost of insurance down.

This effectively means that insurers cant reject you, and that if you cant afford the premiums or have low income status, the government will subsidize and assist you in premium payment.

What is very disappointing is that the public option is now off the table, which basically means we are back to step one of the Obama Plan which is really the Obama Banking Plan all over again.

Lets throw money at a rotten to the core system run by greedy big business fat cats, and hope they wake up one day and give a crap about the people that they say they service.

tradersutra.blogspot.com/2009/07/obama-healthcare-is-like-obama-banking.html

Its very easy to understand why the lobbyists and insurance companies didn't want the public option. Did Microsoft really need Google to take over search? Effective competition makes one work harder while bringing in profit margins. Totally the opposite of what makes America great. This is easy to understand, anybody who whines about it basically doesn't want to understand.

The only effective plan to fix health care in its current form was the public option. The lack of the public option throws the individual mandate out the window, thus the main problem of millions of uninsured people is still in existence. This issue effects all Americans, citizens and non citizens. The lobbyists and insurance companies don't care about the cost of uninsured patients, because regardless if it effects them, they pass along the cost to you anyway.

The biggest problem financially and ethically is the number of uninsured people there are. Let me be specific, the only ones that are really covered by insurance are the ones who are covered by medicare/medicaid.

We the people are not covered! Repeat! Not covered!

Why do people get insurance?

Insurance is there to protect you against unlikely but damaging events. You are generally OK with paying premiums in all the years that nothing goes wrong, (like when you don't get into car accidents, or your house doesn't burn down) because in exchange your insurer promises to be there in the one year that things do go wrong. That is why, when shopping for insurance, we are supposed to look for a company that is financially sound, so they will be there for you when you need them. What good is insurance if you keep paying premiums that generally increase every year, if the insurance company suddenly cancels your policy and or won't pay up for a legitimate claim?

Like most people, your health coverage is through your employer that is not what you have. At some point in the future, you might and or will get sick and need expensive health care. What are some of the things that could happen between now and then?

Your company could drop its health plan. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of the population covered by employer-based health insurance has fallen every year since 2000, from 64.2% to 59.3%.

You could lose your job. Do I need to go into employment trends?

You could have a life changing event that makes you quit your job. Things happen.

You could get divorced from the spouse you depend on for health coverage. This generally sucks.

For all of these reasons, you can’t count on your health insurer being there when you need it. That’s not insurance, that’s employer subsidized health care for the duration of your employment.

Once you lose your employer based coverage, for whatever reason, you’re in the individual market, where, you may be surprised to find, you have no right to affordable health insurance. An insurer can refuse to insure you or can charge you a premium you can’t afford because of your medical history. If in this case - Stick a fork in you, your done. This is the free market as we stand today.

Health care reform and the economy go hand and hand. With regards to the financial crisis, these risks are highly correlated:

Being sick increases your chances of losing your job.

Losing your job reduces your ability to afford health insurance, either through COBRA or in the individual market.

If your employer drops its health plan, that’s either because health care is getting more expensive or the economy is in bad shape.

The other elephant in the room is even if you are lucky to be employed and have some sort of health insurance, your insurer can rescind your policy, or you may find out that your insurer doesn't cover the treatment you are or will be going through. This really is a secondary problem, as the primary problem is health insurance is dependent on actually having a job nowadays. So your job is really the primary insurance you have against illness.

This all goes back to proper regulation of insurers so they cant just rescind policies and cherry pick patients. That is the point, you want to know that if you lose your job, you won’t be shut out because you’re too sick, and you won’t be shut out because you’re too poor.

It increasingly looks like the lobbyists and insurance companies have convinced the masses that health care reform is only for poor people. This is so wrong and short sighted. It’s for everyone, everyone, that is, who is not independently wealthy or over the age of 65. With real unemployment pushing 15%, we are all in danger of losing our jobs and being uninsured.

This effects everyone and Obama is keenly aware.