Health Care Options

I watched the Bill Moyers show last week and was appalled by the information that was shared with him by Wendell Potter, a former health insurance executive who left the industry to become an advocate for health care reform. Potter discussed the industry’s history of denying care to members and its extensive efforts to prevent the federal government from creating a “public option” for health insurance to compete with private plans. Potter said:

"The industry has always tried to make Americans think that government run systems are the worst thing that could happen to them, that if you even consider that you're heading down the slippery slope towards socialism... I think that people who are strong advocates of our health care system remaining as it is, very much a free market health care system, fail to realize that we're really talking about human beings here, and it doesn't work as well as they would like it to... They are trying to make you worry and fear a government bureaucrat being between you and your doctor. What you have now is a corporate bureaucrat between you and your doctor... The public plan would do a lot to keep health insurance companies honest, because it would have to offer a standard benefit plan. It would have to operate more efficiently, as does the Medicare program. It would be structured, I’m certain, on a level playing field so that it wouldn’t have an unfair advantage over the private insurance companies. Because it could be administered more efficiently, the private insurers would have to operate more efficiently.”

What congress doesn't want to think about is that Medicare is already a public option system. Yes, premiums go up from time to time but nothing like the premiums of my supplemental insurance. When I turned 65, the premium was $87. Each year that premium increases even though I seldom use the insurance. Now that I am 73, it is $161.99. An 87 year old friend of mine who is living on her social security has a premium of $199.00. That's what private insurers do. They raise rates to drive people who use the insurance out of the system. They are more concerned about the bottom line then about their insured. They have to answer to Wall Street and from time to time they delay treatment so long that the insured dies waiting for permission for the treatment. That is not unusual at all.

We need a public option to keep the insurance industry honest. Between the medical profession, big Pharma and and the insurance companies, health care costs have risen out of control.