False. I’ve had many patients who have been turned down for coverage by every company they applied to.

I don’t understand why otherwise intellegent people don’t appreciate the fact that insurance companies are for-profit businesses, NOT charities. Why is it OK for a tort attorney to take 40-50% of a claimants award (sometimes leaving the injured person with insufficient funds to even sustain himself) but it’s NOT ok for an insurance company to make an 8-10% ROE? Why is it OK for Richard Swartz to rake in a qazillion $$ a year for getting someone a rental car that he would have gotten anyway but it’s not ok for the CEO of an insurance company to be awarded a share of the profits that the company would not have made but for the leadership of that CEO? Why is “free enterprise” a good thing for you but not for someone else?

As for HMOs, they aren’t allowed in Mississippi. What we have here are PPOs. PPO = Prefered Provider Organization. The designated providers are “preferred” because they are part of the “organization”. And you don’t have to use them. You can go anywhere you want. You just have to pay the difference in cost between what the preferred provider would have charged and what the doctor you chose decides to charge you. And that is 100% fair. You can’t expect your PPO health plan to reimburse an outside doctor more than it would reimburse a doctor who is part of the organization. That’s why YOU have to pay the difference. But the truth is, the VAST majority of doctors DO particpate in these plans that argument is really moot.

“If the government has control over my health care, then it is not a stretch to expect that it will soon thereafter tell me what and how much I can eat, drink, and whether I can smoke my cigar, etc.”

I know what you mean. I’ve traveled to many countries that have socialized medicine or other universal coverage schemes. Have you noticed that in England, France, Italy, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, Israel, Canada, Japan and Australia they tell you how much you can eat, how much you can drink and whether you can smoke a cigar? We only have control over these choices in the U.S. That’s because we’ve yet to succumb to a public option for the uninsured.

And I’m not attacking any one commenter’s views. It’s just my two cents worth on a few select points.

There is already a national health care system in place today. It just happens to only cover emergency medical conditions. It’s called EMTALA and EVERYONE is already , insured or not, legal, illegal alien or just plain aliens of other worlds if they happen to show up at ANY hospital accepting Medicare. Except Federal hospitals and the 2% of the other 4000 nationally that don’t participate. So the argument against “a national health care system” is BS. It’s here and has been since 1986. The only thing currently not covered is PRIMARY healthcare, which is the MOST effective and efficient form. So we just provide primary healthcare in the most expensive environment in the world: the emergency departments across the country. It’s not that enough money isn’t already being spent; it’s just not being spent very smartly.

Rationing. Anyone have a policy limit? Is that not a form of rationing? Anyone have a deductible? That’s rationing is it not? The insurance company is rationing the amount being paid. Don’t agree to pay the deductible and see how much care you get.

Directing their own healthcare. Are you kidding? If you belong to a HMO. Try going outside of it. Have an insurer that has a “preferred provider” nearby. Try going outside of it. Want to go see a physician that doesn’t accept your form of insurance. Let me know how any of these work out for you.

Government intervention. I’ll much prefer someone in government, if they are held accountable, looking after my benefits without a profit motive than an insurance executive or actuary trying to improve the bottom line of their company. And that argument about reforming every other form of government funded health care before attempting to correct primary healthcare coverage…that’s just plain ole BS. Just because we can’t make it all perfect we shouldn’t improve any of it? Surely that’s not the argument, if it is, why do anything at all but sit and bitch until we devise a perfect plan. And as memory serves me, most of Man’s improvements have been the result of its failures, not it’s successes. The success usually was more serendipity than planning and forethought. But I digress.

Yeah, the brown skinned people are breaking the economy by using up all the health care and taking the good jobs. Geezus. XenophobiansRUs is the name of a new civic club I’m thinking of forming. Membership will be in the millions the first day of business. Funny thing is, ain’t but a few native folks left. The rest of us are good ole immigrants. It’s a shame most of us have forgetten so quickly our own boat ride here. ‘Ceptin’ some of the black folks. And even then, they did ride a boat. Maybe we’d all feel better if we just had the Rio Grande rigged up with boats so they could float across rather than walk across. Maybe that would make it all better. Since “they” are already here and all.

My bottom line is this, it doesn’t make economic, legal, moral or ethical sense to continue our current broken system. Healthcare for all is not an economic issue, it’s a moral issue with economic impact.

So true.