The private health insurance industry is in trouble and needs a major ongoing transfusion of cash from government to survive. This essential truth has been deliberately buried under the constant blizzard of lies about healthcare. Health insurance companies face a serious problem. Expensive new medical treatments introduced over the years have impaired their once viable business model. After thriving for many years, the health insurance business as we know it is fast becoming unsustainable. Rising costs are driving up insurance prices, causing an ominous downward spiral of declining enrollment.
The insurance companies know this. They know they need massive government handouts to survive. So, suddenly, they favor “healthcare reform” —the kind that gives them substantial government support. Harry and Louise are pushing such “reform” in TV ads, and so is AHIP, the health insurance company lobby.
The “healthcare reform” working its way through Congress is just what the insurers want. At base, it is mandates and subsidies. Mandates will force almost everyone to buy insurance, giving the insurers more customers. Massive government subsidies will be paid directly to insurance companies, to make insurance “affordable” for those who can’t pay for it.
Reforms to limit denials and make insurance portable will raise insurance costs. Employers and those earning above 3 or 4 times the poverty level will pay in full for the resultant higher priced insurance.
The "public option"? Forget it—it has already been eviscerated to the point that almost no one will be able to exercise it.
Result: more customers, revenues and profits for insurance companies—at the expense of policy holders and taxpayers. Sounds good—for the insurance companies. “Healthcare Reform” might better be called “Life Support for Health Insurance Companies”.
Government already picks up about 50% of the national healthcare tab. It must get even deeper into healthcare to fix our broken system, but why do that by putting insurance companies on life support, pumping $1.5 trillion of taxpayer money into them over the next ten years? The only “value add” the insurers provide is risk pooling, worth about 3-4% of the pooled healthcare cost. Insurers impose overhead costs totaling 45% of the actual healthcare they pay for, about $1.5 billion per day. There is nothing they do that justifies this cost.
Rather than giving health insurance companies a transfusion from the public till, let’s have real reform: single-payer Medicare For All, HR 676. It would cover everyone, and save $1.5 trillion of subsidies.
Let all your elected representative know we want HR 676, not costly permanent life support for health insurance companies disguised as “healthcare reform”.
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