"Building on the system we already have".. a fatally flawed decision

Do we see the government/media/talking heads blathering on about how GM HAS to build on the system THEY have? No way!. All we have heard from day-one is how they MUST jettison the "legacy" costs and the whole way they have done business..why? BECAUSE THEY SAY IT'S FAILED...and they have to start anew, leaner, fitter and unburdened of their "excessive costs" from doing things the OLD way..

When you drive onto a car lot in your old smoking, sputtering clunker, do they take you aside and say.."Don't even think of buying a new car..our service department can put in a new transmission, a new drive shaft, some new axles, new tires..we'll slap on a $3,000 paint job, put in a whole new interior, and that car you bought 21 years ago will be good as new"...?

Supposedly, the health care industry, is somehow different.. We are supposed to believe that it would be too "dangerous" to scrap what we have, and start fresh. The odd thing is that we already have models of what we need, in several forms.. As overburdened as they can be , on the micro, they are stable and working well on the macro level:..Medicare, VA, Medicaid, and the medical system within the active military, on every base.

Baucus and a white house spokesperson have said the there "may" be a need to TAX the benefits of people who receive them in the workplace, but that the employer model we currently have is what will be built upon.. This is lunacy.. It is NOT "working".. Ask the benefits person in any large company, or any clinic that has people all day long with a bazillion different "plans"...ask the doctor who sets up a test for a patient, only to be told it's not "covered"....and ask the person who's laid off suddenly, and finds that his kid's medical needs did not end, just because his job did.

The "pick and choose" system our "wise ones" foresee, is not going to work either, because 99.9999% of people under 30, who are usually quite healthy do not see the need for "complete coverage".. A single guy who has no plans to marry, and who does not take much risk, will probably opt for the "el-cheapo" plan, even though a week later he could be devastatingly damaged in a car accident, totally NOT his "fault".

ALL IN is the ONLY way insurance works for the public. Niche marketing works quite well for the insurance companies, because they can pick and choose their "clients", making the pool of sick people more concentrated, and paying ridiculously high premiums. Take any other form of insurance, and extrapolate the risk pool & you see the fallacy of the medical plan.

We have paid fire insurance for 40 years, and have never had a fire, yet all the money we paid in premiums DID pay out to other people who DID have a fire..am I pissed that we did not "get our money's worth"..nope..

We have paid car insurance (full coverage) FOREVER, and have never gotten "our money's worth". When our oldest son first started driving, he was pissed at us because we FORCED him to carry full coverage on OUR plan, and made him pay for the amount our coverage cost went up. He whined and whined and reminded us that the state only "required" a $5k liability policy, and his car was not worth all that much anyway, but we MADE him carry it anyway. We reminded him that the car he might hit, could be a brand new BMW, and we did not plan to lose our house because he hit someone.

When he grew up and was on his own, we asked him if he had carried through with his plan,. and was carrying minimum coverage..He smiled and said "of course not, I have too much to lose now"..

Well we all have too much to lose too, when it comes to decent medical coverage, and we ARE our brothers' keeper, whether we want to admit it or not.. When we all share the burden, it's lessened on each one of us, but when we segment the load, and pile heavier loads on the weakest, we end up paying in other ways..ways we did not expect.

Excellent take on why we need to overhaul the whole system and how.

We do need to start building from the ground up.

And we do have working models of what we need that we can work from. Medicaid/Medicare, the VA, and the Military health care system all work when they aren't underfunded and overburdened. Why can't we expand those?

The answer is that Insurance companies REFUSE to be excluded, and they OWN our politicians. The are insisting that the starting point for any health care system has to be their involvement and their ability to make every-increasing profits, their ability to choose whether to insure individuals, and which individuals they want to insure.

In other words, insurance companies are insisting that the solution will not solve any of the problems that are sources of THEIR profit. Their profit is more important than our lives, and the bulk of our politicians are happy to go along with this because of the money and perks they receive from insurance lobbyists.

The insurance industry needs to be taken out of the equation entirely. They need to be removed from the room and banned from even participating in the discussion. We won't find a solution that works when the ones that ARE the problem are the ones dominating the discussion.

We need to vote OUT people like Baucus, and start recruiting and supporting people who DO favor single-payer..Unfortunately we have given the keys to the kingdom to people who do not do our bidding.

They like things just the way they are.. They would rather get big fat campaign donations from insurance companies..

We are tackling the problem our of order..

1. media deconsolidation, so we get REAL information
2. public financing of elections, so we get honest people into office
3. an end to CORPORATE/INDUSTRY lobbying

only THEN will real health care reform happen..

Until then, the ones with power to change things, so not see the need for change.. they like things just the way they are:grr:

First of all:
The end of the fairness doctrine and the beginning of media deregulation have taken away almost all access to any significant amount of accurate news for the majority of Americans. It all has to start with accurate information.

Public financing would absolutely take away the power of lobbyists to own so many of our politicians. They would work for the people again!

An end to the idea that money equals speech would be necessary to end corporate lobbying. Good luck getting the millionaires on the Supreme Court to agree to that. But until we end the power of lobbyists to bribe politicians they will always find a way to get money to our politicians somehow. :(

However:
I think we could jump ahead to health care reform ahead of all of this. All we would have to do is mandate that our politicians MUST USE whatever health care system they create. :evilgrin:

If we could find a way to do that, somehow, then we'd end up with a wonderful health care system pretty damned quick.

and it's baffling to me, how they arrived at that idea in the first place..I hope it gets readdressed someday.

Good job!

You are so dead right it's almost scarey, at least from my POV.

You convinced me.

273 people died today due to lack of healthcare in the U.S.

Got questions on single-payer healthcare? What is it? Would it bankrupt us? PNHP has answers.

We just aren't GETTING it.

and knows how to get the point across. K&R

eom

But as a pragmatist, he probably thinks that real change can be achieved in stages.. It cannot.. A nibble at the edges will fail, and that will doom any further changes:(

Great post.

K & R.

As in all of those insurance company employees losing their jobs, in the middle of a depression. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a factor. We have 15.8% unemployment, counting the discouraged unemployed. And there are 600,000 new people a week filing for unemployment. I'm guessing the politicians don't want to do anything right now that adds to those totals. If we started from the ground up on healthcare, obviously there would be a lot of displacement. In reality it would be bigger than the auto companies going out of business. It could be a fiasco. OTOH, our current healthcare system is a fiasco. I like single payer, but I doubt the politicians will vote to re-tool in the current economic crisis. They'll tinker with the current system.

The single upside to the increase in unemployment is that it makes the impetus for a public option that much stronger.

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