Health Care Hodge Podge

Congressman Anthony Weiner asks what value is there in having private health insurance on Morning Joe. As far as I can tell, all they really seem to do is deny coverage and take a 20% cut.

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I am struggling to understand how people can be in favor of private, for profit, health insurance. The market forces of improving profits and reactively providing health care are at odds when insurance companies can summarily deny coverage, weasel out of honoring their coverage through preexisting conditions and rescinding policies. What's so good about a corporation that just takes our money and rips us off when we become inconvenient to their profits.

I'm terrified of the private health insurers. I have absolutely no faith that they will honor their end of the agreement should something catastrophic happen. They'll dump me and eventually Medicaid or Medicare will cover some treatment.

Isn't that ironic? The private health insurers get to cherry pick the healthy people while the government gets to pay for the poor, the old, and the infirmed. They say that they are against a public option, but there's one that they are counting on, or not. They don't care unless there's something in it for them.

I believe Wendell Potter when he talks about his experiences as an executive at Cigna.



I share Weiner's position where I just don't understand what value there is with private for profit health insurance.

Some people have criticized health care reform saying that changing the system will cause the loss of jobs. I certainly hope that it does cause some jobs to be lost. I won't shed a tear if health care lobbyists are sent packing, or if the people whose job it is to find a way to rescind a policy are canned. I have nothing against those people, but their positions are not doing good things for the country.

If the cost of insuring people is lifted, or the responsibility of insuring employees is lifted, employers, small businesses, will be able to employ more people. The cost of insuring employees is growing at a ridiculous rate year over year. I would submit that the cost of health insurance is the number one detractor from annual raises. The health insurance companies are getting double digit raises year after year and everyone else is lucky if they get 4%.

Why are people angry about Obama being a socialist while most people's raises are going to improve the profits of their health insurance company? I think the people who are the most outraged by health care reform are not well informed. Bringing guns to a town hall meeting and acting in ways that would embarrass a pack of baboons isn't the way to voice one's position.



I find it ironic that these people, some showing up with firearms, are complaining about Obama being a tyrant determined to deprive the people of freedom when the previous administration jailed orderly people for wearing shirts that tastefully voice a position differing from the president.