JoB
There was a time in America when Insurance companies were thought of as the good guys… when they were regulated.
Real competition would create a similar situation… with the bonus that you still don’t hamper the kind of inovative care that is not available in a single payer system.
yes, that care is available at first only in teaching hospitals (clinical trials) and for those who can afford it… but that care does trickle down to the rest of society at a fairly rapid rate if it turns out to be cost effective.
In our current system, we are paying for health care, companies to manage the insurance billing and profit-taking by the insurance industry. This is expensive!
Health decisions are driven by clerks… they are trained in insurance evaluation, but not in medicine. This was not always the case.
And it is becoming almost impossible to decipher whether the health plan you chose will cover the care you need. We have almost always paid for the most expensive health care possible through employers because of my chronic illness but i still haven’t found a doctor i trust with my illness that is covered by my health plan. And, don’t get me started on pharmacy care that has a three tier formulary.. if it’s not on it, you don’t get it. None of my medications are on it… it doesn’t even cover a stop smoking medication.
Medical decisions.. your medical decisions.. need to be made by medical professionals… and Hillary’s intention is to restore that. She intends to do away with the roadblock of pre-exisiting conditions that leaves so many without the insurance coverage they paid for. And she would make certain that mental illnesses get the same care as all other illness. This would eliminate the current loophole of blaming chronic illness on the patient’s mental condition to avoid payment. The only way to do this is by regulating the insurance industry.
Can she do this? Not without our help. Unless we deliver a more democratic congress we will have the same kind of roadblocks that are currently causing our democrats to knuckle under to the republicans to get anything done.
But, yes, it is possible. And, it could all be implemented pretty rapidly since she would use an existing system.
Certainly something to think about.