Healthcare Reform: Bureaucrats vs. Billionaire Beancounters
Thank God for my wife. She does an excellent job of keeping track of our family’s finances, which includes all the health insurance paperwork. It’s a lot since our privatized health insurance industry appears to have outsourced all their paperwork to her.
Yesterday she was on the phone yet again, since we had a $5000 bill from the hospital for treatment our son had received in January. Insurance had refused to pay it, not because it wasn’t covered, but because they had accidentally overpaid the hospital previously and so the account balance was messed up. My wife has been on the phone with both the hospital and the insurance company at least once a month since we first got the $5000 bill, carefully noting what and who she talked to. Sometimes the insurance company made a note of it, sometimes they didn’t, but said they would contact the hospital directly.
As they didn’t contact it, the bill has moved closer and closer to collection. It’s not in the insurance company’s interest to be on top of this, after all, they are required by law to maximize profit.
Last night my wife and I were at our wits’ end about this. A single-payer system won’t solve all our problems, but it sure would take the profit-motive out of the equation. The GOP bogeyman of ”bureaucrats deciding your healthcare” seems a lot better than “billionaire beancounters”.
Ed Schultz on MSNBC raises the question: if Obama’s all about bringing everyone to the table, why are single-payer advocates being arrested instead of invited?
Here’s another great clip (very short): Obama in his own words saying single-payer is the best solution:
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The problem is not the “profit motive”, it is the lack of competition in an overly regulated industry.
Of course the problem is “profit motive”. Don’t be ridiculous.
Profit motive leads to lack of competition - Mergers, market segmentation all that.
You need to be more specific about the overly regulated industry.
Imagine the government with a medicaid for all (3% overhead) or single payer type system competing with Private HMOs. Hmmmm, why are private HMO’s fighting this? What exactly are they afraid off?
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