Thursday, November 14, 2013

Anybody Else Longing for Single Payer?

Published by Delaware Liberal Blog, Progressive Populist:

Ok, now I am more than totally befuddled about our so called health care reform.  Today the President announced  that if you liked your piece of shit so called catastrophic health policy that covers practically nothing and leads you to bankruptcy court, you can keep it.  If only the insurance companies will willingly volunteer to restore their pieces of shit policies. In the name of good citizenship.
Of course, there's no certainty that the insurance companies can turn around on a dime and rescind cancellation notices they've sent out and reinstate these policies in about a 30 day window.  Have you ever seen an insurance company pay any settlements in 30 days (excepting Medicare which turns around reimbursements on a dime)?  Let alone retool suspended policies, write and mail out letters to policy holders explaining that the policy you thought they cancelled was in fact a piece of shit and compare the piece of shit option to a real policy you might, just might be able to buy on the Obamacare Exchange, if you're lucky, persistent and unbusy enough to get into the site. Yea, I know, that last sentence needs some punctuation.
Yup.  I caved and gave up on pushing my Party to give us a public option or a Medicare For all program and accepted the reality that wall street pushed and bribed our party of the people to subsidize the insurance industry to do the right thing and give us things like no preexisting condition, not cancel us when we really needed the insurance for illness or accident and so on and so forth.   I caved with no illusions held by some in my Party that the Republicans would show love for our supporting one of the worst and ethics free sectors of our capitalist economy, the health insurance industry.  I kinda knew they'd figure out a way to game us and sure enough, we're here.
So, here we are stuck with this Rube Goldberg machine of a payer system.  Let's just hope the gears are well oiled and don't further freeze up on us.  At least until America comes to its senses and we replace all this claptrap with Single Payer.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

So, Where Was The Republican Outrage On Insurance Ethics Pre-Obamacare?

This post appeared in DelawareLiberal Blog from Progressive Populist.
obamacare
Upfront, let me tell you I was hugely disappointed when the public option and/or single payer got shelved in the formation of Obamacare.  And as one in the health care industry I was amazed that candidate Obama was willing to trust the health insurance industry to do the right thing for a revamped health insurance  public policy, having  seen them in action up close and professionally.  But, I hung in there, reluctantly, as health policy got formulated by my President's new administration and our Party in congress.
But, how quickly we forget the outrageous ethics of the insurance industry in their non-coverage of so called pre-existing conditions, cancellation of policies when people got sick and non-renewal of policies for families with high risk.  This was routine corporate behavior back in the day.  Did we hear anything from Republican policy makers about complete lack of ethics from this industry regarding such treatment of the 85% of the American public covered by so-called high end, employer based insurance?  Hell no.  Not one word.  For that matter, not much either from corporate conservadems.
So, now, candidate Obama is pilloried by these clowns for having made a perfectly reasonable generalization, aimed at the vast 85% majority of the electorate who were employer insured, that they would keep their insurance under his plan.  He even advocated building in a grandfathering protection for those not so covered who relied on their own privately purchased policies that were known to be pieces of shit, coverage wise.   Yes, if you wanted to keep your piece of shit policy, you dumb ass, you could.
This whole discussion now should be not about what candidate and now twice elected President Obama said back in the day, but the ethics and social responsibility of this so called industry.  Their ethics then and their ethics now, manipulating the system, squeezing through loopholes and laying blame on public policy for their outrageous practices and ethics free behavior.
Let's have that debate, that discussion as we now seriously reconsider how we offer the citizens of America a public option/Medicare for all protection against the serial unethical culture of the private health insurance industry.  Their immorality is uncurable.  Let's put them out of their misery.