Insurance

Insurance, as a product, has no ethical basis. It is a scheme, not a service. Its premise is simple. Money is collected from a broad range of individuals, persons or business entities, who statistically have a calculatable risk of adversity, accident, mortality or other misadventure. Based on the mathematically calculated risk, based on historic data, a premium/cost is set for the policy or share, which has a predetrmined monetary value, collectable by the holder when adversity strikes.

When most people were illiterate and innumerate, the era when insurance was really a great racket, the issuers of insurance, the insurance companies, were like great casinos, which knew the odds and profited accordingly from customers who were generally clueless about the math, loopholes and cleverly worded exemptions, which allowed the insurance companies to avoid paying out and thereby get richer.

As I often say to anyone who lauds insurance companies to me, "They didn't build all those high rise monuments to themselves by paying out claims liberally and evenly."

The insurance industry in industrialized nations is under duress. Public education, computers, savvy judges and savvier lawyers all pose great challenges to the bottom line. Premiums are rising to breathtaking heights. In the U.S., libertarian-minded, healthy people feel persecuted by a government demand that they insure themselves for health care. Unfortunately, they don't understand that government is not the problem. It is the potential solution.

Religiuous adherence to capitalism ideology when it comes to insurance companies is not in the public interest. For one thing, health is not a commodity. It is a predictably degradable process with age in every human being. We all get sick. We all die.

As insurance companies are required more and more to live up to their contracts and pay out, premiums for insurance will continue to rise and rise. Sadly, the public will end up paying much more in insurance premiums for less compensation and security. If comparatively less money could be paid in taxes to a well run nationalized health care system which would eliminate the need for private health insurance companies altogether, we would all be much better off.

Health

We all seem to be having a problem with communication on this health care issue. As a health care professional, I thought I would try to clarify some things for those of you who are adrift with the whole health-care-reform concept. Let's start with some definitions, as I see them:

Health: This is what you have when you are not sick at all.

Health Insurance: This is a financial instrument you purchase from a third party which pays for your doctor and hospital bills when you are sick. It's actually sickness insurance, but they didn't want to call it that for obvious reasons.

Health Care: This is what you get when you are sick to restore your health. It is so expensive in the United States that it is usually paid for by the government or by a health insurance (sickness insurance) company, which also gets help from the United States government.

Wellness: This does not have anything to do with rural water supplies. This is a vague term which refers to combined physical and mental state of good functional ability, whether you are healthy or coping with sickness.

Well being: This is another vague term which refers to your "I'm-OK factor". In other words, when you feel OK, if either healthy or coping with sickness, you might be considered to have a state of well being.

Reform: This basically means fixing or improving upon something that is no longer functional.

Now, let me explain a few basic facts about health care:

1. No human being goes through life with his/her health in tact. No matter how much yogurt you eat with active cultures or green tea you drink, you will get sick, if you aren't already. The absence of 120-year-old Christian Scientists attests to this fact.

2. Many of you are already sick and don't know it. No, that's not a wise crack. Disease is often slow and progressive as you age and things happen to your body. In the U.S., you will get very little warning about this until something goes badly wrong, because the health care here is reactive or remedial, not proactive or preventive.

3. Remedial health care, based in emergency and intensive-care medicine, is much more expensive than preventive health care. In other words, if you put off getting treatment for sickness, it costs more, whether you have health insurance or not.

4. Ultimately, taxpayers already pay for the health care of the uninsured and many of the insured, whether they themselves are taxpayers or not. Since hospitals cannot refuse treatment to the seriously sick, they treat everyone and bill the government for any deficits caused by treating people without health insurance or with deficient health insurance. This is called "free care", which is a misnomer, because we are all paying for it already.

5. Health insurance companies are able to pay for all those cheery TV commercials, build those nice buildings and hire all those paper-pushers by NOT paying for health care whenever possible. In other words, they are in the business of collecting money (monthly premiums) and then working hard to avoid spending it on the people who pay the premiums. (Question: Would you pay a monthly fee to someone to pay your utility bills and then expect to have to ask them if you can turn on a light bulb when it's dark?)

6. Every full-time Federal employee gets affordable access to a superior health insurance policy to any that you as an individual could ever afford to buy. That includes Republican members of Congress!

Now, I hope that clears up some misconceptions about how all this works, or doesn't. You will get sick, or already are in some way without knowing it. The only way for us to get good health care is for everyone to participate in the health care system, even when they are well. Insurance companies are needless middlemen, who profit from not helping people who pay them.

So, a fair public insurance plan would have been the solution to your health care needs now and in the future. If you supported the people who have eliminated that option, you really blew it for yourself and everyone else. Maybe you should drop a line to Scott Brown.

Plutocracy

US citizens are allowing themselves to be ruled by a plutocracy. The current whining of the Democrats in Congress that 'the votes aren't there' for universal health care for American citizens, when there are a majority of Democrats in the Congress, is the open admission that we no longer have a two-party democracy in the US. We have a plutocracy: Government by the wealthy for the interests of the wealthy.

The recent 'solutions' to the US 'financial crisis' should have been evidence enough for those with eyes and a brain. The solutions entailed propping up the wealthy who had raped the financial system by defrauding the middle class with bogus loans. The middle class is broke. The wealthy bankers are still flush. The government of the US continues to hold the hands of the rich, while the middle class and the poor struggle on their own.

The health care debate is the biggest tip-off of all. First, there is no debate. Universal health care was never really on the table. Now they are force=feeding the public with universal coverage. They are equating the two concepts in an attempt to fool the public into thinking that a compromise has been reached. This is a patent lie. There was never a legitimate debate.

Universal health care would mean that any US citizen or legal resident would have the ability to access health care (medical assistance or treatment) anywhere in the US at any time it was required without worry about being bankrupted by that need. In other words, medical care as a human and civil right.

Universal health coverage keeps up the illusion that medical care is a commodity, not a human and civil right. This is the position of the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry, the wealthy interests who obviously own our Congress lock, stock and barrel. So, the Congress will keep funneling customers to the insurance companies. More than ever, since every US citizen will be forced to buy private insurance in order to get medical treatment.

Perhaps it is time to stop mooning over well-meaning President Obama. He has surrendered to these interests by giving Congress the go-ahead to sell the American citizenry down the river to the lobbies who have made this country the mess it is right now. Perhaps it is time to get involved, to write your Congressional delegation. Demand your human right to health and well being. Do not surrender your rights as a human being to the insatiable greed of the wealthy.

Practice is fighting greed and stupidity for your own humanity's sake. Compassion is doing the same for all humanity's sake.