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Single Payer - Not necessarily socialized medicine. Not even necessarily the government. Just means one set of uniform paper work to one entity with common standards.
Could be very efficient.Would certainly drive costs down for providers, who wouldn’t have to employ nine clerical workers for one professional, just to bill insurance companies and collect. Could make claims processing faster, too. Would not necessarily change your choice of provider. Remember: the payer is not the provider.
Public Option - A plan run by an entity like Medicare, which could take all the people who couldn’t afford or get into private plans. Not necessarily cheaper, or worse, but a way to guarantee health care for people who can’t afford it. Doesn’t make paperwork more efficient, but gives people with pre-existing conditions or no employer a place to get affordable insurance.
Rationing - What we all think of when we think single payer or public option. But in actuality, what we have now in America, where if you can’t afford or qualify for insurance, you don’t get care. We have more “effective” rationing of health care in America than any other developed country. It’s just not rational rationing. Rational rationing involves letting the sickest go first, or the ones with the best future potential. In America, the old and the rich go first. Also the extremely poor. The middle goes last.
Pre-existing conditions - the way we ration now. Back problems, depression, asthma, epilepsy, diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis are some of the most common pre-existing conditions. Let’s not even talk about cancer.
By age 50, most Americans have one of them, and many Americans have as many as three. Pre-existing conditions are used by insurance companies to stop people from qualifying for health insurance, or to limit the insurance to exclude pre-existing conditions (a “rider” attached to a policy), or to make the cost of insurance so high that entire families go bare.
Employer-sponsored coverage - this is what we have (had) now, which most uninformed people want to protect. What “low information voters” don’t realize, is that 1) the cost of health insurance is part of what drove GM into bankruptcy, and makes large employers so anxious to lay people off whenever the economy hiccups 2)that’s one thing that makes the cost of American goods more expensive than those produced elsewhere and has forced manufacturing offshore 3)small employers are trying to duck it like the plague, because the cost of insurance makes hiring too costly for them.
Who likes employer-sponsored coverage? The health insurance industry, because it has found the deepest pockets to shift the costs to. Who doesn’t like it? Any small business. Anyone who works in a small business. Anyone who is laid off. Anyone who works for him/herself.
Now. Armed with this information, imagine yourself laid off, or with a pre-existing condition and wanting to work for a small company, or self-employed. What do YOU think you would want?
Sometimes it’s necessary to walk a mile in the other person’s moccasins, folks.
I don’t have a dog in this hunt, because I’m on Medicare, which is single payer. But I know what it’s like to be over 50 in a small business (my own) with employees I cared about and a hip that needed replacing. I never told anyone about it because I didn’t want a pre-existing condition to raise our rates. As a result, I was bone-on-bone in pain when I reached age 65, and collapsed in a heap in the orthopedic surgeon’s office, thanking God for Medicare.
LInk to blog: http://ushealthcrisis.com/2009/06/a-glossary-of-health-care-reform-definitions/
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AMERICA’S NATIONAL HEALTHCARE EMERGENCY!
It’s official. America and the World are now in a GLOBAL PANDEMIC. A World EPIDEMIC with potential catastrophic consequences for ALL of the American people. The first PANDEMIC in 41 years. And WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES will have to face this PANDEMIC with the 37th worst quality of healthcare in the developed World.
STAND READY AMERICA TO SEIZE CONTROL OF YOUR NATIONAL HEALTHCARE SYSTEM.
We spend over twice as much of our GDP on healthcare as any other country in the World. And Individual American spend about ten times as much out of pocket on healthcare as any other people in the World. All because of GREED! And the PRIVATE FOR PROFIT healthcare system in America.
And while all this is going on, some members of congress seem mostly concern about how to protect the corporate PROFITS! of our GREED DRIVEN, PRIVATE FOR PROFIT NATIONAL DISGRACE. A PRIVATE FOR PROFIT DISGRACE that is in fact, totally valueless to the public health. And a detriment to national security, public safety, and the public health.
Progressive democrats and others should stand firm in their demand for a robust public option for all Americans, with all of the minimum requirements progressive democrats demanded. If congress can not pass a robust public option with at least 51 votes and all robust minimum requirements, congress should immediately move to scrap healthcare reform and demand that President Obama declare a state of NATIONAL HEALTHCARE EMERGENCY! Seizing and replacing all PRIVATE FOR PROFIT health insurance plans with the immediate implementation of National Healthcare for all Americans under the provisions of HR676 (A Single-payer National Healthcare Plan For All).
Coverage can begin immediately through our current medicare system. With immediate expansion through recruitment of displaced workers from the canceled private sector insurance industry. Funding can also begin immediately by substitution of payroll deductions for private insurance plans with payroll deductions for the national healthcare plan. This is what the vast majority of the American people want. And this is what all objective experts unanimously agree would be the best, and most cost effective for the American people and our economy.
In Mexico on average people who received medical care for A-H1N1 (Swine Flu) with in 3 days survived. People who did not receive medical care until 7 days or more died. This has been the same results in the US. But 50 million Americans don’t even have any healthcare coverage. And at least 200 million of you with insurance could not get in to see your private insurance plans doctors in 2 or 3 days, even if your life depended on it. WHICH IT DOES!
Contact congress and your representatives NOW! AND SPREAD THE WORD!
God Bless You
Jacksmith – WORKING CLASS
June 17, 2009 - 9:36amThis Comment