Why should we force people to buy into a health insurance system as broken as ours?

[killbotfactory]

I can guarantee you, if you offer mandates up front, the health insurance companies will welcome them with open arms, while they subvert or de-fang any reforms we try to pass that would make health insurance plans fair and affordable. Does everyone understand how powerful these people are? They have no guilt, an army of lobbyists, and nearly endless pockets of money. Do you really think they'll just roll over and let the next president brow-beat them into submission? Do you really think they are fearing the government forcing people into buying their scam health insurance plans? You can kiss any support from a democrat in a state where the health insurance companies employ a significant amount of people goodbye. We'll end up with a bad compromise that will screw over the working poor, just like every other reform that's been passed for the past two and half decades.

[tularetom]

1. The proposals I've seen aren't for "universal health care"

They're for universal health insurance. Just another way to put still more taxpayer dollars into the pockets of the politically well connected insurance fatcats. They can call it "socialized medicine" all day long but the only thing that's gonna guarantee every amurkin equal access to quality health care is a single payer system.

[TeamJordan23]

16. I agree with you. The major Dems have univeral health 'insurance' plans

I'm an Obama supporter and I will concede that only Kuchinich has a true universal health care plan. All the other major Dems have plans that will allow everyone to have insurance. Out of the top Dems, I like Obama's plan b/c it doesn't have a mandate.

[Hieronymus]

2. Edwards' plan would give people a choice of either private or single

payer. It would result in the decline of private insurance, because the single payer is so much better.
Kucinich proposes single payer right away.
Hillary and Obama want private insurance.

[annie1]

3. hi. can you tell me more about the difference btwn hil's and edwards...

healthcare plans? thanks. :)

[zalinda]

5. I don't know much about Clinton's plan

and no, I don't want someone to send me a link to her web site. Thank you very much. If you can't explain your candidates positions, then there is either something wrong with you or your candidate.

Edwards plan is simple. All people will eventually have to be covered, just like SSI is now. He proposes to mandate that insurance has to cover everyone no matter what, pre-existing conditions, mental health or what ever. Doctors would have the last say in treatment, no insurance company could over ride a doctor's choice of treatment. There would be a private and a public plan that you can get. Insurance premiums would be based on what a person could afford with the public plan. He hopes his plan will be able to get through both houses and would be one the way to single payer coverage.

zalinda

[Sanctified]

4. I doubt the single payer will be so much better, it will be like our current legal system.

Would you rather have the best lawyer money can buy or one supplied by the state? The health care industry will make sure our Politicians will cripple any type of single payer system because they won't tolerate competition. It will be a two tiered system that separates the haves from the have not's.

Picture a system where the poor will be herded into facilities with minimal health services where they will wait for ever to see a doctor while the rich will receive the best health care with no wait and will get first access to organs.

The only option is for the government to take ownership of all insurance companies and then create a socialized single payer system. There cannot be a private insurance system and a single payer system.

[Hieronymus]

7. In France, one can have any doctor one chooses, and the government pays

that doctor. We don't have that choice here, if we're in an HMO.
France's heath care is rated #1 by the World Health Organization .. we're #37.

[eShirl]

10. Picture a system where the poor will be herded into facilities with minimal health services where th

"Picture a system where the poor will be herded into facilities with minimal health services where they will wait for ever to see a doctor while the rich will receive the best health care with no wait and will get first access to organs."

Sounds just like now (with the possible exception of access to organs).

[Hieronymus]

11. If Hillary or a Republican wins, yes. Nothing will change. Please study the

single payer systems in other countries .
Your post sounds like Republican talking points.

[papau]

6. Actually Hill and Edwards are very similiar &universal via mandate -Obama is similiar but no mandate

all lead to single payer via gov "Medicare like" policy

All make affordable via subsidy (which is why there is a cost to the gov) that depends on income

All regulate - but Edwards and Clinton do a better job

[killbotfactory]

8. How will he get it through congress?

My point is that if mandates are being offered, the insurance industry, the republicans, and democrats in States that employ a large number of people in the health insurance industry will block, or weaken measures to regulate them, but they will embrace the mandates. The result will screw a lot of people by forcing them to buy into insurance plans that rip them off and provide horrible coverage, and for what? Because some people who don't think they need health insurance won't buy into a plan until they need health insurance? Who cares?

FYI, Obama also proposes a public plan for people to buy into.

I guess a good result is that after a decade of being ripped off by insurance companies, people will be clamoring for a single-payer type plan.

[eridani]

9. But since most people will never get expensively sick--

--the private insurers can undercut the public plan by cherrypicking healthy people and offering them rock-bottom rates. And of course they'll continue to find ways of getting out of paying claims like they do now, but most people won't know this because they'll never file big claims. The private "Medicare Advantage" plans are screwing the public system in exactly this way right now.

[radfringe]

12. health insurance is not health care

nor does having health insurance mean you are getting the health care you may need. so let's make that distinction from the get-go

(if you haven't seen my thread regarding SICKO --> http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2523349&mesg_id=2523349 )

Through my various jobs in my lifetime, I've been on various health insurance plans from the HMO type to those with high-deductibles.

I was more likely to go to a doctor under an HMO plan because I could afford the co-pay as opposed to the high-deductible plan where I couldn't afford to pay up front for the office visit/prescriptions.

about 4 years ago my partner broke her foot, she had health insurance - one with a high deductible and we couldn't afford to pay up front for the the doctor visit so she refused to go to the doctor. After a month of hobbling around, she finally went to the doctor, $50 to the doctor to have him send her to a specialist, $70 to a specialist to have him write her a prescription for a special kind of brace and another for some pain meds. (he didn't take any x-rays, just felt her foot. she was in/out of the exam room within 15 minutes)

She went to one medical supply place - they wouldn't take her insurance. A second medical supplier didn't carry the brace, but would have taken her insurance. The third place DID have the brace, would 'take' the insurance, but she had to pay for the brace up front and they would submit the paperwork to the insurance company for her. They wanted $500 for the brace.

She came home in tears and without the brace. I found the same brace on-line through a medical supply place for $75. We ordered it, had it shipped overnight, for an additional $25.

Total spent that day $220, which was not reimbursed by the insurance company because she hadn't met the deductible. As far as filling the 'script for pain meds - she didn't bother, couldn't afford to shell out another $100 for 15 pills. She got by taking OTC pain pills.

During this time period she was also suppose to be on meds for high cholesterol. That meant shelling out $200 a month, and (assuming she met the deductible for prescription meds which was separate from the other deductible) she would have to submit all the paperwork and then wait 2 months to be reimbursed for 80% of the cost each time she had the prescription refilled.

the point I'm trying to make is by making health insurance mandatory will result in plans that people won't use because they can't afford to pay up front for medical costs, which means insurance companies aren't going to be paying out but they will still be collecting the monthly premiums.

[Hieronymus]

13. Sad, but true. In a system like the one in France your partner would have

immediately gone to a specialist , and the bill would be paid by the Government.

[Hieronymus]

14. Please read the following from The Economist ..

May 20, 2004

FRENCH HEALTHCARE....The Economist provides a capsule summary of healthcare in France:

Its hospitals gleam. Waiting-lists are non-existent. Doctors still make home visits. Life expectancy is two years longer than average for the western world.

....For the patient, the French health system is still a joy. Same-day appointments can be made easily; if one doctor's advice displeases, you can consult another, a habit known as nomadisme médical. Individual hospital rooms are the norm. Specialists can be consulted without referral. And while the patient pays up front, almost all the money is reimbursed, either through the public insurance system or a top-up private policy.

For family doctors too, liberty prevails. They are self-employed, can set up a practice where they like, prescribe what they like, and are paid per consultation. As the health ministry's own diagnosis put it recently: “The French system offers more freedom than any other in the world.”

And despite the Economist's scary headline, which proclaims that "crisis looms," the French system provides this service to everyone in the country and does it for less than half the cost per person of the U.S. Even if they decide to raise taxes to cover a growing deficit in their healthcare fund (the subject of the Economist's article) their costs will still be less than half ours per person.

Now, there are undoubtedly drawbacks to the French system. They probably have fewer high-tech machines than we do, and the comparative cost figures may be skewed by the American love of elective procedures. Still, there would have to be a lot of drawbacks to make their system less attractive than ours.

So why not adopt it? Well, that would be socialized medicine. Can't have that, can we? After all, everyone knows that when you socialize something it automatically declines slowly into anarchy and uselessness. Right?

[TeamJordan23]

15. I agree, the Insurance companies would love a mandate. nm

[no name no slogan]

17. universal "health insurance" is a joke

We already have near universal coverage in Minnesota, through a combination of private/public programs that provide coverage for 99% of the population. Almost everybody has insurance here.

And healthcare is still unaffordable.

Any sort of mandate for health "insurance" will just mean another indirect subsidy to the big insurance companies. Which means more money for the middlemen, and less going to provide healthcare.

Polls repeatedly show that the American public DOES NOT want more "insurance": they want a single-payer, government-sponsored healthcare program, a la Medicare, that covers EVERYBODY and EVERYTHING.