"Health Care Providers"?

[tucsonlib]

Who is your health care provider? Your HMO? The company that issued your insurance policy? If you answered "yes", then you're a living example of how corporate lobbyists succeeded in shaping ("framing") the health care issue.


Let's cut through the crap - Doctors are health care providers. Nurses are health care providers. Paramedics are health care providers. Medical technicians are health care providers. Hospitals are health care providers.

Insurance companies, on the other hand, are health care middlemen. They are health care profiteers. They don't "provide" - They ration. They limit.

Somehow, it is taken for granted that corporations deserve a prominent role in any health care reform negotiations. After all, they're the ones who provide the stuff, right?

Haven't we had enough of this Orwellian B.S.?

"Enhanced interrogation" is to torture as "health care provider" is to profit-driven corporation.

[leftstreet]

1. K&R

"Enhanced interrogation" is to torture as "health care provider" is to profit-driven corporation.

[HowHasItComeToThis]

8. THEY ARE SKIMMERS

[Hepburn]

9. Skimmers?

I prefer: "Fucking bloodsuckers!" :hi:

[tucsonlib]

10. Why, Katherine! Did You Kiss Spencer With That Mouth?

:pals:

[DCKit]

13. Kate kissed Spencer.

Audrey kissed Mel Ferrer and some other dude.

Sorry, big fan of the Hepburns. All three.

[tucsonlib]

15. Yikes! I Am SO Embarrassed! Thanks!

I've destroyed the evidence..


:hi:

[rainbow4321]

2. K&R

[valerief]

3. In GWB language, they're Health Disproviders. nt

[tucsonlib]

4. In That Same Spirit...

I propose "orwell" be recognized as a verb. Then I could decry the orwellification of America.


:fistbump:

[CrispyQ]

5. k&r

I hope you use this in your letter to your congress persons & to your local paper!

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[jtrockville]

6. Heh, I've even heard "most of us get health CARE from our employers"

Really? Our EMPLOYER provides us with health CARE?

Unless we work for a doctor's office, hospital, clinic, or HMO, our employer does no such thing!

[leftofthedial]

7. I have met the sheeple

and the sheeple are us.

[many a good man]

11. You're wrong about HMOs not being providers

The doctors, nurses, technicians, etc. who treat me work for the HMO. They are not in private practice. Therefore my HMO is a health care provider by any definition of the term.

There is a certain synergy and cost savings associated when your insurer is also your provider. Like the VA or any completely government-run health care system (like in the UK), there are savings and convenience when all providers use the same system. GPs, nurses, and specialists like radiologists, urologists, etc. have easy access to medical records. As a patient I can make appointments and review my medical records online. I can also take charge of the medical care of an infirm relative the same way with his/her permission.

There are great opportunities for savings and efficiencies when the provider and insurer are the same. Unfortunately, in this country the provider/insurer is allowed to make great profits at my expense. Health care is something that should NEVER be driven by profit and greed. All other points of the OP are spot on.

[tucsonlib]

14. Thank You

But are you saying that your HMO actually owns, or runs the hospital or clinic where those medical personnel are employed? I would find an arrangement like that downright scary. It would like taking my car to a dealership for servicing, and the boss there tells me "Our mechanics are the best and brightest. They are well-intentioned and take pride in their work. But of course, you understand, I'm the boss, and maximizing profit is my number one concern. I have the final say as to exactly how the repair is done."

Except, of course, I doubt an HMO would be quite so honest and upfront.




:headbang:

[John Q. Citizen]

16. Also, if you decide to move, or you decide you really like a certain doctor that isn't

with that HMO, or you want a second opinion from a third party doctor, you are out of luck, or at least out of pocket.

[PHIMG]

12. So true. Let's cut out the middle man, thier waste, and thier CORRUPTION.

Bloody Hands. Private Insurers make self-interested and arbitrary claim and coverage denials relegating many to premature death.

Restrict Choice. Private Insurers restrict medical consumers’ choice in medical providers, inhibiting the proper function of the free market in medical services and enabling bad providers to thrive.

Adds Complexity. Over 1,200 Private Insurance bureaucracies complicate and impede the practice of medicine with differing and often conflicting billing and administrative policies.

Drains Resources. Nearly 30% of the healthcare spending funneled through health insurance middlemen is wasted on profit taking, underwriting, executive compensation and other unnecessary expense and waste.

Squanders Expertise. Our current health care model diverts providers' attention from "how to heal" to "how to get compensated" by the shameless insurers.

Manipulates the Media. Private Insurers exert a level of editorial control over the media via advertising purchases. Corrupts Our Politics. Private Insurers manipulate elected officials with campaign donations, plum corporate jobs, and an army of lobbyists.

Brainwashes the Populace. Private Insurers use paid media to lie directly to the populace, leveraging fear tactics and other highly sophisticated propaganda campaigns in order to evade accountability for the consequences of their actions and protect the status quo.

Restricts Debate. Private Insurers’ media and political operatives dishonestly malign genuine reform as “politically infeasible” in order to limit the debate to industry-blessed half measures.

Private Health Insurance Must Go! Reform proposals that do not remove private insurers from our healthcare system are morally unacceptable, fiscally irresponsible, and unsustainable even in the near term. These “mandate and subsidize” proposals are not well meaning attempts at realism by so-called centrists. They are a sinister attempt to marginalize the opportunity our country has at this defining moment to sideline the private insurers and move to a healthcare system that works – publicly funded and privately provided Medicare for all, as implemented in HR 676 – The United States National Health Care Act.

[cascadiance]

17. Insurance companies are *leeches* or *parasites*. That's even more accurate framing