Wednesday, May 13, 2009

How Gracious of You, Health Insurance Companies!





Recently, the health insurance companies, following discussions with the White House, have pledged to work to reduce costs by 1.5% of a year -- which could save $2 trillion dollars over the next ten years.

Unfortunately, there's two problems with this. First, their pledge is completely voluntary. They have no obligation to follow through. Secondly, healthcare costs are actually rising by 6% ever year.

We can continue to toy around with the idea that we can regulate private insurance companies into offering affordable and available healthcare to all, or we can stop letting insurance companies dictate what kind of healthcare reform we get and demand that the government offer a public health insurance option -- based on Medicare's efficient not-for-profit model -- to all. Go here to use TrueMajority's tools to write a letter to your local newspaper in favor of the public option.

1 comments:

Bryant said...

I work at a pharmacy. I see people every single day that I work who are complaining about their insurance.

Medicaid and Tricare (government health programs) cause the most problems.

Medicare Part D isn't *as* bad, but it's still pretty bad. Why don't *you* go tell an old woman that her Medicare insurance has reached the donut hole (which I have to do on a regular basis). *You* go watch her break down into panic, anger (She'll scream at you even though it's not your fault.), disbelief, near-tears, or whatever other mood she ends up in. Then you can come back and praise Medicare.

If you think these programs are great, you're fooling yourself.

There are lots of problems with private insurances, too, but on the whole I'd say that the government-backed ones result in the most problems.

Furthermore, don't forget that for many years, the government was involved in the HMO market.