Obama's Health-Care Reform

The key has always been about serving society by using the tools of capitalism and free market and not the other way around i.e. serving the ideology of capitalism and the free-market. That is why we have a regulated free market (kinda oxymoronic) - these regulations came about over time as societies faced crisis'es and imbalances caused by the free-market.

The goal of reform should be to provide complete and efficient health-care to most in society and use the free-market as a tool to achieve this. We have had a pure for-profit health insurance system for the last 40 years and we see the results are pure evil i.e. it has negative impacts on society (see my blog entry regarding this topic: Insider's Case for Health Care Reform). The Health Plans merely cherry pick the healthiest and find ways to screw everyone when they get old or sick. Regardless of whether its employer based or not - as long as its pure for-profit with no regulations - they will continue to cherry pick for maximum profits. You will only find this out when you start getting sick - they will gladly take your money now while you are healthy and promise you the world.

Obama is trying to find the right balance of primarily serving society while trying to leverage free-market profit incentives. He is trying to put in the right regulations to serve society (for-profit companies will have no incentives otherwise). Additionally, a Govt. Plan will create an honest upper-limit of profit-making that other private health-plans will not be able to cross - thereby keeping pure for-profit incentives in check within the health-insurance industry (which has been proven for the last 40 years to result in societal evil). As part of this balancing act the Health care delivery systems (i.e. clinics, hospitals, doctors etc.) will continue to operate in the realm of free-market as they always did.

An Insider's case for Health Care Reform

Very convincing arguments for Health Care Reform and why unchecked profit making incentives in the Health Insurance industry creates evil (from a Society's perspective) were made by the Insurance Insider Wendell Potter.

Wendell Potter formerly worked at CIGNA leading up their PR web of deceit and was instrumental in defeating the Clinton Health Care Reform of the 90s.

Some key points he had:

Wall Street Investors punish Insurers based on their measure of Medical Loss Ratio - essentially a measure of how many cents to the dollar$ of your premiums go towards paying claims. The lower the value the more profitable the company. In the early 90s it was about 95 cents to the dollar but now it has reached approx 80 cents to the dollar. CEO / Executive pay is directly based on this measure.

They like to scare the public against Govt. based plans saying: You will have a Govt. bureaucrat standing between you and your doctor! - well having Wall-Street and Corporate bureaucrats stand in your way purely for profit with an incentive to kill your claim (not to mention you) is gotta be much worse don't you think?

Finally, Govt run Medicare has higher satifaction ratings than private plans and operate with a 3% administrative overhead while private Insurance plans have a 20% overhead mostly going towards excessive executive salaries, claim denial processes and negative PR strategies - so essentially 20% of your premiums go towards screwing you!

Watch the Bill Moyers Interview..(where i got my info)

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/watch2.html

Another interview:

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/16/former_insurance_exec_wendell_porter