Healthcare: The Big Scam

This is in answer to someone who said we didn't need a public option.  As I understand it, the public option only benefits the insurance companies.  Everyone, however, needs access to quality health care.  So:


Dear Sir,


I have a preexisting condition that even with generics costs about $6000 per year in medications. When we retire we will be paying both halves of our insurance or I will have to commit a crime or be institutionalized in order to keep my meds coming.


If we don't have medical coverage for everyone we will be paying in more taxes to pay for indigent care in government owned facilities, public health to protect the general population from communicable diseases, immunizations, disability, homelessness, welfare, state mental health care and prison for violent offenders who are not getting their psych meds. This doesn't even take into account children who are orphaned or virtually orphaned when their parents die or become permanently disabled from diseases that they cannot afford to treat because they have no health insurance.


We have a public health care system that is one of the finest in the world: The Veteran's Administration. This model can be used to create a health care system for the rest of the country. Why should we have to pay for loss of property values, public housing, welfare benefits and child support for people who, if treated, could continue to work and pay their mortgages instead of have to quit because they have a treatable cancer but no (or not enough) health insurance?


Why is it Americans think that providing health care to everyone is a bad thing?  Health is a public issue. Asthma is the disease that causes the most absenteeism in school children in the country and costs our education system millions.  The elderly live in fear of the whims of politicians changing their currently sub-standard care. And people without health care or medicare pay up to twice as much for treatments like coronary bypasses. Why should someone without insurance pay that much more than medicare patients?


The current health care system is designed to put people out on the street if they have a catastrophic illness. Therefore, only the rich can survive being extrememly ill or having a bad accident. Because if insurance companies continuously attempt to deny coverange... that is their knee jerk response. 


Perhaps it is a quiet form of genocide.


And why isn't the health care system run by doctors?  They know what's going on and what's needed. It is in other countries and is quite successful. So what if you have to wait six months for a hip replacement? After six months, you have your hip replacement. You don't get put off because of fighting with an insurance companyuntil it's too late.


There is no reason for insurance companies to be in charge of our health care. They are not the patients, they are not the doctors. They are just the people who have managed to put themselves in a place to collect money no matter what the medical outcome.


I've been in the public sector for thirty five years. All programs run toward entropy. We need reins on insurance companies. This is a good first step. Giving insurance companies more leeway (like interstate rights) will just make the system more susceptible to fraud and abuse. Deregulation is never good for the average citizen.  But it's "gud fer bidness".


What's my stake in this?  I'm a citizen.  I'm not retirement age, but with any luck I will be.  I'd like to live to be a healthy senior citizen, a condition which will require preventative medical care.  This is a plan which is in direct opposition to the financial interests of insurance companies.   I just hope someone sees the light soon.