Barbara Ehrenreich author of Nickel and Dimed blogged 2 days ago about her opinion of the alternatives that Americans are being offered in health care. I couldn't agree more! Here is what she said.
I didn't realize a few entries ago that the Visionary Activist interview with Catherine Austin Fitts I referred to was a two parter. The second half of the interview was even more interesting. Here is the archival link.
http://www.kpfa.org/...
This is how Ms. Fitts describs herself:
Catherine Austin Fitts offers a unique perspective on the global financial system and on the political economy. Her background includes Managing Director and member of the Board of the Wall Street investment bank, Dillon, Read & Co. Inc., Assistant Secretary of Housing - Federal Housing Commissioner in the first Bush Administration and President and founder of Hamilton Securities Group, Inc., an investment bank and financial software developer. Catherine has designed and closed over $25 billion of transactions and investments to-date and has led portfolio strategy for $300 billion of financial assets and liabilities.
http://www.solari.com/
I was on the Solari website when I discovered the blog by Barbara Ehrenreich.
Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of thirteen books, including the New York Times bestseller Nickel and Dimed. A frequent contributor to the New York Times, Harpers, and the Progressive, she is a contributing writer to Time magazine. She lives in Florida.
http://www.alternet.org/...
Bow your heads and raise the white flags. After facing down the Third Reich, the Japanese Empire, the U.S.S.R., Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein, the United States has met an enemy it dares not confront -- the American private health insurance industry.
With the courageous exception of Dennis Kucinich, the Democratic candidates have all rolled out health "reform" plans that represent total, Chamberlain-like, appeasement. Edwards and Obama propose universal health insurance plans that would in no way ease the death grip of Aetna, Unicare, MetLife, and the rest of the evil-doers. Clinton -- why are we not surprised? -- has gone even further, borrowing the Republican idea of actually feeding the private insurers by making it mandatory to buy their product. Will I be arrested if I resist paying $10,000 a year for a private policy laden with killer co-pays and deductibles?
Wow! I could not have said that better myself.
Leighton Ku, at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, gave me the figure of $776 billion in expenditures on private health insurance for this year. It’s also a big-time employer, paying what economist Paul Krugman has estimated two to three million people just turn down claims.
If my health care initiate goes through the amount of money the small county of Coconino would collect would be 3% of the $776 billion dollar industry--even at the modest prices I have proposed. That is for the mere 90,000 citizens that it would serve. In short, I think within one year there would be a reserve capable of allowing the rates to drop even further. I really do not think solvency is an issue with a local scheme.
This in turn generates ever more employment in doctors’ offices to battle the insurance companies. Dr. Atul Gawande, a practicing physician, wrote in The New Yorker that ''a well-run office can get the insurer's rejection rate down from 30 percent to, say, 15 percent. That’s how a doctor makes money. It's a war with insurance, every step of the way.'' And that’s another thing your insurance premium has to pay for: the ongoing "war" between doctors and insurers.
A really well run doctor's office. In fact could you tell me where to find the folks that can get it down to 15%. I have an opening.
Note: The private health insurance industry is not big because it relentlessly seeks out new customers. Unlike any other industry, this one grows by rejecting customers. No matter how shabby you look, Cartier, Lexus, or Nordstrom’s will happily take your money. Not Aetna. If you have a prior conviction -- excuse me, a pre-existing condition -- it doesn’t want your business. Private health insurance is only for people who aren’t likely to ever get sick. In fact, why call it "insurance," which normally embodies the notion of risk-sharing? This is extortion.
Think of the damage. An estimated 18,000 Americans die every year because they can’t afford or can’t qualify for health insurance. That’s the 9/11 carnage multiplied by three -- every year. Not to mention all the people who are stuck in jobs they hate because they don’t dare lose their current insurance.
Saddam Hussein never killed 18,000 Americans or anything close; nor did the U.S.S.R. Yet we faced down those "enemies" with huge patriotic bluster, vast military expenditures, and, in the case of Saddam, armed intervention. So why does the U.S. soil its pants and cower in fear when confronted with the insurance industry?
Kinda puts it in perspective.
Fellow citizens, where is the old macho spirit that has sustained us through countless conflicts against enemies both real and imagined? In the case of health care, we have identified the enemy, and the time has come to crush it.
And I have just the weapon!
Dr A’s Initiaive
Look, even if the Democratic idea of health care reform passes my initiative would become a local, government run, not for profit health insurance. It could compete within the system against both Medicare and private insurance. It is still worth doing, even if you think one of these other plans will pass, to give you a cost effective option that you control.