Insurance is an evil scam which is destroying America. Why should one man profit ( the investor ) at another man's expense? ( patient ) This is what happens all the time with the insurance industry in health care.

The only way you win is if you lose ( your health ). The focus of health care should be CARE not profit. The insurance industry makes health care about profit. It should be called "managed profits."

I was forced to take a drug which was not right for me, didn't work for me, and was not advised for me by my doctor because the INSURANCE company said I had to try it before I would be approved for the right drug ( which was much more expensive. )

Why should the insurance company have anything to say about what medicine I should take?

It's absurd to think that somehow you will have a "savings" if you turn your health care dollars over to a "middle man" to play with on the stock market.

Insurance increases costs and decreases quality of care. It's a scam. It removes accountability from health care. Nobody is responsible for keeping costs low.

The idea that you CAN understand insurance contracts should be challenged. Have you ever read one?

You shouldn't need a lawyer to get a doctor. This is what frequently happens with insurance-based health care.

We need to cancel our insurance and insist on health care for everyone provided by taxes, like Canada and many other countries already do. This will put health care spending in direct competition with military spending. It should be in competition because war is unhealthy for humans and other living things.

Steve Moyer

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Everyone accepts the need for auto insurance, life insurance, and property insurance. Why is health insurance being singled out for criticism?

The answer, boiled down, seems to be, "Because when it comes to health care we have a right to free money."

Nonsense. There is no such right in nature, in ethics, or in the Constitution, any more than there's a right to free car repairs. Nor is there a corresponding obligation for anyone to pay for such things.

This is doubly true in the absence of any parallel accountability for weight, sloth, smoking, risky sex, or other lifestyle choices.

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A staff writer at The New Yorker and some experts have examined Medicare data from the successful hospitals of 10 regions, and they have found evidence that more effective, lower-cost care is possible.

Please be 'sure' to visit http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/opinion/13gawande.html?hp for credible evidences !

Some have followed the Mayo model with salaried doctors employed, Other regions, too, have found ways to protect patients against the pursuit of revenues over patient.
And a cardiac surgeon of them said they had adopted electronic systems, examined the data and found that a shocking portion of tests were almost certainly unnecessary, possibly harmful.

According to analysis, their quality scores are well above average. Yet they spend more than $1,500 (16 percent) less per Medicare patient than the national average and have a slower real annual growth rate (3 percent versus 3.5 percent nationwide).

Surprisingly, 16 % of about $550 billion (the total of medicare cost per year) is around $88 billion per year, except for Medicaid (total cost of around $500 billion per year), medicare 'alone' can save $880 billion over the next decade.

In addition, under the reform package, along with the already allocated $583 billion, the wastes involving so called "doughnut hole" , the unnecessary subsidies for insurers, abuse, exorbitant costs by the tragic ER visits etc are weeded out, the concern over revenue (below) might be a thing of the past.

(( Net Medicare and Medicaid savings of $465 billion + the $583 billion revenue package = $1048 billion - the previously estimated $1.042 trillion cost of reform = $6 billion surplus - $245 billion (the 10-year cost of adjusting Medicare reimbursement rates so physicians don’t face big annual pay cuts) = the estimated deficit of $239 billion ))

In modernized society, the business lacking IT system is unthinkable just like pre-electricity period, nevertheless, the last thing to expect is happening now in the sector requiring the best accuracy in respect to dealing with human lives. Apparently the errors by no e-medical records have spawned the crushing lawsuits (Medical malpractice lawsuits cost at least $150 billion per year), and these costs have led to the unnecessary tests, treatments, even more profits so far. And in different parts of the U.S., patients get two to three times as much care for the same disease, with the same result.

Thank You !

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Even a man as powerful as the president has difficulties taking on the health insurance industry. They will spend billions before they allow their profits to shrink. but the president will prevail and get national health care passed. The biggest battle the president can engage himself in would be one against the arms industry. But it would be suicide for him to take on something bigger than him self.

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The overwhelming consensus in the Halls of Power not only here in the USA but across the world is a unified commitment to the policies and programs and practices of Neo-Liberalism. They are expressly interested in expanding and extending Capital and capitalist methods to every nook and cranny of the planet and outer space. It's the overwhelming preferred majority interest.

One thing they are explicitly and very clearly not committed to is any expansion or extension at all in the realm of social services or labor rights.

In fact, they are committed to the contraction to the maximum extent possible in such areas.

Anyone aligned with any 'left' at all would do well to consider these things.

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Insurance is "a scam", as a previous comment pointed out--and, it is facilitated by goverment-granted tax expenditures to help make it even more profitable for the scamsters.
But, that does not make the so-called reform bill a viable alternative.

First, the bill keeps all of the favorable tax treatment of the financial intermediaries intact. Second, the bill takes it for granted that our horrible health care system, based as it is on Big Pharma friendly allopathic myopia, is a standard of care worth preserving. Third, now that the so-called "public option" has been abandonned, the goverment will be paying and workers will be gouged for the outrageous costs of the Medical Industrial Complex through the financial intermediaries. This is Hillary Care all over again. Forth, there is nothing about prevention...no benefits for those who live and spend their resources to eat and live in a healthful manner and not be a burden to their fellow countrymen by becoming obese Cheeto-eating diabetics with cardiovascular disease &etc..

The least of our problems in regard to health is who is going to pay for it. The 'reform' institutionalizes our mistakes and will expand them in regulation after regulation after regulation.

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coming out of this.

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