UNIVERSAL HEALTH INSURANCE MAKES GOOD SENSE.

Libertarians and most Republicans have succeeded in brainwashing their allies against Universal Health Insurance here in the USA. Unsurprisingly, some of their major donors are connected to private health insurers or for-profit health services. 

Most Americans are unaware of just how ripped off they are by private health insurers. These huge companies with glass towers and other investments are not charitable institutions, dedicated to the health of subscribers. If you think that, you are naive. And the myth that USA health care is the best in the world is simply a lie propagated by vested interests.

Yes. Private insurance companies employ many clerks, case managers, reviewers, etc.. They do not pay their rank and file generously. I know. I once worked for one. I sat in a cramped cubicle and did telephone work all day for a significantly lower wage than I was paid for direct-care nursing. I was the only man in an office of 100+ women. Common lunch conversation among the women was about their choice to sacrifice clinical nursing for regular hours and less pay.

I have also been under the thumb of the disability insurance wing of the private medical insurance industry. That experience was perhaps the most stressful economic experience of my life, as I struggled to survive a terminal prognosis, alone and out of work in a house with a sizable mortgage. Describing the insurance company staff as "ruthless" or "devious" would be too kind. By comparison, the people at Social Security were angels. 

Even Medicare Part D , the drug program, is in the hands of private medical insurers who "process" the claims for the program at a premium cost to the retiree. And, if you have chronic illness which requires expensive medications regularly, the monthly premiums are not cheap. These plans were the bait-and-switch products of the Bush and Obama administrations. So the insurance companies are profiting out of the pockets of retirees, who have spent lifetimes paying taxes and into Social Security, under the label of a government program.

Eliminating private health insurers will immediately lower health care costs. Common sense. These companies complain of low profit margins, but you have to question why they fight universal insurance so viciously. 

Universal health insurance can operate exactly like private health insurance. There is no private secret recipe. All it would take is computers and bean-counters. The government have ample access to both. Case managers, utilization reviewers, consultants, etc.. are already available to the private insurers and would be available to the government. Any flim-flam explanation as to how this will be too expensive to set up is nonsense. Look at the military budget and get back to me on that.

Medical institutions would not have to change much of anything. They are already heavily stomped on by private insurers who have even taken to forcing doctors to prescribe according to insurance company regulations. Some Italian-suited hospital MBA's may get the ax, but that would not effect patient care in the least.

The secret sauce of any insurance program is premiums. Universal health INSURANCE means just that. Now, those with no insurance and no money get their health care for free ...from the taxpayer. This includes illegal immigrants, for example. 

Hospitals cannot deny emergency care to anyone in the USA. Who did you think pays for it all? You do. And a trip to any urban emergency department will open your eyes to the fact that the uninsured just go to the ER whenever they please instead of having preventative care from a doctor. Yes. They have to wait a long time if they simply have a sore throat, but that is why they come with ten relatives to keep themselves amused.

If every American was subscribed automatically to a universal health insurance from birth, premiums would be distributed across the entire population. Most of the population at any given time is healthy. This is the private insurance racket, from which they extract all that money they invest. 

Bernie Sanders, sadly our most articulate educator on the subject in higher politics today,  really sucks at explaining this. The reason is most likely that giving out any real information about the workings of private health insurance in the USA is against the insurers' interests. But, as Senator Sanders has said, seniors are not generally dissatisfied with Medicare A and B. 

Medicare deals directly with providers. Its portion of costs is typically 80% for subscribers, who are then forced to get a private insurance plan to cover the additional 20% or pay that out of pocket. That 20% is most likely fat tagged onto the costs anyway. Medicare carefully monitors costs and pricing. As subscribers, we get regular statements of our expenditures in the mail. We are even encouraged to dispute the expenditures. Private insurers do not encourage dispute. They dictate.

And what about the uninsured? They would no longer be costing us billions annually in emergency room visits. The universal health insurance can be required of all USA residents, regardless of citizenship status.  

Are Americans so stupid that they cannot figure out how to provide universal health insurance to themselves through their government? I wonder. Do Americans really think that "the best" doctors will run away from the USA under a universal health insurance program? Where the hell would they go in the developed world, since universal health insurance exists just about everywhere else? That is a lie concocted by private insurers, hospital administrators and physician lobbies.

Why? Because USA health care is the golden goose. It is overly costly because it is corrupted by corporate greed. Plain and simple. Universal health insurance is the cure for that greed which sucks excess billions out of the pockets of Americans each and every year.

Please watch the video above to get an example of one system. The French model.