"Clinton to Propose Universal Health Care"

It's about time.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday will lay out a plan to secure health insurance for all Americans while severely limiting the ability of insurers to deny coverage or charge higher premiums to people with chronic illnesses and other medical problems, her aides and advisers say.

. . .

Mrs. Clinton will not try to impose an overall limit on national health spending, the aides said. But she is prepared once again to do battle with insurance companies, which she has said “spend tens of billions of dollars a year figuring out how not to cover people” and “how to cherry-pick the healthiest persons, and leave everyone else out in the cold.”

. . .

[Clinton's aides] said . . . that Mrs. Clinton would amplify a comment in March when she declared, “We could require that every insurance company had to insure everybody, with no exclusion for pre-existing conditions.” . . .

The insurance companies are of course ready for this fight:

Karen M. Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the chief lobby for insurers, said they endorsed the goal of universal coverage. But Ms. Ignagni said that insurers denied only 3 percent of claims, and that many of those were for experimental procedures that employers did not cover.

Mary Nell Lehnhard, senior vice president of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, said, “Some of Mrs. Clinton’s proposals, while trying to make insurance more affordable for older, sicker people, could unintentionally drive up costs for young, healthy people and ultimately for everyone.” . . .

Denying even 3% seems to me a lot (I'll read more on this), and why should employers be in a position to make life-or-death decisions about their employees, especially if an experimental procedure might work and prove beneficial to other sick people as well?

Also, does Blue Cross then expect older, sicker people to pay higher premiums (when, because they're old and sick, they're probably least likely to be able to afford to)? The whole purpose of insurance is to spread the risk among a large pool of people, with everyone paying a reasonably affordable premium. Eventually the young, healthy people are going to get old and sick, too (I know this from experience), and their expenses will need to be covered by the premiums everyone (including themselves) has been paying.

The bottom line here is, the insurance companies just want to cover young, healthy people in order to maximize their profits to pay for their myriad bureaucracies and expensive executives and have some money left over for their shareholders. To hell with sick people. I personally think it's immoral for companies to operate in this way, let alone be in control of a nation's health care delivery system. (May I add that my doctor agrees on this.)

I'm all for Hillary if she has the guts to set this situation right. I'm glad to hear she's getting into the fray, and she of all the candidates has the experience under her belt for this whale of a confrontation.

Article here.