"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.

Guardian Article on Health Care in the U.S.

"Expensive and divisive: how America is losing patience with a failing system / Onus on workers to buy health insurance as rising costs force firms to end perk"

The US spends about 16% of GDP on healthcare, a proportion expected to climb to 20% by 2015, according to the National Coalition on Health Care. At present spending levels of $1.6 trillion a year, which works out at $6,700 per capita, is double what is spent in countries such as France. And yet that still leaves some 47 million Americans entirely without health coverage, and tens of millions of others under-insured, according to latest census figures.

It also fails to guarantee a better service to those Americans with access to healthcare. The US ranks last or near the bottom on quality, access, efficiency, equity and healthy lives, according to a report in May 2007 from the Commonwealth Fund, which studies healthcare.

"The US healthcare system is considered a dysfunctional mess," writes Ezekial Emanuel, chairman of the department of clinical bioethics, in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. . . .

Full article here. I found this paragraph telling:

However, the US has - with [the British] government's encouragement - made inroads here. United Health, a US healthcare provider based in Minneapolis, arrived in the UK in 2004 to develop a scheme which had succeeded in keeping frail and elderly people out of hospital in the US, although an evaluation in November showed it had reduced neither the number of admissions nor deaths.

(But I'll bet you the company made money on the "scheme" nonetheless.)

Clinton on Health Care (So Far)

While rivals Barack Obama and John Edwards have proposed detailed health care overhaul plans, Clinton is taking an incremental approach. She started with a speech in June on reducing costs, followed by Thursday's address on quality, and will outline her plan for universal health care coverage next month.

''My order here is deliberate,'' said Clinton, a New York senator. ''In order to forge a consensus on universal health care, we need to assure people that they will get the quality they expect at a cost they can afford.''

. . .

Speaking later in Manchester, Clinton said her universal health care plan would not involve a single-payer government system. Instead, she said, she would consider expanding Medicare and allow people to join the federal employees insurance program.

''I think you don't want to take choices away from Americans. We're big on choice here. But you've got to have some framework so the choices work better,'' she said.

Source

Wednesday Night

Getting back in front of the eight ball, hay fever notwithstanding. (And there is no hay anymore in Miami, except maybe in Miami Lakes. Hmmm. Where is this hay coming from!?) Took several sprays of my gold-plated nosespray tonight and right now am doing better. I just don't want to get addicted to it, since, aside from being a steroid, it costs $50 for 120 metered sprays on my healthcare plan. I guess I shouldn't bitch that some advanced countries have universal healthcare and basically free drugs. Also not to be bitchy that I assume our pharmaceutical companies make loads of profits by charging Americans over full price while negotiating lower costs with the foreign countries' healthcare plans, while we don't even have one. How American is that. Hmmm.

Bought three new pairs of shoes tonight, all the same but in different colors. I hate shopping for clothes. My shoes were practically destroyed (by hurricanes, etc.), however, so it was about time. I was starting to feel ashamed at work. Well, no more! I've got some lovely boat shoes to wear to work.