To make health care affordable, attack insurers' greed

[depakid]

By Phil Angelides

As California tackles health care reform, there's broad agreement on at least one thing -- we won't be able to expand coverage to the 6.8 million uninsured Californians unless we at the same time do something about the soaring insurance costs that are punishing hard-working families and employers alike.

The good news is that we should have no trouble finding ways to contain costs. Our health care system is hugely inefficient. We spend more money per person, and provide care to a smaller percentage of our population, than any other advanced country. To cut costs, we need only have the political courage to look in the right places.

<snip>

Since 2000, health insurance companies have doubled premiums to employers and families, raising them at four times the rate of inflation and faster than the cost of providing health care. As a result, the top seven health insurers are making record profits, triple what they made five years ago. Every year, more than $10 billion of the premiums paid by California businesses and families -- about 14 cents on each dollar of premiums -- are gobbled up in insurer overhead and profits and diverted from the medical care they are supposed to provide. By comparison, the administrative overhead costs in Medicare average about 3 percent. That $10 billion is more than enough to pay for health care for all of California's uninsured.

But that's only the beginning.

MUCH more on Arnold's boondoggle: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/16408849.htm

[EST]

1. "Insurance" is the problem all up and down the line.

There is no need for such insurers. With a public fund, run and closely monitored by the people, not some profit making enterprise, the jod gets done-we've proven it. The middle man can be removed and put at something constructive.

Contrary to the knee-jerk reaction built into so many so-called "conservatives," a democratic republic must borrow the best from all philosophies of government, including socialism.

[Mythsaje]

2. We, as citizens,

have no obligation to make millions of dollars for other people with no actual sense of obligation toward US.

And, yeah, that definitely applies to the insurance companies.

[rfranklin]

4. But all those insurance ecompany employees will go on welfare!

Think about it. Our swollen health insurance industry provides jobs to million of paper pushers while the government would only employ a fraction of those paper pushers. Suddenly there would be paper pushers in bread lines, civil unrest and maybe even revolution!

[Lasher]

3. 2004 Study shows elimination of insurance companies would pay for national health care

The potential administrative savings of $286 billion annually under national health insurance could:

Offset the cost of covering the uninsured (estimated at $80 billion)

Cover all out-of-pocket prescription drugs costs for seniors as well as those under 65 (estimated at $53 billion in 2003)

Fund retraining and job placement programs for insurance workers and others who would lose their jobs under NHI (estimated at $20 billion)

Make substantial improvements in coverage and quality of care for U.S. consumers who already have insurance

http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=1623