BALANCING THE SCALES: OBAMACARE VS THE INSURANCE GIANTS

PATIENT FREEDOM VS HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANY'S FREEDOM

Thursday, June 28, 2012, the Supreme Court agreed that the Affordable Care Act commonly known as "Obama Care" was constitutional. We should be pleased. The "one percenters" (OPs) who have little need for equitable and affordable health care will try to convince you that the health care system we had prior to passage was just fine. (OPs are the approximately three million American multimillion and billionaires). They tout loss of our "individual freedoms" and promise to repeal the law. They and their facilitators distort the truth. What they favor is the least freedom for the people and the most freedom for the companies--their clients. The new health law is about freedom to choose. It tends to create a better balance between the freedom the insurance companies have and those that rightly belong to our citizens.

The radical right, the "OPs" and their media facilitators rant: ”Our health care is the best in the world". That is true, for the wealthy. Our system is the best in the world, and certainly it is even better IF you are a member of the top one percent. But numerous studies have shown that it does not provide good care for all Americans.

The OPs and their hirelings in the media, government, and think-tanks like the Heritage Foundation, claim that the health-care studies are "biased" against America. They make that lame assertion in response to legitimate scientific studies by the UN and other organizations which reveal that our system costs more, provides less timely service, less beneficial care and worse overall results than other types of health care systems. (The Commonwealth Fund in 2009 ranked USA last among six industrialized western nations. WHO in 2000 ranked USA 37th among all world nations, below Dominica and Costa Rica). The truth is we spend more, much more on health care and by all creditable accounts have higher morbidity, higher mortality and lower longevity than other similarly wealthy nations.

In response to these criticisms, the OPs and their media and government honchos try to claim that we have more ”freedom" in our system and freedom costs something. They will try to emphasize those freedoms such as the freedom to smoke tobacco, eat more sugar and salt-laced foods, drive faster on less regulated highways, carry and shoot concealed weapons, and (in some states) to have the luxurious freedom to ride a motorcycle free of the bulky encumbrance of a helmet which may protect your vital brain in a collision. These so called ”freedoms”, they claim, skew the results of our national health data to make our health care results look more like that of Bulgaria and Estonia rather than Canada or Western Europe. So when these super-wealthy folks, their friends in the insurance industry, and their unwitting supporters in the media "diss” Obama Care you can ask them these questions about our freedoms and how they have been parceled out between the business community and the consumer.

Why would you continue to let the health-insurance companies have the freedom to take more than 30% of their fees and allot them to administration and compensation for CEOs and investors, and then relegate the remainder, as little as 65%, for actual healthcare expenditures? Thus, before the ACA, out of every dollar the insurance companies spent, only 65 cents was used to defray actual health service costs. That is one main reason that our health and longevity outcomes are not as good as other industrialized western nations yet we spend twice the amount they do on their health care. The new bill, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) forces the insurance companies to limit their administrative costs to only 15%, or to spend 85 cents out of every dollar on actual health care service. (PS: Medicare--the government paid system uses only 2% of its funds for administrative purpose.) Shouldn't all of our freedoms include the right to have as much longevity, infant health, and effective care as those countires in Western Europe?

What about the freedom for access to preventative medical care? Why would you prefer that our uninsured citizenry, continue to be denied access to professional medical preventative care and instead must use expensive emergency room service? Often this type of care is not paid for by the patient and we all wind up "footing the bill" through elevated hospital costs. The ACA mandates that everyone have health insurance. That means that more emergency hospital visits will be paid for, hospital costs can fall, and more people will be getting preventative care rather winding up in a hospital emergency ward with something serious and expensive to cure. The ACA will save money over the long haul. That solution gives more freedom to the recipients of health service.

Why would you not be in favor of having the freedom of keeping your child insured under your family health plan until they are 26 years old--if they need it? The ACA now permits you to do that. That is more equitable and increased freedom.

What about the freedom of choice? Why hand over more choices and freedoms to the giant insurance companies? Prior to ACA , the insurance giants were free to "cherry pick" among potential clients like you, your children or grandchildren for those with the least likelihood of having costly disease? Then they had the freedom to exclude the others and relegate them to a life of medical uncertainty. What freedom is that? These companies are highly profitable already and can well afford to treat all patients equally. In the past, if you had some form of pre-existing condition, you would be excluded from affordable health insurance. The health insurance companies were always looking at their bottom line to limit any high risks and maximize profits. Now they can not.

Why would you want to continue to permit insurance companies to have the freedom to to cap the amount of money they can expend on your care or treatment, to limit their expenses and maximize their profits. Isn't that what health insurance is for? It serves to protect you against some unknown and catastrophic event. Shouldn't we be free to make such choices?

Who wouldn't agree that these provision in the ACA provide for a better balance between the freedoms of the citizen and those of the giant corporations? Don't fall prey to the lies and distortions of the three million OPs and their media hirelings on freedom issues--Obama Care is OK ---it expands freedom for the patient and citizen.

Get the picture?

rjk