Big hearing yesterday with the Connector Board, with a parade of special interests — and general interests, i.e. jes’ folks — telling the Connector folks what they need from new health care plans. Health Care For All (here’s their rundown), the City of Boston and some other fine groups want prescription drugs to be included in all “creditable” plans. Employers don’t want the drugs to be required. Yeah, drugs cost, no question. And everybody who’s not an insurer hates plans with high deductibles: hospitals, single-payer advocates, Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, etc. etc. And the idea of a lifetime payout limit sounds just unbelievably cruel to me: What do you tell the patient with the chronic disease — sorry, your lifetime payout is up, and we’re all going home? Apparently.
I just don’t see how we can talk intelligently about the cost of plans if we don’t actually know what we’re paying for. The insurers tell us they’re only breaking even, or making a teensy-weensy little profit off of the new plans. Well, if two-thirds of their overhead is indeed underwriting (ie. determining and selecting cash cows good risks) and marketing … mightn’t you think there’s some fat to be cut?
And wouldn’t it be nice to know what we’re making people buy?
We’re lucky that our insurers aren’t permitted to do medical underwriting. In other states, insurers can charge you more, or deny coverage altogether based on your health status.
<
p>
Because of reforms here in the 90s, insurers for individuals and small groups are required to take all comers, and can only vary premiums based on age and a few other factors. They can’t take health or previous claims into account. The age factor is constrained, so the young end up subsidizing the old.
one that can be the difference between life or death, permanent disability or full health, economic stability or bankruptcy, human dignity or having your dignity stripped away, I certainly hope we can do better than be “not as bad” as other states in regards to our healthcare system.
<
p>
And we’re much worse in terms of cost — we pay 30% MORE per person on healthcare and that’s not just due to having less uninsured/more folks covered with taxpayer-funded insurance.
<
p>
“What’s inside the box?” – Here in Mass. it’s obscenely expensive insurance products sold to us at a profit by “Non Profit” Corporations. These products give you access to a lot of crappy quality, overly expensive and hard to access healthcare.
<
p>
I hope you’ll join the growing movement to demand streamlined financing single-payer universal healthcare as you learn more gory facts about “What’s inside the box” (these facts that are taking place ON OUR WATCH):
<
p>
Click the above link to see the LECG report that the Mass. Legel commissioned that revealed that 39% OF EVERY HC DOLLAR SPENT IN MASS. IS DIVERTED AWAY from actual hc spending.
<
p>
See the Inst. of Medicine (IOM) Rept “Consequences of Uninsurance” that reveals that at least 18,000 PEOPLE DIE PREMATURELY EACH YEAR in the U.S. due to not having health insurance.
<
p>
See the IOM Rept “To Err Is Human” that shows how almost 100,000 PEOPLE DIE FROM PREVENTABLE MEDICAL ERRORS each year in the U.S..
<
p>
See Wall Street Brokerage House reports for data on the RAMPANT PROFITEERING in the healthcare medical-industrial complex in the U.S., a complex that treats healthcare as a commodity and privilege for those who can and will pay highway robbery prices for lousy quality care.
<
p>
See Mass. Attorney General reports on our state’s healthcare industry corporations that claim to be “Non Profit” while they post HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS$$$ IN ANNUAL PROFITS and they rape our economy by not paying a fair share of taxes.
<
p>
As you might have inferred, I am mad as hell that this injustice of the highest order — DENYING THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE IN THE WEALTHIEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD THEIR LIVES AND THEIR DIGNITY — is taking place under our noses.
<
p>
And here in Mass. we let our politicians — led by BCBS, Partners HC, and AIM — take us down the wrong reform path; the entire healthcare system as currently financed and delivered is a harmful mess and the Mass. faux reform plan does next to NOTHING to address the underlying causes or solutions to this mess. It just continues to feed the beast.
<
p>
It is way too generous to say “Oh, it’s just good people caught up in a bad system” — No. It is people in positions of power including the executives at insurance companies such as Andrew Dreyfus and Cleve Killingsworth at BCBS and Charlie Baker and Bruce Bullen at Harvard Pilgram, and Jon Kingsdale, and our politicians in “leadership” who willfully obstruct needed reforms that would place people’s needs–and taxpayer needs–before profits and their high salaries.
<
p>
To learn more and to get involved in real reform that puts people before profits, and before political campaign contributions, please visit
MassCare
the
Alliance to Defend Healthcare
and for reform on the national level
Healthcare-Now
and
Medicare For All