Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on June 30, 2012
Obamacare – Affordable Care Act – ACA – Justice Roberts decision – ACA constitutional
I used to own and operate a physical therapy practice from 1989 to 1996, so I know more than most people about the insurance industry. I never understood the media’s argument against health care. When Justice Roberts put in the final decision, the stock market rallied in the health sector. People who once played Russian roulette with their lives will now be able to get health insurance. People who are dying won’t leave their loved ones holding huge debts that could wipe them out. And most importantly, there is no such thing as “death panels.” I can assure you that.
But I was never completely happy with Obamacare. Let’s re-write the Affordable Care Act to be what it was intended to be: affordable health insurance that covers pre-existing conditions, yes, but also offers a public option. Let people have a choice to purchase the plan, even if they are self-employed.
It’s easy to write an ACA that makes sense: just take Medicare and add maternity and child health. There was no need to start from scratch.
There’s only one thing I don’t like about being taxed for insurance: the whole thing should not be privatized. Insurance companies have shown us time and again that they can not be trusted with huge sums of profits. Most of it goes toward the top executives’ salaries and not toward what they should provide: healthcare. Case in point: United Healthcare’s Stephen J. Hemsley makes 48.8 million per year. You can’t tell me that he makes money like that by making the company profitable without also realizing that his efforts and money isn’t going toward improving his subscriber’s healthcare. I know; my daughter and I have experienced being on the United Healthcare plans, and it was no picnic trying to get services.
We shouldn’t have health insurance companies at all because they operate in a perpetual state of conflict of interest. They are supposed to “make money” and “be profitable” and yet they are supposed to “provide funding” for “healthcare”… Doesn’t anyone else see how those two ideals conflict? Medicine should be socialized, end of story. Thirty-two of the thirty-three developed nations have universal health care, with the United States being the lone exception [1].
Norway 1912 Single Payer
New Zealand 1938 Two Tier
Japan 1938 Single Payer
Germany 1941 Insurance Mandate
Belgium 1945 Insurance Mandate
United Kingdom 1948 Single Payer
Kuwait 1950 Single Payer
Sweden 1955 Single Payer
Bahrain 1957 Single Payer
Brunei 1958 Single Payer
Canada 1966 Single Payer
Netherlands 1966 Two-Tier
Austria 1967 Insurance Mandate
United Arab Emirates 1971 Single Payer
Finland 1972 Single Payer
Slovenia 1972 Single Payer
Denmark 1973 Two-Tier
Luxembourg 1973 Insurance Mandate
France 1974 Two-Tier
Australia 1975 Two Tier
Ireland 1977 Two-Tier
Italy 1978 Single Payer
Portugal 1979 Single Payer
Cyprus 1980 Single Payer
Greece 1983 Insurance Mandate
Spain 1986 Single Payer
South Korea 1988 Insurance Mandate
Iceland 1990 Single Payer
Hong Kong 1993 Two-Tier
Singapore 1993 Two-Tier
Switzerland 1994 Insurance Mandate
Israel 1995 Two-Tier
And there is one more problem with Universal Health Care: if we don’t get our environmental house in order, with (for example) autism and cancer rates soaring, we’ll be broke even if our government administers the plan flawlessly. It takes both: to improve the health of our planet as we improve the government that supposedly “supports” our health.
http://truecostblog.com/2009/08/09/countries-with-universal-healthcare-by-date/