{"id":9751,"date":"2009-11-30T09:59:19","date_gmt":"2009-11-30T16:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=9751"},"modified":"2009-11-30T09:59:19","modified_gmt":"2009-11-30T16:59:19","slug":"health-care-reform-%e2%80%93-it%e2%80%99s-a-shell-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/11\/health-care-reform-%e2%80%93-it%e2%80%99s-a-shell-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Health-care reform \u2013 It\u2019s a shell game"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Guest<\/p>\n

Health-care reform, as Congress presents it to us, is incomprehensively complex and non-understandable. If you want to control things, that\u2019s exactly the situation you would want to create.<\/p>\n

There are hundreds of lobbyists trying mostly to keep things really complicated for us \u2013 the folks who will pay for it \u2013 so they can keep it their way.<\/p>\n

Occam\u2019s Razor<\/a>: When there is more than one possible solution for a problem, the simplest is most likely to be the best.<\/p>\n

Health-care reform\u00a0made simple: The public option is a non-issue being made into everything. It (sort of a Medicare-for-the-masses) will also go nowhere. If it comes about, it will be provided for only a small\u00a0set of the insured \u2013 those who can\u2019t afford anything else. It will serve only a small portion of the population \u2013 and not you and me.<\/p>\n

Think about it \u2013 if the public option reached any appreciable part of the population, it would be very close to single payer \u2013 and we can\u2019t have that! Why not? Don\u2019t ask\u2026<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s why<\/h3>\n

We don\u2019t exactly understand why \u2013 but here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n

How do\u00a0insurance companies\u00a0work? Like any business, they sell something to make money. What do they sell? Payouts? Benefits? No. They sell peace of mind. They sell the assurance that if you are
\ntheir customer and you end up qualifying for a payment from them for whatever your insurance covered, you will get it. Car accident, house burns down, or you get sick, depending.<\/p>\n

But those payments to folks with losses are expenses to the insurance companies. Their real job is to limit expenses and drive as much of the premiums as possible to the bottom line \u2013 and executive salaries and stuff like that. So the business of the insurance companies, like any profit-making enterprise, is to increase the income \u2013 premiums and reimbursements \u2013 and limit the expenses, which are claims paid to policy holders.<\/p>\n

If they deny claims or coverage, they make money. If they let costs go up, they make money because premiums go up, and they also make a percentage of their total payout. What needs to be done is for Congress to tightly restrict the insurance companies\u2019 profits and internal shifting of money, so they\u00a0are forced to provide a good product \u2013 peace of mind and coverage \u2013 at a reasonable price. It is done in other countries.<\/p>\n

The insurance companies want anything but that. They like business as it is for them.<\/p>\n

The diversion<\/h3>\n

So the insurance companies are spending over $1 million each day to make sure they don\u2019t get regulated, and to keep our attention away from that aspect of things. The best way to do that is to provide a diversion \u2013 and it\u2019s the public option.<\/p>\n

The public option is the deal \u2013 the pea in the shell game. Our attention is being drawn totally to the arguments over the public option, and in the end it means almost nothing. And it totally distracts attention from what needs to be done with and to the insurance companies themselves.<\/p>\n

In the final analysis, they will be required not to drop coverage for my cancer case because I forgot to\u00a0tell them I had acne 50 years ago, and stuff like that. But they will still insure almost all of us, at rates they set and profit from, without meaningful control of their\u00a0bottom lines. What\u2019s going on?<\/p>\n

We are being betrayed by Congress — both parties. I think that is the right word. Those folks have a job to do, they are the only ones who can do it, and they are not doing it. In fact, they are working to\u00a0deceive us into thinking they are doing it, or trying so very, very hard against all odds, when they really aren\u2019t working on the problem at all.<\/p>\n

They are playing \u201cHide the Issue\u201d with us. We will end up with a mess that will make the insurance companies richer and richer, and we will pay.<\/p>\n

Disheartening to the extreme<\/h3>\n

I think the president did the right thing by putting the whole issue in the lap of Congress to start with, rather than trying to work out a plan and send it to them. It puts the credit for what happens exactly\u00a0where it belongs. Congress is not only not working well, it is working clearly against the interests of us, the people it needs to work for. It\u2019s disheartening in the extreme.<\/p>\n

We aren\u2019t going to get the\u00a0health-care plan\u00a0we need, and we have nowhere else to turn.<\/p>\n

But don\u2019t fall into the public option trap. It\u2019s just a way to keep us from paying attention to the issues that really matter.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what I think.<\/p>\n

Hearn is retired and has lived in Las Cruces with his wife Dona for about six years. He has discovered a new career as a volunteer working to help animals, people who need help and doing issue analysis for local\u00a0elected officials.\u00a0He finds Las Cruces a great place to live that provides amazing opportunities to contribute to the welfare of the community.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Health-care reform, as Congress presents it to us, is incomprehensively complex and non-understandable. If you want to control things, that\u2019s exactly the situation you would want to create. There are hundreds of lobbyists trying mostly to keep things really complicated for us \u2013 the folks who will pay for it \u2013 so they can keep it their way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,16],"tags":[117,116],"class_list":["post-9751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-guest-columns","tag-health-care","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}