|
Wow, is that hypocritical thinking or what?
let me get this straight... Patients should have the "right" to pursue any therapy they want, whether proven, unproven or harmful, just because somebody out there says that a particular snake oil they concocted is effective. Just wondering if you think that their health insurance should pay for it as well?
And then, if they get sick and they want conventional therapy to make them well, which is available, yet so expensive that only a select few could afford to pay for it without insurance, health insurance has no obligation to insure them? Here in the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the world?
Healthcare in this country should be a basic right. It should be available to everyone. I'm not saying it should be free... it should not be. But those who are able to pay for insurance should pay, and those who can't should be covered by other programs. Every person should be insured. No person should be denied care or coverage, and just as every person who can afford insurance should be FORCED to buy it, insurance companies should NEVER be allowed to deny coverage to anyone based on "pre existing conditions". If they want to do that they should be forced OUT of the health insurance business. Let them sell auto insurance... then it's OK to deny coverage if someone has had 20 accidents. If our system operated on those basic tenets, we would be in a lot better shape than we are now. The idea that insurers should be allowed to micro evaluate risk and cherry pick all the healthy patients results in a system like what we have, where many, many people fall through the cracks.
By the way, what the insurance companies are doing by turning away higher risk patients is to transfer the cost to us.. the public. These patients end up getting their care, either through programs like Medicaid, or charity care which is paid for by taxes and higher costs for everyone else. This is so McGuire can walk away with his $100 million dollars.. money he stole from taxpayers, patients, and physicians.
Face the facts.... the large Insurance companies have singlehandedly destroyed our health care system, with the assistance of the government, who basically turned their backs and let them do whatever they wanted.
What we have now is a system where both patients and Physicians are dissatisfied, while insurance companies reap millions in profits (money that used to go pay for actual health care).
Until this is changed we will face continued increases in premiums, more health care rationing and denial of care, and more uninsured.
And by the way, the stuff in Sicko is also bogus. It does portray the problems in the US system, but if you think Cuban medicine is better... that's a total joke. It might be better for a society where Medicine is practiced at a third world level, but if you need a CAT scan, MRI, or a complicated operation, I wouldn't recommend going to Cuba. What Michael Moore neglected to mention in his film is that the technology there is about where we were in the early 70's. I don't know how many CAT scanners they have in Cuba, but in Canada, another socialized system, the wait is 6 weeks for a CAT scan!! My patients get mad if they have to wait more than 2 days.
|