When It comes to health Insurance… health insurance companies have no incentive to offer a good product at a fair price. Not only do they see nothing wrong in peddling crap, they want us to defend and protect their right to peddle crap. How they wrap gouging in the American Flag while screaming socialism escapes me. Since when is it patriotic or capitalistic to pay top dollar for an inferior product?
And let’s face it, the writing has been on the health insurance wall for decades. Not that they’ve bothered reading it, or made even the smallest attempt to change the small print – which, ultimately may have changed their fate. Oh no, they’ve behaved as if the government option was inevitable and, therefore, justified their obscene profits with their equally obscene lack of service. It’s as if they knew the end game and calculated how much money they could make until the inevitable happened.
The facts bear out this theory:
Today, as President Obama pushes for a sweeping reform, the system has eroded to the point that the data alone capture the urgent need not just for an overhaul of the existing system, but for the creation of a public health insurance option that will guarantee health insurance for all Americans. As the number of uninsured has risen to staggering levels – an estimated 50 million Americans will not have health insurance this year – the traditional model of employer-sponsored health insurance has been shown to be seriously flawed. Americans who once worried about losing health insurance if they lost their jobs now must entertain the possibility that their employers will not offer health insurance, or that the premiums will make it unaffordable. Minorities, children, and low-income households are at greater risk of going uninsured.
Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. If health insurance companies are okay with these numbers, then they’ll get exactly what they deserve – extinction. Go on and trot out the tired old argument about waiting for a hip replacement, but, the truth is, if taking yourself, or your child, to a doctor is something you can’t afford, hip replacements and seeing a specialist are the stuff dreams are made of.
—Although the majority of Americans under the age of 65, about 63%, have employer-sponsored health insurance, coverage has been steadily declining since 2000, even during periods when overall employment grew. Some 3 million fewer people had employment-based insurance in 2007 than in 2000. This loss of coverage was especially steep among children, where employer-sponsored health coverage dropped from 66% in 2000 to less than 60% in 2007. While still providing coverage to a majority of children, it is a slim majority that is getting smaller all the time.
—Average premiums for an employer-sponsored family plan have risen nearly 120% since 1999, three and a half times faster than workers’ earnings and more than four times faster than inflation. One of the reasons some workers do not have coverage is that they cannot afford the high premiums. This problem has hit low-income workers the hardest, although coverage levels have also fallen for college-educated workers.
—Fewer than half of all Hispanic Americans have health insurance through an employer. The rate of coverage among this group fell to 41.4% in 2002, from 45.8% last year. Among African Americans, only a slim majority have employer coverage: 51.6%, down from 56.1% in 2000.
—Workers in the service sector are highly unlikely to have health insurance through their employers. The coverage level among this group was just 29.5% in 2007. Fewer than half of all workers at small businesses with fewer than 24 employees had employer-sponsored health insurance from their own job.
Another example of greed run amuck. Personally, I won’t shed a tear over the loss of these leeches. They had their chance to save themselves and chose, instead, to pad their bank account. Good riddance.