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I'm beginning to feel that we have a real problem in talking about health care. Sometime in the last couple weeks, I read a comment about how what we were arguing about had little to do with health care and everything to do with financing.
I didn't remark on it at the time, but was reminded of it again today in an excellent diary at DailyKos, where Something the Dog Said put perspective on how necessary it is to have a public health insurance option:
... [A]ccording to the AMA 94% of all insurance markets in the United States are highly concentrated
... Between 2000 and 2007 the top ten publically traded insurance companies saw profits increase 428%! Let that sink in, in a little over seven years they saw a 428% increase in profit, all the while passing on double digit increases in premiums to their customers!
... There is also a need for new legislation limiting the size of health care companies ...
I was with them up to that point, but the size of clinics and hospitals isn't the problem and talking about insurance companies as if they were your GP plays right into the hands of the 'we have the best health care in the world' crowd.
Because your doctor or physicians' assistant or nurse provides health care. Your dentist or psychiatrist provides health care. If you're like me and one of these fine medical professionals has cured something that ailed you, the term health care probably calls up some warm and fuzzy thoughts towards them.
But United Healthcare provides medical financing. As with the rest of the finance industry, health care financing is driven by unrestrained greed, unsustainable profits, and a sickening disregard for the public good.
Medical expense financing isn't health care any more than car insurance is a ride to work, and helping its purveyors hide behind our goodwill towards doctors is like confusing Geico with Ford Motors. So call the public option health insurance reform, or medical finance reform, but please (I say, with a sternly wagging finger pointed selfwards,) don't call it health care reform.
PS: Also. Help the folks at Firedoglake to keep up the whip for the public option.
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