Overpaid Insurance

I'm critiquing an article by Vincent Navarro, entitled "The Next Failure of Health Care Reform", on Counterpunch.Health Care is a major problem in the United States of America. People have problems maintaining and accessing healthcare when they need it. When they do access their healthcare, they have problems paying their bills. The number of people that were uninsured in 2006 was 47 million or 15.9% of Americans. That does not even include the number of people who are underinsured and cannot pay their medical bills. Health care has become a political point at least on the democratic side during presidential campaigns. The problem is finding a president that has an effective plan to support a dramatic change to the healthcare system.

It started with Dukakis who spoke of universal health care but was afraid of being too radical, so it did not succeed. In 1992, Bill Clinton put universal health care at the center of his program. Clinton’s ties with Wall Street and Robert Rubin caused the lack of commitment to antagonize the insurance industries. He did manage to reform the health care system with one called “managed care,” which left insurance companies at the center of the system. Bill had a good system setup, but he compared to the Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration health plan. The problem was that those programs are managed by the government, a single-payer. The healthcare system we have now is managed by insurance companies. These insurance companies also donate large sums of cash to campaigns. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the insurance industry has contributed $525,188 to Hillary Clinton, $414,863 to Barack Obama, and $274,724 to John McCain. Interestingly not one of the candidates is asking for a publicly funded system. This is not allowed in most other democratic systems, so why is it allowed in the U.S.? There are things wrong with our system in my opinion, but is it completely bad?

The single-payer system of Canada is good if you do not have any emergencies. Ever wonder why people come to the U.S. for critical conditions? The U.S. has good medical facilities and offers good services. The question is at what price? Would you rather get treated now and worry about the large bill later, or wait in a long line but pay less.I found an article from CBSNEWS entitled "Canadian Health Care in Crisis." In the article they discuss that the Canadian healthcare system is still good but it also needs work. One of the better aspects is that medical doctors know that they will get paid because they get reimbursed by the government, unlike the U.S. where they have to fight insurance companies. Usually the person being treated is stuck in the middle fighting their insurance. In the meantime, they are turned into collection agencies and it in turn damages their credit. The main problem is, like I stated, the waiting line for government hospitals. There were an estimated 1 million Canadians waiting for medical needs in 2005. In some parts of Canada they allow private hospitals where immediate assistance can be obtained.

If we cut out the middle man in the U.S., the insurance companies, I think that would put us in the right direction. The overhead for the public system in Canada is only 4% compared to the U.S. of 30% that goes to marketing administration. The U.S. spends 14% on their GDP on insurance which is more than Canada. What would be the reason for keeping insurance companies? Is it an economic reason or is it a political reason?