I Really Can Not Stand It---

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A new report: Insurance Company Rate Hikes Driven by Greed, Not Underlying Medical Costs. Quell surprise, eh?

The cost of medical care is rising faster than inflation and doctors and hospitals are making more profit than they used to. BUT, insurance companies are raising their rates much faster than even that - over 20% faster than the amount they are paying doctors and two times the amount the underlying cost of care is rising. To put it another way, insurance companies are making more profit than ever (and they are making record profits) because they are raising their prices faster than their costs.

Rates go up for small business. Small business drops coverage. And then people have to seek insurance on the individual market where insurance companies make more profit because they deny coverage or raise their rates with impunity because individuals have a harder time fighting back.

And what, pray tell, are the insurance companies spending all that moola on? PERKS!

Anthem spent $27 million on 103 executive retreats to locations like Hawaii in 2007 and 2008 alone. From 2000 to 2008, insurance companies spent $716.4 billion of their premium dollars on administrative costs, salaries for their CEOs, and investor profit -- practically enough to fund the entire health reform bill.

And, so, this is why we must have--

Medicare for All!

And we must have it NOW.

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Why No Public Option?

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Mandating coverage of all, without a public option, is nothing more than a HUGE GIFT to the insurance companies.

47 million (roughly) new customers. Think about it. 47 million new customers. That's 47 million new customers to abuse, deny payment to, allow to die while waiting. That's premiums from 47 million new customers--much of it subsidized by tax payers.

Without a public option, the health insurance companies will be handed such a windfall of profits as has been heretofore unseen in this country.

The availability of health care for we the people will be no greater than it is now. The health insurance companies have been very bad players since the Clinton administration tried to force an overhaul in the early 1990's. Premiums have exploded. Payments made by them for care has diminished or vanished.

A mandate without a public option is like sending the uninsured through the mountain pass with no weapons with which to fight off the bandits (the health insurance companies, in case you don't get it). No cavalry to ride to the rescue. No ninjas to appear to save them. The bandits will make out like, well, like bandits.

Pheugh. (Please insert the dirty word of your choice here.)

Medicare for All

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