A Votre Sante

First, to respond to Terry's lament, I was indeed referring to the liberal/radical protesters from the '60s and early '70s who were loud and disruptive en masse (Chicago, Washington, etc.) Hey, even I walked out of my 1970 college graduation because of Cambodia. But while these were more generational outcries from idealistic mass movements, the current Tea Bag/ Town Hall protestors are either United Health employees forced to attend or fringe loonies who popped up as Joe the Plumber-wannabe whack-a-moles with no ideals whatsoever and a moral compass pointing directly south. And didn't you love Barney Frank telling that moron that she was the intellectual equivalent of a dining room table?

When I study a political problem I try to determine which arguments are valid from either side of the question. I generally approve of the current health-reform plan, and certainly agree with the Public Option (it's an OPTION, Republican morons, not an obligation!). But I also see where those expressing fiscal concerns have a reasonable isue upon which to debate, if they ever permitted debate. Medicare is in financial peril in the long-run, and Obama just today announced that the Federal deficit is likely to be bigger than he projected. Of course if people were just willing to pay a little more in taxes, but... AAAUUUGGHH!

I am not an expert on medical care or the insurance so I can only speak of my personal experience with various purveyors of health insurance. And all my experiences, save my current membership in an HMO, have been negative. In the early '70s I had an appendectomy for which Blue Cross would only pay $350, a ludicrously low amount for an operation that then required a week-long hospital stay. Twenty years later I had an operation that supposedly cost about $4K, but the hospital billing was listed as about $30K. I did not have to pay most of that, but someone did. Or not. My last experience with a commercial insurance company involved recompense for a colonoscopy (a procedure which, as a preventive measure, ought to be covered), which was practically nothing. It was then and was so mishandled because of clerical incompetence that I ran away screaming to Kaiser. At least then I'd always know what I needed to pay, and an open-heart operatioin would cost me no more than the co-pay.

The most dire problem with the current system has long been the arcane actuarial/accounting practices of the Medical/Insurance complex in whicht medical procedures are billed at at least ten times their actual costs. For insured people somehow the pay-out is no worse, but if they are uninsured, suddenly they have to pay $85,000 for a $8,000 operation. That is, well, very bad, and can be life-ruining. And Medicare is rife with the same kind of fraudulence. When my mother was getting routine medical care she was always outraged by the insanely high costs that would appear on her statements, even if she didn't have to pay. But doctors then routinely (and still do) bill Medicare excessive amounts. She was (and still is, fortunately) a staid and non -argumentative type, but even she wanted to scream to her congressman about the fraudulence.

That is the kind of nonsense that has created the financial hole of medicare, and obviously needs to be adressed as part of Obama's "cut the inefficiency" plan to finance the health-care reforms. But we all need to radically alter the way we have accepted these practices because they were simply too complicated to decipher, with all the coding and extra hospital fees, blah blah blah.

The biggest irony of the Rejectionist response to health-care reform is that the insurance industry is likely to do sensationally well by insuring the last 20% of Americans. But they are still clamoring for more concessions, including a particular vile one that would allow the companies to reduce insurance payments after deductibles to 65% rather than the conventional 80%. Without the Public Option, the insurance could well collude and add more burdens to American's medical payments.

But let's not talk about that. Let's all go to Sarah Palin's Facebook page instead and worry about Death Books for Veterans. That ought to be illuminating.