Insurance is a racket, and Obamacare is a rigged game.
Do you want to know why the Tea Party hates Obamacare, and who puts them up to it?
I’ll tell you, and you will never read the news on health insurance the same again.
The rigged game that is the American Health Care system is being run by the biggest beneficiaries, the ones who love the gross waste and the absurd inefficiencies that are embedded within the system.
The insurance companies profit off our blood, and the new Affordable Care Act is a marvel in doublespeak. It was written by insurance companies, and the opposition to it is ironically funded by…insurance companies.
My best guess is that they will keep this going into the retirement of the Baby Boomers, leeching off as much profit as possible until finally being lanced like the cancerous pus that it is.
Before I lay down my case, allow me to submit as Exhibit A everything this incredibly smart guy says about the American health care system as it is today:
The most shocking statistic that he reveals is that per capita, Americans pay more for health insurance through their taxes than many other citizens of industrialized nations. Citizens of other countries have full, universal health care paid for by the government, covering every man, woman and child. Yet we pay more than they do for health care, just through our taxes, and for that we receive = zero health care.
Those tax dollars go into covering the elderly on Medicare, and the military insured by the VA, but most importantly, they go to our outrageously high costs of coverage.
See, this is where the game is rigged — an aspirin in an American hospital costs twenty times more than what it costs in the drugstore, and that’s because both hospitals and insurance companies are in complete systemic harmony in gouging the American consumer with inflated costs.
There is no negotiating power to lower costs, which means standard supplies are kept artificially high, and rare treatments and surgeries can be exorbitantly expensive, even though they would be completely covered for a Canadian.
A single stitch can cost $500.
With such inflated costs, it is necessary to have an insurance plan, to shelter us from paying $4000 per day for a hospital bed. In this corrupt system, we need insurance.
And that is just how the industry likes it.
The insurance companies cannot survive in a socialized system.
If American health care was free for every citizen, as it is free for citizens of most other industrialized nations, then these insurance companies would lose their easy source of profit.
So their best move is to fund extreme right wing politicians, who move the conversation further to the right.
Ted Cruz filibustered the Senate to protest the Affordable Care Act, even though it was approved multiple times by Congress, and upheld by the Supreme Court.
Why do Tea Party fanatics equate any sort of government involvement with socialism? Because they are paid to do it by their donors.
Insurance companies control the conversation by providing the script for both sides.
We can’t discuss the merits of nationalizing our health care system if we’re still just trying to convince the electorate that having any sort of government intervention or regulation is acceptable. We fight against the ludicrous arguments of the radical right, and find ourselves defending the insurance industry, and the new mandate that everyone in the country pays for an insurance policy.
Disclaimer: I used to be a licensed insurance agent.
I worked for one of the nation’s largest insurance companies. While I was in the belly of this beast, I learned how it thinks, what it’s motives are, and how little it actually cares for the well-being of a person.
I have seen insurance companies split responsibility of medical bills into increasingly complicated slices, requiring most medical practitioners to hire additional staff just to handle insurance paperwork.
I have seen insurance companies retroactively revoke payment for bills up to 18 months old (the legal limit), citing arcane terms, requiring the doctor to shell out the cash to pay for a patient they don’t even remember.
I have seen insurance companies deny coverage as a practice, because statistically, most people will not put in the effort to fight them, and they will make more money by having a policy of “deny on the first call.”
The purpose of an insurance company is to create profit.
They do this by leveraging risk. They offer the consumer a choice of policies, all with different levels of coverages, deductibles, copays, and exemptions. If you make the wrong choice, your unforeseen malady will be your responsibility to pay for, and your monthly premium is protected profit.
Asking the consumer to make this choice — it is despicable. You are choosing between options concocted by teams of actuaries, who have a century of data they can use to construct the policy in such a way that you will lose your bet.
Remember, gamblers: the house always wins.
And now, we are all forced to pay an ante into the system.
I recently applied for health insurance for my family, and despite my knowledge of the intricacies of insurance contracts, I was stupefied.
Instead of covering everyone universally, we have preserved the ability for the American consumer to choose between options — one option that won’t cover you for everything, or a bunch of other options that will cover even less.
These are not choices that consumer should make; when we get sick, we want the bills to be paid for by the government. Simple as that.
Instead, we have the insurance companies layered between the consumer and their health care, offering you a choice between policies that might cover you, or might not, depending on what (exactly) your malady is in the future, and whether or not you made the right choice out of the options the actuaries gave you.
We could solve this problem by nationalizing the insurance companies, taking them under federal control. Private insurance does not run the game in other countries, where health care is often better, and always cheaper.
But who can champion a crusade against the insurance companies? They are the most powerful corporations in the world, and they hold many politicians in their pocket.
