Earlier today Aetna announced that it would be laying off 650,000 of it's customers in 2010. Were these deadbeat customers who didn't pay their premiums? No. They simply used their medical plans. See, when you actually use your insurance, it costs your private insurance provider money and this gets in the way of revenue. Aetna chairman and CEO Ron Williams put it this way "We view 2010 as a repositioning year, a year that does not fully reflect the earnings potential of our business.". They key word in his sentence being business of course. I have no problem with any business in America making money. I just have a problem with the lives of Americans having dollar signs on them.
Earlier today Aetna announced that it would be laying off 650,000 of it's customers in 2010. Were these deadbeat customers who didn't pay their premiums? No. They simply used their medical plans. See, when you actually use your insurance, it costs your private insurance provider money and this gets in the way of revenue. Aetna chairman and CEO Ron Williams put it this way "We view 2010 as a repositioning year, a year that does not fully reflect the earnings potential of our business.". They key word in his sentence being business of course. I have no problem with any business in America making money. I just have a problem with the lives of Americans having dollar signs on them.
There are roughly 300 people living in the United State today.
There are roughly 45 million people on Medicare today.
There are roughly 200 million people with many types of other insurance today
There are roughly 45 million uninsured people.
I'd like to be clear from the very beginning that I believe that health care is a moral covenant and therefore should be a right not a privilege. It should not be something required by law but provided by law. There is only one way to ensure that all people in America have access to the care they need - a government system.
I know that there are many people who disagree with me for many reasons. But if government was truly incompetent as they suggest then all the services they depend on would have ceased to exist long ago. Last I checked my water still comes out of the tap, the trash gets picked up, the police keep pulling me over, and the military protect me pretty darn well!
So let's focus what government does well - Collect revenue, hire people, and deliver services. I'd simply like to expand single payer health care to forty million more people. Expand you say? Yes...Medicare is single payer and I'd like to open it up to some additional patients.
I recognize that it would be impossible for our toothless congresspersons to do what is easiest and simply take some whiteout and remove the "over 65" from the Medicare law. Then we'd all have healthcare in about five minutes. So I propose a compromise that provides coverage for all and pays off their sugar daddies at the same time!
Let's agree on some basic concepts: 1. Everyone has the right to see a doctor or get emergency medical care. 2. Everyone will need a specialists at some point. 3. Some will want elective procedures.
- GP/ER
I'm guessing that they'd rather not be in the primary care business anyway since that is the front lines. They actually have to provide actual services and give them the opportunity to vie for your business!
Medicare should be opened up to all citizens for general medical visits, prescriptions and ER visits free of charge. This might seem like a costly change but preventative care is the silver bullet. The leading reason why most people wind up with delimitating sickness is because they avoid initial doctors visits in the first place. General Practitioner visits are low costs and are important to triage more severe illnesses. This would also help prevent the spread of disease as people who are more likely to see a Doctor are more likely to get shots and get treated when they are sick. Providing prescriptions and emergency room services will be a life line to millions. It will also cut the cycle of medical bankruptcy and the problems that hospitals are having making ends meet.
- Specialists
Insurance coverage could be purchased from a Health Insurance Exchange choosing from an addition to Medicare benefits or any one of several private alternatives to add a "Specialists Benefit". This would be necessary to see any doctor who is not a primary care physician. It would be important to make sure that all doctors (at least in a geographic region) to accept all insurance carriers by law. Because this would be required, there would be sliding scale affordability credits issued for lower income levels. I'm willing to be that this would be a very popular service since it would include things like Chiropractors, Physical Therapists, Mental Health, and Alternative Medicine.
- Elective
Nearly 9 million people in the US had cosmetic surgery in 2003. Private insurance companies should be able to provide additional coverage for elective procedures like liposuction or cosmetic surgery with a cap on spending and deductibles. Who amongst us hasn't dreamt of a little nip and tuck but it wasn't covered under your insurance plan? There could be different levels of coverage like there is in auto plans and a requirement that the patient be in the plan for a certain amount of time before using the benefit.
We have a moral crisis in this country. Millions of Americans, insured or not, need reform to guarantee that when they need access to the best medical care possible they not only receive it, they won't mortgage their families future to do so. We can no longer ask people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. We can no longer expect for-profit private insurance companies to adequately cover all Americans. We also must acknowledge that our system of government is way too entrenched to allow either liberal or conservative solutions to win out. Therefore we must come together and take from both.
Aetna's actions today prove that there is no way to continue without reform. Healthcare should no longer be "for profit". I'm interested to hear your thoughts.