Freak Out

Without stammers, ums or qualifiers, Kamala Harris said let's just get rid of health insurance companies and be done with it.

This has generally resulted in some folks freaking out, which I suspect was her intention. Harris is neither stupid or naive, she fully knows that such a thing would be incredibly difficult. But, if she were to become President and plops that on the table as a bargaining chip she starts with a strong hand that might, I stress might, go a long way to actually making true progress on fixing our broken and overpriced healthcare system.

The current estimates are that 44 million Americans have no health insurance while another 38 million have inadequate insurance. Those numbers ought to be sufficient enough to get the attention of our government that we have a genuine national emergency requiring a massive serious response, but it isn't. The reason is simple, those in power and their private sector allies are doing just fine and many of those "allies" spend substantial amounts of money to convince even those in desperate need, that a government facilitated solution is a march toward socialism. It is un-American and an assault on god, mom and apple pie. Our very freedom is on the line, the Deep State is on the move to take your individuality. Sounds like the plot of a dystopian novel which is why it works. Remember all of those protests and ad campaigns against the Affordable Care Act? The death panels that would be established and the state sanctioned killing of grandma was coming. What those citizen protesters failed to recognize is that those death panels exist but they are in the private health insurance companies. They were already deciding who lived and died, they simply did it with a smile and actuarial tables.

Michael Bloomberg says we can't afford universal healthcare but we need to let those in need be able to buy into possibly Medicare. One might call that a public option. Ah yes the public option that was supposed to be offered in the Affordable Care Act but President Obama took it out even though he pledged it would be included. The A.C.A. is the conservative health program designed by the Heritage Foundation and embraced by Republicans in the 1990's and what Mitt Romney put in place in Massachusetts. If Richard Nixon hadn't bit the dust, it's what he intended to pursue.

For more than a decade I've been writing about this subject and here we still are, spinning our tires in the mud. The Republican Party has done everything it can to destroy the Affordable Care Act but it's still limping along. The patient rights portion, such as pre-existing conditions are good but the overall program needs a complete overhaul. The Obama Administration knew going in that the legislation was seriously flawed and would have to be fixed but 2016 brought that to a halt.

It's not just the $50.00 box of tissues during a hospital stay but it's the maintenance drugs required by most people. The pharmaceutical companies are robbing Americans in broad daylight and with the permission and complicity of our leaders. Even if you have prescription coverage in your insurance, the amount many people must pay out of pocket monthly is devastating. If you have no insurance or money you're screwed and you're going to die, because a lifesaving routine drug that costs two cents per pill to manufacture sells for $3.00 and that's the cheap end.

Private health insurance companies aren't going away anytime soon, if ever in my lifetime, but if a Democrat takes the Whitehouse in 2020, watch how fast Republicans come out for a new and improved Affordable Care Act with a public option.

Although I support a single payer universal healthcare system it must be an improved version of Medicare, which doesn't even cover dental and vision. Because apparently being able to chew and see are not important.