SeniorJunior

One Big Plan, Man Bollixed: The Current U.S. Health Care Situation: Our private, mostly unregulated, profit-driven insurance system guarantees by its very nature that millions of citizens, many who are highly productive workers, are either uninsured or under-insured. This situation cannot be improved significantly without eliminating private health insurance as the primary form of healthcare financing. Adding approximately 30% to the cost of healthcare (that's about $300 BILLION A YEAR!) private health insurance is parasitical in that it helps only the owners, stockholders and employees of the insurance companies and does essentially nothing to improve health care. Converting from private health insurance to Single Payer Government Insurance - "Medicare for All" (MFA) faces formidable hurdles, which are addressed in this plan. Hurdles. (I'm talking high hurdles, track fans.) The private health insurance companies are an immense po

For-Profit Health Insurance Companies They Are a Plague on all our houses (except theirs, of course) For many decades America has handed the vital insurance responsibility of keeping our citizens healthy and well to corporations driven by profit. It's worked great - for making corporate profit.  Not so much for the citizens. Millions have no health insurance. Millions more have inadequate coverage. Our workforce is constrained and debilitated by the for-profit system. There are some responsibilities that are too important to let profit supercede their fulfillment. The way to a fair and universal health plan for America is to DO AWAY WITH FOR-PROFIT HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES. We don't want "socialized medicine" with the government running the health biz. We don't want health care to be "free." We will all pay our fair premiums. We want every penny to be paid by the recipients of the care, just on a progressive ability-to-pay, non-profit insuranc

Me, John Edwards, John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich All four agree that the way to a fair and universal health plan for America is to DO AWAY WITH FOR-PROFIT HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES. We don't want "socialized medicine" with the government running the health biz. We don't want health care to be "free." We want every penny to be paid by the recipients of the care, just on a progressive ability-to-pay, non-profit insurance basis. The House Bill (HR 676) that describes this approach is called "The New Medicare" or "Medicare for All." (If Edwards were still in the Senate, I betcha there would be a Senate Bill.) OK, great idea . Over some years, we gradually phase out the for-profit insurance companies, and transition to the Medicare-like system with tiny administrative costs comparatively. Nearly all the health care money goes to actual health care providers. What a concept! Inherent in this plan is an absolutely HUGE news story

I notice there are only two arguments from opponents to universal health care in the U.S. 1. There are long waiting lines for medical service in countries that have it. 2. We can't afford it. Both are mostly wrong. "Long wait" is a relative thing. How long do all those people in the U.S. have to wait if they have no coverage? They might wait until they are deathly ill and have to go to the emergency room. Talk about expensive care, and we all have to pay for it. "Afford it?" We who spend more money on health care than any other people on earth? And what do we get for all that money? 37th rank in the world in public health, that's what. I firmly disagree with the well-worn politicians' statement: “There is no single prescription to solving our nation’s serious uninsured problem”. There is a prescription that’s working quite well in many first world countries, which I am sure all those Senators, Congressmen and Administration types know all about. Let me

Think You Are Good at Using Search Engines? Find this fact for me and you will be LIONIZED on good old SeniorJunior! * The UNFINDABLE (to me so far) Fact: Total expenditure in the U.S. on health insurance premiums to for-profit health insurance companies ????? If you search exactly that (just above^) question, you get a fine US News & World Report article, but it's still impossible to know the answer to this question. Statistica also has some answers, but EVERYBODY COMBINES HEALTH AND LIFE INSURANCE premiums for analysis. (Why do they do that?)  Much of the data is "per-capita," but omits the uninsured, etc.  I searched for this very  basic piece of information for a good hour. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd believe the for-profit health insurance companies have made a huge (and successful) effort to hide this number.  ** It's definitely huge . Combine all the employer-provided health insurance, all the privately-purch

"Comments" For several years, most of my opinionating happened on this blog.  Lately, my time at the keyboard has been mostly devoted to fictionalizing.  However, the opinions keep storming up out of my deeper brain centers and are impossible to repress.  So my efforts have moved to making "comments" on various articles, columns and op-eds. I have a sneaking feeling that these tidbits get more readership than they would if they appeared only on this blog. And since they are in response to something (sometimes to other commenters commenting on the column), I don't really have to establish a context, thus I can be pithier.  I love pithy. ANYWAY.... Here are my recent efforts.  Granted they might not make any sense if you didn't read the piece I'm commenting on. But at least you can see I haven't entirely abandoned reality for sci-fi. NEW SEQUENCING   From this point, the latest comments will be here first, rather than at the ever-retreating