It’s not only high risk pools. The increase in rates ( example Maryland where the rates increased 40 percent last year for many plans, after having increased almost twenty percent the year before), has caused employers who have plans to go to a high deductible plan ( In some cases well over 4 grand a year for a family), or drop their plans altogether. That 4 grand comes easier for some than for others. It often prevents those who can’t afford the deductibles from seeing a doctor for things that maybe they should be seeing a doctor for. So, here we are right back where we started, with those at the middle part of the spectrum getting stuck. They have insurance that cost what is to them a fortune, but it is worthless except in the case of a hospitalization or other catastrophic illness.

Then there are silly political moves. In my state a business gets a tax break or credit of 7 or 8 grand for businesses who offer insurance for the first time, but no break for business who have consistently offered it, despite the fact the astronomical increase in their rates over the last two years. As a result there are as many businesses dropping their group plans as there are initiating a plan. Talk about getting getting nowhere fast.

The market based regulatory model doesn’t work for health insurance, at least not to the benefit of those purchasing it. In a free market there is supposed to be satisfaction on both sides. Tit for tat. You pay “this” and get “that”. What you get should be worth what you pay for, or at least make you happy. Both sides are supposed to be content here. With health insurance — especially with these high deductible plans that are currently the insurance companies profit nirvana — you pay “this”, but don’t get anything until you’ve paid another (huge deductible), “that”. “That” being the bit you can’t afford. Consequently, you don’t use the insurance you pay for. You skip going to the doctor for that recurring sore throat that could be cancer, or that strange rash — a symptom of leukemia. You wait too long because you just can’t afford the deductible this week, this month, this year. The insurance companies smile.
Progress

A comments off I shouldn’t read NPR during lunch presentation.

Same with health insurance. When you are controlling the market, getting karats and giving carrots in return, you are not a service, you are an affliction. When It’s no longer “you get what you pay for”, but “you pay for what you don’t get and if you don’t pay for it you will pay more”, it’s coercion. What we really need to do is get rid of the health insurance industry altogether.

Thank you to Bill Clinton for going to North Korea, whispering sweet somethings in the ear of some nutty guy — convincing him to pardon our two journalist. Our journalists, held since march, and later convicted of high crimes, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, will hopefully be on U.S. soil soon. I don’t pray, but I’ve been doing that controlled visualization of this situation, and in that visualization I pictured Bill getting on a plane to Korea to save you. Damn it works.

I wonder if they had to give Kim the movie rights to this story?

A comments off, afternoon brain fart, from the messy desk of the blogger formerly known as Alice.
This post needed to be redone due to brain farts, I am not responsible for the former feed. ;)

The media’s excuse is that people don’t watch stories on health care, and there is little in the way of compensation for such reporting. By that FOX was right to eschew Obama’s health care press conference, they won the ratings in that time frame, but from the standpoint of being a news organization with some responsibility to put significant content in front of the public, they lost.

I loathe that Congress works in such a way that if some kind of plan on health care isn’t rushed through this year it’s bound to be unaddressed for some time. There is something wrong with a system that works that way, especially when the issue is so complicated that I doubt most of Congress understand anything but the political ramifications of it. I don’t have confidence in this process, or the people in charge of it, and I’d like to see some real investigative reporting on the health care issue.

Much of what I read/watch from major news services is nothing more than reports on the political implications of passing, or not passing, a health care bill. I want to see real life reporting on how systems in other countries work, not vague statistical comparatives. What I see is “reporters” making their point with any of the various points you can make with statistics, depending on which ones you choose for your particular agenda. As I’ve said here before, facts of omission are a greater part of our news these days, and with health care it is even more so because it is a complicated issue, probably takes time to investigate, might even take time and concentration to understand, and brings little in monetary rewards. But the public needs to hear some good reporting on this issue.

In a note to Trudy Lieberman (director of the health and medicine reporting program at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism who covers health reform for the Columbia Journalism Review’s cjr.org, and regular contributor to The Nation), Sarah Varney, one of the few really decent health care/health reporters out of LA (I lump her with Kelley Weiss, Joe Barr and Paul Conley at Capital Public Radio), who was inside Canada working on a report about their system, said….

“I would say as an American health reporter there is a lot of pressure inside news rooms to give the Canadian horror stories equal footing with what my reporting actually found—-which was that the Canadian system is by-and-large a functioning system that covers everyone for half the cost with enviable health outcomes”

According to cjr.org’s Health Reform Too Boring for Broadcast?

“Varney told a compelling and interesting story that directly contradicts the ads now running on U.S. television. She also conducted a round table conversation with some of the best Canadian health experts, including leading health economists Robert Evans and Morris Barer. They explained that their system is not socialized medicine — doctors don’t work for the state; they are independent and run their own practices. What is socialized is the insurance pool— every Canadian is in it— which powers the country’s lower cost, not-for-profit health insurance system.”

Trudy Lieberman’s Health Care pieces at at cjr.org

At the Nation

We need real health care reporting, whether we want it or not, and it is all but non-existent.

If you have a favorite reporter who is currently covering health care, I mean really covering it, let me know.

Peace