Single Payer or Private Option Health Insurance May be Favored By Most Americans, but Congress Is Not Listening

Ruth I agree with everything you just said.

Do I think Congress is listening Yes but not to us.  They are so corrupt by money from private industry like insurance companies they have forgotten that no matter how much money a company may have it only has so many voters to cast ballot. 

We need drastic campaign finance reform and we need it now.  We need to make these Senators and Congresspersons stop and realize that people like YOU AND I elected them not AIG or United Healthcare.

On the one payor system yes we need to try it.  The people are speaking and if Congress doesnt listen then we need to find the ones that will.  We put them there and we can take them out.

I suspect the only way Congress will listen to us is if they cannot pass what they are trying now.

Yet another empty promise from Obama?

Congress is scheming to ram Obama's $1.5 TRILLION Healthcare Rationing Scheme into law before the American people are aware of the facts;

and This scheme for government takeover of our healthcare would hand our healthcare system over to an unelected board of medical "experts" who will deide who gets medical care and who doesn't.

New Government mandates in healthcare would establish a nationwide Medical Record Database, destroying our right to privacy when it comes to our medical records.

The plan would end private health insurance by HERDING hard working Americans into high cost, low-benefit tax-payer funded health insurance schemes.

Preident Obama's proposed plan would raise taxes by thousands of dollars on hard working, over taxed Americans.

The free market is the most INEXPENSIVE and MOST efficient way to ensure American citizens get the healthcare they want and need.

Urge your representatives to publicly oppose Obama's $1.5 TRILLION Government Healthcare Takeover and Rationing Scheme on every vote -- and oppose any other bill that would expand the government's role in healthcare.

What part of all your accusations of the single payer option, or public option, that we are supposed to be so fearful of, is the insurance industry NOT already doing to us, at a profit, for their pockets?

We want the option. 

Linda, we have the most expensive health care system in the world.  We have thrid world results from it.  Doesn't that mean anything to you?  You are paying for a luxury car and getting a Yugo.  You are paying for prime rib and getting a hotdog.  You are paying for front row center and getting back of the balcony.  Linda, you are being cheated.

Linda we don't have a free market.  Can't you see that.  There is no free market for health insurance or for drugs.  We never had a free market.  It just can't happen.  The big money people won't let it happen.  Whether they use government or corporate power you won't have a free market in health care.

Linda, you are being lied to by the insurance and drug industries.  Please look around you.  Talk to people who are dealing with our health care system.  It's broken and the fat cats are taking the American public to the cleaners.

Linda - You are not listening to what Obama wants to do. His first priority is to get a health care program that pays for itself. He said he won't sign a bill that is not designed to do that. And as it stands right now the insurance companies are making the decisions about what health care a patient needs and they are not medical people qualified to make that decision.

A program on PBS a few months ago compared health care systems in all the major developed countries in the world. We rated near the bottom among third world countries. Our system is much more expensive and not as comprehensive as other major countries. And not one single person or family in all those countries EVER went bankrupt because of medical expensive.. The system we have is getting more expensive and nonsustainable every year. It is time to try Single Payer!

I agree, Ruth.  Good article!

Ruth - fabulous article - those folks who always talk about Obama's empty promises never seem to listen to anything he has to say - he is looking at the big picture - I won't bother to go on and on on that - but I will say I would be really afraid if we didn't have a smart person getting other smart folks to look into every avenue of this system.   Salud

I get so sick of these neo-con phrases such as: "healthcare rationing scheme,"  "taking away our privacy, "HERDING hard working Americans into high cost, low-benefit tax-payer funded health insurance schemes," "hard working, over taxed Americans," "The free market is the most INEXPENSIVE and MOST efficient way to..."

I'll be willing to bet that I can go out on the Internet and find the article Linda copied from verbatium.  And that if I could stand to listen to Fox for 12 hours I would hear these same phrases multiple times from many "news" casters and talking heads.  Thankfully, more Americans are thinking for themselves and understanding that we have been used and misused by big corporate illness industries way too long and it's time for real HEALTH and CARE.

Hello Ruth.  I wish that the insurance and pharmaceutical companies would focus on providing affordable health care and affordable medicine.

Instead they continue to lobby our Senators in Washington with the only goal of keeping their cash cows up and running.

Considering the fact that over 40 million Americans are uninsured and that the majority of bankruptcies here in America are directly related to health care,  the policies these lobbyist are trying to hold on to and preserve are failed policies.

It's time for a fundamental change in the way we treat our most valuable resource - the American people.

Whether it's the Single Payer or Private Option Health Insurance Favored By Most Americans or the options proposed by President Obama, we can all agree that something must be done.  Doing nothing is not an option.

I'd like to thank you for posting this article at our group,

Barack Obama's Presidential Appointments, Bills and Policies. (Join Our Group and Post Your Articles. We Love Opposing Points of Views)

It is our lastest FEATURED post.

"I wish that the insurance and pharmaceutical companies would focus on providing affordable health care and affordable medicine." I guess the $10 for three months of doses and free antibiotics in my town is just too much.

"We Democrat citizens, with the help of a lot of middle of the road folks from other parties, voted in a remarkable and able man with a vision for the future."

You Democrat citizens also voted in all the sens and reps that are screwing us every day. Thank you very much for that!

Ruth I enjoyed your article.  I agree that we should give President Obama a chance at his ideas, afterall, only he will be blamed if the health care system fails.

Ruth, I must agree with what you have said, and at this point we have experienced enough to know that insurance companies have destroyed our medical care and put us all at risk.  As well, with insurance being so related to one's job, the number of people excluded continues to grow.  Sure, if people try to restrict medical care and not pay for enough medical professionals. a nationwide healthcare plan could be a problem, but still, for those who have no insurance or poor insurance, even a bad national plan would be better.  A co-worker of my husband's just learned she has a 5000.00 deductible.  This is while she also learned she needs gall bladder surgery.  So what is the point of that insurance.  We need to do something, and the Republicans couldn't do it, Hilary Clinton tried her best and was thwarted at every move.  I do hope President Obama can finally get healthcare for all.

"We need to eliminate that middleman, the corporate insurance company that stands between us getting the health care we need and the medical personnel who want to give us that care."

I've been shouting the same thing for years, Ruth.  You and I both grew up in an era of the family doctor, a trusted friend who took care of us, gave us shots and medicine, bandaged our wounds, delivered our babies and even, (gasp!) came to our houses when we were ill.  And we paid him, person to person, with no need for forms and codes and co-pays and nit-picking accountants. Then along came "health insurance", which insured nothing but huge profits for themselves, out-of-reach premiums for patients and hamstrung physicians who had to toe the line or go without payment.

We didn't need them then, and we don't need them now.  A government-run system like Medicare works just fine for me, and would do the same for everyone.  There is simply no reason to allow multi-billion dollar corporations to make life and death decisions based on their own bottom lines.

When we had that kind of care, we had the County Hospital and everyone in the room was exposed to the xrays when they were being taken and they used ether to put yo out for surgery (with the little screen over yuor nose and mouth with it sprinckled on a clothe), the medical wonder was the Salk vacine, the hospital rooms were 30 person wards. Times have changed.

Insurance has made more and better available. Profits will do that.

Sparky - Because they have lost their jobs and cam barely put groceries on the table in addition to making their house payments. There are a great many people out there who don't even make $20,000 a year even when they hold down more than one job.

Dame Ruth- You said it better than I did!  One thing that gets me when the naysayers spout the same old tired arguments is that when they adding up health care costs to the country they don't figure in the the disastrous costs to single families when they are struck with health disasters.  They only count what it costs the government. Costs of health care to private citizens should be added in when costs of health care to the nation are totaled up.

So many conscientious good people are ruined by catastrophic costs of unexpected severe and often incurable illness. And a lot of times they couldn't get the treatment they needed because insurance companies wouldn't authorize it. President Obama often speaks about the trouble his mother had getting her insurance company to authorize the care she needed. By the time some people get the insurance companies to agree to pay for treatments they need it is too late and they die. I think all this negative talk about long waits for doctor appointments and bad care is hooey. We have long waits already, and a lot of doctors are so loaded with patients they won't even take new ones. Sure there are flaws in the medicare and medicaid systems, but they can be cured. Fraud and dishonesty can be exposed and rooted out. There are always cheaters in all walks of life that are trying to cheat the system, and lawmakers have to keep finding ways to catch and punish them. How many people have to die under the current system before the opposition is willing to try another system that will take care of all people regardless of their station in life?

Al - Right and we can vote them out next time they try to get elected. This time, I for one, am going to take names, count the ways they vote, and try to find out where they get their campaign money.

I personally don't have much stake in the current health care reform. For almost all of my adult life I have recieved health care as an active service member, the spouse of a career service man, or as a 25 year government employee eligible to get the kind of insurance congress and the president get. I could get care at a veterans hospital, but all veteran's hospitals are overloaded and going to get worse as the troops come home and are discharged. Besides that as an octogenarian I have supplemental insurance and medicare that works OK for me. 

Thanks to all who commented, especially those who agree with me. I can't understand why those who keep giving the same old tired arguments based on key words and false premises can't see the runaway train coming at us if we don't take action to stop it.

The cold truth is that no one really knows IF even a sizeable minority of Americans want nationalized/single payer/socilaized or whatever health care.  Polls are trooted out, mallable and some flat out suspicious like the recent NYT poll making extravegant claims of widespread support.

If this Kennedy Plan is so great, the Dems do not need single Repub vote to win.  There is the rub, many are at best nervous about having the sole blame on them if this plan passes.  It takes no rocket scientist to realize the actual costs nor rules have been revealed and will be more expensive and restrictive than sold.

Nor does the rush (like everything this president does) to get it done hastily make many confident.  This is a major undertaking and should rightly (if your cause is that just) be examined critically without a rush.  We were told other programs in the past needed approval now or the world would collapse; Patriot Act, TARP 1& 2, the spendathon, Obama's first budget, and now cap and trade.  The record is pretty poor so far such rush is needed or worthy of the pitiful results produced.  Health care is no different, pass it quick before people understand what it will do.

And sorry but I don't agree with you at all on this, I too get tired of the same old cliches/key words/false premises but from your side of the argument, its not debate but an attempt to force something by calling the other side callous at best.   Our government is here to "help", yeah that is inspiring.

Ruth, I think that single payer may be off the table for a practical reason that has little to do with what is the BEST choice. I think that Obama may have calculated that single payer risks lining up the Fat Cats AGAINST passage of a health reform bill. If you do not win, it does not matter if your idea is the best one. On the other hand, if you enact something that is not the best plan, you risk buyer's remorse down the road.

At this point I do not know what to think. Frankly, I am more sure that the Cap and Trade bill is something that has to happen, though i realize that many americans, especially right wingers, think it is pure poison.

In return for this perceived advantage by insurance companies, ABC refused to accept commercial dollars from those companies on the evening they aired Obama's speech about his health care plan.  Can we say censorship?  Whether or not you approve of insurance companies, do you want the president to dictate what products and services may be advertised during a given time period?  Feels like a police state to me.

Thanks for posting to Fugitives from Ignorance, Conformity, and Peer Pressure

Am I missing something, I hear how bad our health care is and yet all I hear about is money?

What if we start with what good health should be, what is the desired quality of care, and how people will get access, and cost?

If you decide that health care has to be cheap, I will assure you will get cheap health care.

It's not a question of how much it costs, it's a matter of WHO is making the money.  I don't mind paying a physician for his expertise...I do object to shelling out thousands of dollars to an insurance company which does absolutely nothing but handle money and make medical decisions based on fiscal, rather than physical, necessity.

So you would rather pay the doctors, nurses, and hospitals directly and avoid the middle man. Then do get insurance.

I like the insurance and the companies that developed the concept. They allow me to spread the risk and cost, and they allow me to draw on the pool f money when I need it. For that service they desrve to be paid. If also invest that money to make it go farther then all the better.

If they spend some of that money on researching ways to imptove the delivery of health care, better yet.

I can assure that the helath care system has improved beyond peooles wildest dreams in the past 60 years, whenhealth care insurance began becoming broadly available.

You may shame them, I am greatful. Because with out their ablilty to pay for the advances in health care we would still have a 50's or 60's system.