The question I have to ask is why? Why is this happening? Why can’t we get this right? What’s wrong with this country?

I’m going to learn French.

But until some form of federal SINGLE PAYER, Medicare For All, not-for-profit system is enacted, both universal health insurance coverage and cost containment will be impossible to achieve.

To the private insurers, a policyholder suffering from a malady is not someone needing care but rather a cost. Thus, increased private profits from decreased costs mandate that people remain sick. Optimally, someone suffering from an illness will not be insured by a private insurer. If that person is a policyholder when the malady occurs, the private insurance company often will drop the policyholder with little or no notice.

The private insurers make no secret of this brutal practice, which they delicately call “recission.” Testifying before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations June 17, UnitedHealth, Assurant Health and Wellpoint executives all refused to discontinue using recission:

“WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant Inc. canceled the coverage of more than 20,000 people, allowing the companies to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims over a five-year period….

“[P]olicyholders with breast cancer, lymphoma and more than 1,000 other conditions were targeted for rescission and that employees were praised in performance reviews for terminating the policies of customers with expensive illnesses….

“The executives — Richard A. Collins, chief executive of UnitedHealth’s Golden Rule Insurance Co.; Don Hamm, chief executive of Assurant Health and Brian Sassi, president of consumer business for WellPoint Inc., parent of Blue Cross of California — were courteous and matter-of-fact in their testimony.

“But they would not commit to limiting rescissions to only policyholders who intentionally lie or commit fraud to obtain coverage….”

Thus it is ridiculous even to discuss reaching universal coverage in an insurance environment dominated by private health insurers, because the private insurers’ prime directive is to maximizer profits, not provide health care.

Yet for months the Obama Administration, and the Democratic Party, have based every proposed “reform” on maintaining the control of our health care system by private insurers.

Further, every Democratic proposal emphasizes reducing health care by encouraging those private insurers to be even more ruthless in their cost-slashing which immediately will cause major reductions in health care for the vast majority of Americans.

As a sadly typical example of Obama’s destructive focus on making the denial of necessary health care his health “reform” cornerstone, the July 24 Wall Street Journal stated: “At a White House summit in March, Mr. Obama spoke 18 sentences about the need to cuts costs, and two about the uninsured.” (Source: “Obama’s Expert On Health-Care Costs Gets Political,” p. A1.)

This is horrible health policy and even worse politics. It prioritizes private profits over the public’s health, which badly will weaken our society and economy in the midst of the worst recession in eight decades.

Obama, the Democratic leadership, and the private health insurers are acting as if we are too unintelligent to understand the deep cuts in health coverage they all are planning for Americans. But we are watching very closely, as Obama’s softening poll numbers already have begun to reveal.

The only way out of this destructive spiral is for Congress and the Obama White House to cooperate in the creation of an adequately funded, high quality, single payer, Medicare For All, not-for-profit health care system.

“In actuality, taxes are nearly equal on both sides of the border. Overall, Canada’s taxes are slightly higher than those in the U.S. However, Canadians are afforded many benefits for their tax dollars, even beyond health care (e.g., tax credits, family allowance, cheaper higher education), so the end result is a wash. At the end of the day, the average after-tax income of Canadian workers is equal to about 82 percent of their gross pay. In the U.S., that average is 81.9 percent.”

Read more here: http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_12523427

A public option will do very little if anything to save money and won’t help the many millions who can’t afford it. They will be dumped into the expanded Medicaid with all its disparties, including no doctors – not to mention no choice thereof or ability to keep the doctors they’ve been using, and, there’s estate recovery for the 55 and up crowd who will actually be getting a loan, not a health insurance policy.

Obama forgets this part when he talks about how his health care reform will be financed – on the backs of the lower-income people all the way around – can’t afford the insurance or the penalties, and if you sign on the dotted line, you just gave away the store.

Obama said all Americans would have choice between private and public. Obviously this is not true b/c the Tri-Committee bill also has expanded Medicaid, and contains subsidized plans which also discriminate in even more ways than Medicaid – just like in MA. So a large segment of the population won’t have choice. They will be forced under the thumb of the HMO profit-seekers along with having no choice of doctors, hospitals, etc.

Therefore, the law of the land will not be equitable for all. It will be just as it is in MA – based on ability to pay – you get what you can afford. If you can’t afford it you get penalized. If you can’t afford much, you get a pricey premium that you can’t afford to use. If the state needs to save money, they drop you, and the sad saga goes on while people like you tell the world what a success this is. Do you live with your head in the sand? Or are you one of those, “I’ve-got-mine people?”

Obamacare is the same broken system with everyone forced to buy the failed product, the insurers send us the bills, and Congress continues to pocket the bribes.

Uniquely American? Unfortunately it is because every other industrialized country does much better with a single-payer system. Obama and the 111th Congress should be ashamed to fly the stars and stripes next to this scheme.

Be sure to watch Bill Moyers at 9:00 EST July 24 – Marcia Angell and Trudy Lieberman and read Trudy’s series on the MA plan at http://www.cjr.org.