One important battle has now been won - health care IS a right.

Missing from the legislation is the public option. The next step is implementing the public option. As much as many of us want a Medicare for All system, it will not happen overnight.

To implement a Medicare for All system would require nationalizing the insurance companies or buying out their stock holders. Neither option is realistic. While we may not need the insurance companies, we do need their adjusters. These same adjusters handle claims for Medicare all across the country. Converting them over to government employees would, indeed, put a bureaucrat between you and your health care provider. This, for obvious reasons, will not happen.

A public - Medicare buy-in - option, however, will move us toward a Medicare for All system. This is why the insurance industry fought so hard to keep this out of the bill.

As more and more people buy into the public option, the insurance industry (much like the tobacco industry several years ago) will need to diversify. The tobacco companies have survived and so will the insurance industry, but not at our expense.

Medicare currently pays private industry to handle their claims and they can continue to do so, expanding their workforce as more and more become insured.

History repeatedly has shown us, the most important bills in our history were not perfect (and many still are not) when they were first enacted. Social Security, Medicare, the Civil Rights Act have all been changed, expanded, or adjusted since their original enactment. This health care reform bill is not perfect and it, too, will require refinement.

What is lacking in this bill, however, is much that could be done on the delivery side of health care. The framework provided by the bill will be filled in by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners and Health and Human Services. Upon completion of these portions of the bill, we will be in a better position to determine what still needs to be done.

The allegations of a government takeover, high costs, fraud, death panels and selling insurance across state lines are discussed below.


Government Takeover: First of all, the government already pays about 60% of health care costs in this country—Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, and VA are government programs.

Costs: They say Insurance companies know best about how to supply affordable health care to the public. They say that Medicare will be destroyed by taking $500 billion out of the Medicare program. Clearly, if they know how to provide affordable health care to us, they’ve been keep it a secret. And most of the money taken from the Medicare programs is the huge subsidies that the Bush administration pushed through for Big Insurance—most of which goes to insurance run HMOs via the Medicare Advantage programs that CBO reported is costing seniors more than it is delivering to them.

Fraud: The difference between Medicare and private carriers is that Medicare goes after fraud. Private carriers just pass these costs on to you in higher premiums, rather than pay expensive legal fees to sue the fraudsters in civil court. Medicare, on the other hand, has the FBI do investigations and the Attorney General's office pursues criminal prosecutions and restitution. These cases are reported in the media frequently. When is the last time we saw a private carrier awarded restitution of a fraud case they pursued?

Death panels: The fear of government making life and death decisions in individual cases is a smoke screen to hide the everyday occurrence of Big Insurance HMOs doing just that. The “right to consult a counselor” is really all about personal choices, writing a will and an advanced directive so that your wishes will be followed at the end of life—which is already offered by those same insurance companies that overcharge you.

Selling insurance across state lines: This is no more than a race to the bottom for insurance coverage. Each state mandates the minimum amount of coverage a policy should provide. These vary from state to state. So one state may require coverage for an annual mammogram and another state may not. So a policy may be cheaper, but it may provide less coverage than mandated by your state and your state would have no authority to require that coverage. As companies compete for more and more policies, they will relocate to states that require the least coverage so they can sell the cheapest policies. Furthermore, the state in which you reside would have no authority to confirm an out of state company is maintaining the proper reserves, is financially sound, or to adjudicate consumer protection complaints under their state laws. Nor would the instate Insurance Commissioner have the authority to apply consumer protection laws for an out of state customer.