thinksense

An understanding of what and how our current "Health Inusrance" (which does not insure your health, only who and how much people get paid when you need care. I t probably would be more honest to call it carer payment insurance. But that's not right either.....)

Let’s start with a common sense question.

1...Is it cheaper to pay cash to a supplier of anything, to that supplier or is it smarter and cheaper to pay someone who stands between you and your supplier and have that person, after taking out cash to cover his expenses, pay the bill, (and have the option of not paying the bill if he decides that he can find a way to avoid paying it?)

The answer should be obvious.

So how did we get into this “Health Insurance” mess to start with?


Go back into the early 1900s when there was no big insurance racket going.

In 1903 , at the annual Medical convention the biggest discussion was about the fact that Medical Doctors were not earning enough. Their earnings were compared with ordinary mechanics, who were earning about the same amount.
Part of the problem was that patients didn’t like to go to the drug using doctors, and preferred Homeopaths, Naturopaths, Osteopaths, and others. That problem was attacked by the AMA, which was being run by an M.D. (said to be bought from a degree mill) who had a Magazine, the AMA journal that would give it’s “Seal of Approval” to Drugs/Medicines who’s manufacturers would pay the AMA to do so and his journal attacked all others. (I wonder if you would call that extortion, what do you think?)

The AMA attacked the medical lack of popularity problem by knocking out the walls of their 4th floor and installing 700 desks, each desk in this huge bullpen was occupied by a “typewriter” (as the girls were called in those days) working on a “Typing Machine", each of whom would work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week writing letters to several newspapers or magazines (there was no radio or TV in those days) letters/articles telling of the great “modern scientific medicine” and panning all non drug doctors. That way every single day , every newspaper and magazine in the United States would get free articles touting Allopathic (Drug) medicine that they the editors could place in any empty spaces in their publications. Over time that did work and in a few years, most people switched to going to medical doctors.

This helped the earnings problem, but still not enough money was coming in to satisfy the doctors. How could they get the patients to “pay them what they were worth?”

Again the AMA came up with the answer. This time a new crook was running the AMA. (He did end up in jail, by the way.) His solution, Blue Cross Insurance, which covered doctor bills. Now the potential patient only had to pay an insurance company, year after year, until he needed the insurance. This allowed not only the insurance to make money, ("We proudly announce that last year we paid 90% back", would go the radio advertisement) but allowed the doctors to charge a much higher bill. And the doctors charging higher bills not only made doctors rich, (“My daughter made a good catch, she married a doctor.”) but it scared people into buying more insurance. ("My god Charley, I’m glad I had insurance, or the bills would have wiped me out.")

The AMA Blue Cross did so well that they shortly built another insurance company, Blue Shield!
With all the same stuff as above, except it wasn’t the doctors getting the geld, but the hospitals. And you poor shnooks thought you were getting a big break. How dumb can you be.

Soon more and more insurance companies added "Health Insurance" to their houshold and care lines

Now the govt. and a lot of other people are getting rich and you are still paying the bill.

I, personally carry NO “health insurance”. I have put aside money to cover my own expenses, and I pay the medical doctors and hospitals cash and bargain for the lowest cost based on that. Remember that I am a doctor myself.

BTW. The Insurance guys are so greedy, they have been shorting both you and the doctors as much as they can, legally. You see the results in doctor shortages, sloppy care (in a few cases), and those doctors who couldn’t afford to retire, now working for “Health Care” companies for salaries.

Think, would you rather have the doctor working on you, base his business survival on getting a reputation for skill and excellence, so he can charge the fee that reputation earns, or the doctor forced to work for a corporation who doesn’t need a good reputation, just needs to slam as many patients through each day, running as many tests as possible to build the bill to the insurance so the corporation earns a big profit?

A final note...I do not mean to impugn the doctors. They are doing as good a job as they can under the current state of things. Almost all of them are skilled, hard workers being as honest as they can be under the current Health Crap Policies (and I don’t mean insurance policies.)