The whole health care issue has been hotly debated recently because of “Sicko”, and there seem to be two camps of people now:

People who have gone to see the movie, were horrified by it, made them quite rightly scared that things exist this way, and wanting a better system which might or might not be like france’s or the UK’s.

Then you have the camp of right wing conservative michael moore haters who despise anything the man does, even when he is simply attempting to make things better for everyone, republicans and democrats alike.  These are the people that start throwing around terms like “socialism” and “communism” and “pinko liberal pipe dreams”, and basically railing on “Sicko” while not actually admitting there is indeed a problem.

Of course the latter group brings up plenty of excellent point by point reasons why truly socialized health care isn’t as great as “Sicko” makes it out to be.  And for the most part I agree.

Our government is a bumbling mess of incompetent bureaucracy, trusting them with our actual health care would be a nightmare.

So, I had an idea.  The problems pointed out in Sicko obviously lay a lot of blame on the health care industry itself, but then also on another major culprit : the [b]health care INSURANCE[/b] industry.  Most of Moore’s movie was about people who DID have insurance, but then just got straight up fucked and screwed by their insurance company.

So it seems to me that ensuring our health in the hands of giant mega corporations who’s main goal is to make profits for its shareholders (and NOT our wellbeing) is the problem.

So, I would say, socialize the health care INSURANCE racket.  Make a state run non-profit organization who’s goal is to provide affordable insurance to people — not the actual health care itself, just the insurance.  You still pay monthly premiums, hopefully of which your employer will pay a good bit.  Most everything stays just about the same, the only difference is that instead of having profit hungry, dishonest, unethical insurance companies standing between us and the hospitals, we have a non-profit organization who’s goal it is to ACTUALLY provide the insurance we are paying for.

Since it would be non-profit, there would be zero incentive for those involved in the organization to deny people their health care.

I guess I just don’t think that as a society, things that literally DIRECTLY affect the daily healthy well being of everyone shouldn’t be controlled by large corporations who do nothing but take our money and then strong arm us into not getting what we paid for.

Any comments on why this wouldn’t work, or who this could be bad for (aside from the insurance companies of course… but maybe if they had done what they were supposed to do in the first place, this wouldn’t be a problem).

Shit like some girl getting denied payment for her treatments because she “lied” on her health insurance application (she had a yeast infection 14 years earlier which she didn’t write down).  That kind of stuff would be completely avoided in a system like I’m talking about.

It would still be optional, you could still use private insurance companies if you want… the whole point would be to create a state run insurance agency that was NOT trying to make a profit at all, and was trying to operate on the thinnest of margins that it could — thereby reducing inefficiency, reducing CEO’s pockets being lined with yours and my money, reducing premiums for everyone, and ensuring that people at least who DO have health insurance, would get their payout when they needed it and wouldn’t get jerked around like we are now.