Does the Health Insurance Industry Have Congress In Its Pocket?
No one ever talks about dismantling the Fire Department, Police Department, or Postal Service because they’re models of a scary socialist project. Why should healthcare be any different? Quite simply, the health insurance industry stands in the way. And as the Real News Network reports, they’ve been lobbying hard to make sure that a for profit system of care remains the law of the land. But labor, single payer advocates, and Americans who want basic healthcare are pushing back.
“We believe the health insurance industry is trying to buy their way onto the table with health care reform,” says Carmen Balber of Consumer Watchdog at a protest against the American Health Insurance Plans’ 2009 Policy Forum. “We see this in two big points,” she goes on to explain, “one which is a mandate that would require individuals to purchase private health insurance… and secondly we know the insurance industry is trying to block any sort of public option for the American people. They don’t want the competition, so we’re here to call out the insurance industry for trying to buy Congress’ position.”
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This article is from GRITtv.
Single payer health insurance is the only reasonable option for a citizenry that is unable to access affordable health care. Medicare works for our elders. . . . . a similar system works for members of Congress. The rest of the American public deserve the same.
I think that we must have National Healthcare in the U.S.A. and that will only happen when the poeple refuse to accept the Insurance companies from making healthcare decisions based on costs. They are only concerned about profits and profits can only be made with the denial of healthcare services. We need as a Nation to finally accept that Healthcare is a right that we all must have and it must be protected. There is no room for business profits in our Nations healthcare needs. We mush have single payer Government healthcare for all, NOW.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus ruled single-payer off the table. However, a MAJORITY of Americans want single-payer reform.
Why?
Sen. Baucus has received more campaign contributions from health insurance and pharmaceutical companies over the past four years than any other Democrat in Congress.
According to the Consumer Watchdog study, Baucus has received $413,000 since 2005 from insurance and drug companies, third behind Sens. John McCain and Mitch McConnell.
Baucus is now pressuring the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to favorably judge his health plan as financially sound–even though it is not. The CBO issued a series of recent studies which have found that most savings claimed, in the effort to keep private-for-profit insurance companies in the mix, do not exist.
Alternatively, a single-payer system would save more than $350 billion per year.
SINGLE-PAYER SHOULD BE GIVEN A FULL AND FAIR HEARING BY THE SENATE FINANCE COMMITTEE
Write to Senator Baucus and tell him to put Single-Payer Reform on the table:
http://baucus.senate.gov/contact/emailForm.cfm?subj=issue
For more information: http://www.change.org/ideas/294/view_action/sen_baucus_we_need_accurate_numbers_not_creative_figuring