Hell yeah!

I agree with Lisa…this is yet another reason we need, at the very, very least, a meaningful public option. It seems to me that as long as there is a profit motive for denying care or charging more for certain segments of the population, it will happen.

Put another way…honestly, if the health insurance companies exist for the sole purpose of making money by managing risk, then some might say it’s unfair to ask them not to charge more for folks who, statistically, will end up costing more. Or to force them to take on clients with pre-existing conditions. Or to not allow them to dump people that exceed some lifetime cap. Or to force them to cover procedures that are a “bad risk.”

Does that seem cold? It does to me, too. Which is why I think we need to make up our minds about a fundamental question: does the fact that someone is a fellow human being mean that they are entitled to be taken care of when they get sick? Good people can disagree, but I say “yes.” And if we say “yes” as a society, I think that a single payer system is the best way to make that happen.

Louise,

I too have excellent insurance… and I’m going to be taxed out the whazzoo by this plan.

However, the Israeli plan is NOT a single payer plan. Of course, Israel is structurally different than the U.S. but I think it would still be viable. In Israel, there is a National Health Insurance Law which spells out the minimum requirements of any insurance plan. No preexisting conditions, no one can be turned away, what must be covered and what subsidies the government will provide. Israelis are required by law to be enrolled in a ‘sick fund’ of their choice and usually premiums are withdrawn from their paycheck; lower income Israelis’ insurance premiums are subsidized by the government.

It’s a good system; Israeli health care is amongst the best in the world. But a couple of caveats: there are a larger number of doctors in Israel per person than in the U.S., doctors and nurses are paid less than in the U.S., doctors don’t have to take out enormous loans to go to medical school like they do in the U.S.

Finally, individuals may opt to purchase supplemental insurance above the basic insurance. The basic insurance is good by many standards in the U.S. but still, it doesn’t cover everything.

Oh, yes, Lisa…I didn’t mean to imply that it was single payer, but thanks so much for explaining the way it’s done in Israel; the more we hear about how other countries handle this (including the benefits and the drawbacks), the better off we’ll be. I was mainly agreeing with the idea of a “national health care system” in the general sense of guaranteeing, in some form or another, that people are able to obtain health care. While my preference would still be single-payer, I think the model you describe does have advantages over what we have now.

Jogging, mountain climbing, sex, heavy lifting, erections in a pill and suicide attempts are all voluntary… should insurance not cover them?

I agree – the companies are going off of who is more likely to need to use the insurance money at some point. Women are more likely to need health care. Same with the Auto insurance. Men are more likely to get in an accident and need the coverage. Based on this, I understand the higher rates. However, being a woman should not be considered an ‘existing condition.’ Being denied for that reason is wrong.