patrickumsted.com

Everyone who goes to an ER without health insurance has to be paid for by the rest of us.  If you are against any health care reform, you should also be against the uninsured going to the ER with no way of paying for it.  So I thank you Ms. Marianne Stebbins for advising the uninsured to do whatever is in their power to increase my insurance premiums and health care costs while not providing any ideas whatsoever to lower the impact on our health care system of the uninsured.

Context–She is upset over Rep. Cao(R-LA) voting for Obamacare, or Pelosicare, or Hitlercare, or whatever the Teabaggers call it these days.

I don’t agree with a public option at this time.  Make COBRA coverage available and realistic. End the insurance companies’ ability to limit coverage based on pre-existing conditions.  Allow insurance companies to compete state to state with one another.  These ideas I can support and these ideas would increase coverage while encouraging competition in the marketplace.  However, just telling the uninsured to just go the the ER is the status quo and is unsustainable as our population and the number of uninsured grow.

P.S.- I also thank your pirate hat.  GAAAARRHHH!!!!!

[hattip: Washington Independent]

Reason Magazine hits the mark.  The insurance corporations have dug their own graves. Unfortunately, everybody loses.

The truth is that companies don’t want competition; they want government guaranteed profits. Mesmerized by the prospect that an individual insurance mandate would provide them with tens of millions of new government-subsidized customers, private health insurers have allowed themselves to be maneuvered into an inexorable process that will lead to their destruction. In 2004, Berkeley economist Robinson warned that double digit growth in premiums and profits was unsustainable. “In the long term, health insurance will be either revitalized by the private sector, through product innovation and competitive entry,” wrote Robinson, “or disciplined by the public sector, through purchasing power and regulatory requirements.”

Emphasis is mine.