Health insurance—— Do I like it?? Of course not, it is expensive and at the moment I am not sick. Do I care whether other people have insurance—— not really except that when they get sick we all end up paying for it in some form or other.
The health insurance companies have done a fantastic job in building up an industry that before did not exist that now we all support. (They take at least 25% of the healthcare dollar and contribute to much of the added costs that have been imposed on physicians, hospitals and drug companies. The billions of dollars which are now going to health insurance companies was once available for medical care.) Imagine the number of newly jobless people there would be if this industry were to be eliminated. Take a drive from Placerville to Sacramento and count the number of buildings that are owned and operated by Medical Insurance companies.
I can remember well the days when real estate people and car salesmen were anxious to lure physicians into their environs, those days are gone as physicians are no longer such easy prey as they aren’t nearly as affluent as they were before the large amount of money that the healthcare industry has diverted to their pockets is gone. Once upon a time physicians could take care of patients who could not afford medical care. Those days are also in the distant past. The luxury of a physician being able to take care of a patient that couldn’t pay is no longer available. The companies that many physicians work for do not allow their physicians to see patients that can’t pay or who have no insurance. The luxury of being able to send patients to the specialist best qualified to take care of a patient’s problem are also long gone. This specialist is not on “their” list of contracted physicians who have agreed to take their pay schedule.
The whining and complaining that many politicians, insurance companies and people do, has convinced many people that anything that changes our present system is bad. Unfortunately there are no guaranties that a change will improve everything but hopefully at least a few things can be improved. The wild range freedom that has allowed insurance companies to subvert so much of the healthcare dollar into their pockets can be improved to the public’s benefit so that the public can get just a little more care for the same number of dollars.
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