France or America, Who is Calling Who Socialist?

Roger Cohen, who I gather spends a lot of time in France, wrote an interesting article in the New York Times a couple days ago. By his accurate perspective, the US and France actually are more similar than dissimilar.

Most (French) would be shocked to hear about American social security, let alone Medicare and Medicaid, the government-run health care systems for the elderly and the poor that together form one of the largest publicly financed health systems in the world.

Americans obsess less about France than vice-versa but when they do they tend to suffer from equally delusional ideas. The French — like many Europeans — loom as a feckless multitude coddled by a nanny state that’s so big it must be socialist.

In fact, ever since President Mitterrand tried broad nationalizations in the early 1980s with catastrophic results, France, like most of Europe, has been on a steady march toward freer markets, trade and competition. In its way, it has been Americanizing.

Both we and the French really know very little about the other, although ignorance doesn't seem to get in the way of our loudly voiced opionions of the other. The two countries actually have more in common than not.

Read the entire article here.

Death Panels? They're already here.

I'm getting a little tired of hearing about Death Panels under any possible under the proposed insurance reform. First, anybody who is talking about Death Panels under any version of the proposed insurance reforms either is just passing along information they have heard without fact checking or they are trying to manipulate peoples opinions by knowingly passing on false facts.

But, with the above in mind, who are we kidding? Every health insurance company, cooperative or government program including medicare already has a Death Panel. What else would you call the policy makers who develop policies that refuse applicants for any reason, deny a procedure, cancel a policy, raise premiums or, in any way, limit a participants treatment. They are already deciding who gets what and to what limit.

People do actually die because of these policies. If that is not a death panel, then what is? The only way to avoid these Death Panels is to provided unlimited coverage to 100% of the people, including illegal immigrants for free. As long as one person is being told what they can and can't have somebody else is deciding their fate. Even the politicians who deny 100% coverage for everybody are enforcing a policy that results in death.

Indeed, What Has Private Insurance Done For Us?

I usually try to write for myself. In fact yesterday I wrote a bit about the evil ways of private insurance. But when somebody says exactly what I wanted to say and says it better, I yield the floor. So, please read Michael Hiltziks' piece in todays Los Angeles Times. This piece is Spot On.

What's So Great About Private Health Insurance?

The firms take billions of dollars out of the U.S. healthcare wallet as profits, while imposing enormous administrative costs on doctors, hospitals, employers and patients. They've introduced complexity into the system at every level. Your doctor has to fight them to get approval for the treatment he or she thinks is best for you. Your hospital has to fight them for approval for every day you're laid up. Then they have to fight them to get their bills paid, and you do too.

Pelosi: Health Insurance Companies The Real "Villains"

Forget the Blue Dogs, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Thursday. The real "villains" in the fight for health care reform are insurance companies.

"They are the villains in this. They have been part of the problem in a major way," Pelosi said of the insurance industry after her weekly press conference. "It's almost immoral, what they are doing," she said, referring to industry lobbying against a public insurance plan option. "Of course, they've been immoral all along. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening, and the public has to know about it."

The current system works so well for insurers that they don't even want subsidies, Pelosi claimed. "They've had a good thing going for a long time at the expense of the American people and the health of our country," she said, adding that it will be tough to keep them from getting their way. "This is the fight of our lives."

Read the rest of this article

Todays Cartoon