The Moral Bankruptcy of “Market-Based” Health Insurance
Paul Krugman nails it regarding the idiocy of ‘market incentives’ solving the health insurance crisis afflicting the nation.
Going without health insurance isn’t like deciding to rent an apartment instead of buying a house. It’s a terrifying experience, which most people endure only if they have no alternative. The uninsured don’t need an “incentive” to buy insurance; they need something that makes getting insurance possible.
Read the complete article Here
Bob Herbert has a follow up piece on the desperate debt cycle many are taking on in their efforts to meet ever-increasing medical bills and insurance premiums.
A disturbing new report shows that with health care costs continuing their sharp rise, low- and middle-income patients are reaching for their credit cards with alarming frequency to cover treatment that they otherwise would be unable to afford.
This medical debt, to be paid off in many cases at sky-high interest rates, is being loaded onto consumer debt that is already at dangerously high levels. Many families have been crushed by the load, driven from their homes, forced into bankruptcy, and worse.
Read “Your MasterCard or Your Life” by Bob Herbert.
on January 29th, 2007 at 1:59 am
It appears that Colbert did an excellent explanation of the problems with Bush’s new plan for deducting health insurance from the taxes that the poor don’t pay; it was shown on Stephanopoulis this morning. That should at least support jettisoning Bush’s non-plan on the problem.
The only real solution is national single-payer health care. But there are going to be bugs — lots of them — and rich, self-indulgent, and irresponsible people aren’t going to like some of the rationing that occurs, while responsible and self-disciplined people still aren’t going to like the fact that they are footing the bills for many irresponsible and self-destructive types. There will have to be limits to limitless craving for perfection, and to endless maintainance of brain-dead vegetables on life-support. In other words — nobody’s going to like it.