A Lesson in…

Health Care in America 101

Current health care in America is very simple and extremely profitable. It is premised upon the indisputable fact that younger Americans are statistically healthy and incur very little health care costs. These young, healthy Americans pay insurance companies approximately $6,000.00 per year for individual coverage and approximately $12,000.00 per year for family coverage. Of course, such premiums are often substantially more and can indeed double and even triple as these young, healthy Americans age.

Americans pay these premiums from approximately age 25 thru age 65, at which age they retire and go on Medicare, which effectively ends or substantially replaces their employer provided private insurance coverage at the precise time their need for healthcare begins. Thus, from the approximate ages 25 to 65 (i.e., 40 years) Americans pay the insurance industry approximately $240,000.00 to $480,000.00 or more for coverage they are statistically unlikely to use.

From 50 to 65, those unfortunate disposable employees who lose their jobs before retirement age face denial of health care and possible bankruptcy should they actually receive care at their own expense. Those who survive until retirement age 65 then receive their primary healthcare from the government Medicare Program at taxpayer expense for the remainder of their lives during which they are statistically most likely to actually require health care (i.e., not from the insurance companies they have paid for 30-40 years.)

In summary, the insurance industry reaps massive revenues by insuring those who statistically do not need it, by selectively pruning even those insured by denying and dropping coverage should they actually require health care, and subsequently – ultimately – dumping their pilfered clientele onto the government funded health care programs at the very age when real health care needs actually begin to prevail in the senior years. This is obviously why Medicare and Medicaid exists in the first place – politically engineered by the insurance industry and their corrupt politicians to pass the real cost of health care onto the taxpayers.

Thus, the real issue is not a government takeover of healthcare as the government already provides such healthcare. Rather, the real issue is a government takeover of the REVENUE — the billions of dollars paid to the insurance industry by the young and healthy prior to actually needing health care.

Yet that is not the message we hear from our corrupt, corporate-owned representatives. No, all we hear is the frightening “untenable” costs of health “insurance” reform. However, if we look to the actual 2009 federal budget, we see that Medicare and Medicaid represent $408 billion and $224 billion, respectively, for a total of $632 billion. This $632 billion constitutes the taxpayer funded plan already and historically successfully actually paying for health care costs in America.

Compare this amount to the premiums currently being paid by young, healthy Americans. If we project approximately 100 million households, paying the insurance industry an average of $9,000.00 per year (i.e. the average between individual and family coverage), we can easily see where the American people are currently paying approximately $900 BILLION per year to a parasitic insurance industry IN ADDITION TO the $632 BILLION in taxpayer funding of the Medicare and Medicaid programs. That’s $1.53 TRILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR the American people all currently paying.

Why in the world would Americans knowingly choose to continue this level of funding for the illusion of health care insurance while young and healthy???

The answer is: They would not!

But the American people have not been told the truth. They have been misled, manipulated, and deliberately distracted from the relatively simple mathematical concepts discussed above.

Again, the real issue is not a government takeover of health care. The government already provides (i.e., pays for) health care in America. No, the real issue is a government (i.e., the people) takeover of the REVENUE — the billions, indeed TRILLIONS, of dollars being paid to the insurance industry by the young and healthy prior to actually needing health care.

Now that the insurance industry has openly and arrogantly displayed their unmitigated control over their bought-and-paid-for corrupt politicians — Republicans and Democrats alike — there remains no further restraint to gouging their victims for all they’re worth. There is no longer any concern for any further pretense or appearance of legitimacy or propriety in their looting of the American people. Indeed, the insurance industry may even be displaying a sense – an awakening – their strangle hold on the health care of the American people may be weakened and, perhaps, soon broken. Hence the 40% increase in premiums proposed by BC/BS of CA, and similar premium gouging throughout the country.

The insurance industry has exposed for all to see its true nature – a parasitic industry leeching trillions in revenues from our country while providing no real value dumping the real costs of actual health care onto the American taxpayers.

It is called “ersatz” capitalism – the flawed version of capitalism we’ve ended up with, an unfair system that socializes economic losses and privatizes the gains. Yep, that pretty much sums up “Health Care in America”.

Thus endeth the lesson.