"For women, the health insurance crisis is very real, very personal and very scary," Guest said.
The committee also heard from women such as Peggy Robertson of Colorado, who read a letter from her insurance company. Robertson testified that because she'd already given birth via cesarean, when she tried to get an individual policy in Colorado, her insurance company considered it a pre-existing condition and wouldn't insure her unless she could prove she'd been sterilized.
That "put me on the edge of my chair," said the chairwoman of the committee, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., calling it "offensive and morally repugnant."
"No one in the United States of America, in order to get health insurance, should ever be coerced into getting sterilized," Mikulski said.
I really don't see the problem. We all wanted a for-profit system, right? I mean, the market always delivers the best results. If the government got involved, we'd have death panels and firing squads. What's a little forced sterilization when compared to that?
Deep breath.
Remind me again what insurance companies actually do?
What an epiphany. Lived my whole life accepting the idea of health insurance. Suddenly it's obvious: from the vantage point of fulfilling the the Hippocratic oath, there is no reason whatsoever for health insurance companies to exist.
ReplyDeleteWe've created a monster.
Insurance companies add value by underwriting. Underwriting in health insurance is a process of discriminating between sick and healthy people. We are trying to create a system where that doesn't happen.
ReplyDeleteSo why do we need them?
All of the Rube Goldberg health insurance mechanisms in these bills are designed to ensure that insurance companies don't discriminate, so that we can keep them around.
Why are we keeping them around if they don't do anything?
Because the donate millions to Democrats. (Republicans too, of course, but they're beyond the pale at this point.)