The Jack Wade Show

After spending an enjoyable day cheering on our courageous health insurance protesters, I was treated to a thoroughly annoying news story on one of the evening network newscasts.  The thrust of the story was that insurance companies have taken a new direction in their fight against the upcoming health care legislation. The Insurance people have released advertising that says that insurance company profits have only gone up by a small percentage last year, but health care and pharmaceutical costs have risen dramatically.

That may or may not be so, but one thing the insurance companies don't tell you is that the rise in health care costs can be statistically mitigatged by the fact that all of their insured people are not sick at once, that is to say that the healthy insureds ostensibly can offset some of the expense incurred by the unhealthy insureds.  That's why insurance companies love to disqualify pre existing conditions and, in some cases refuse to write policies. 

I feel that  the very reason private health insurance DOESN'T work in our country is, in it's present state, it HAS to disqualify some of it's less healthy potential clients in order to exist.  That is to say, if an insurance company has a client base that was largely in poor health, the operating expenses would drive it out of business.  That is inconsistent with the idea of getting health care for all.

The insurance companies have a point about the rapid rise in medical and pharmaceutical costs.  We should thank them for bringing it to our attention because it tells us that we need to nationalize every aspect of health care to really control it's spiraling costs.  Private insurance companies can not regulate health care expenses by law, governments can.

At this point I can hear loud sqeals of protest coming from conservatives.  They will say that government shouldn't be in  the health care business. I say that health care should have always been a government function because it protects and serves public life and safety in the same way a police or fire department does.  We wouldn't think of privatizing our police departments, why should we privatize our health care?  Some people might say, doctors sacrifice their lives by spending years in medical school and should be rewarded for their effort.  Police, fire and for that matter our military personnel have sacrificed their lives to protect our lives.
Under a national health care model, doctors will be free to be doctors, not businessmen.