Thread: Health Insurance in the USA

Lets start with this:10 Surprising Facts about American Health Care - Brief Analysis #649

Originally Posted by JMS

Lets start with this:10 Surprising Facts about American Health*Care - Brief Analysis #649

No one wants to be like Canada anyway.....

But seriously, most of those stats are comparing Canada to the US. I don't know what to make of that.

As for the other stats, its a conceded point that the US has better "rare disease" care than other countries.

And yet more..if you care to read the bill that is: Dagnamit! I tried to upload the bill but it is too big so I split it in half and each half is now bigger than the original. Can anyone help?

Originally Posted by JMS

Can anyone help?

I can provide a link to the pdf: http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf

Originally Posted by Leighton

As for the other stats, its a conceded point that the US has better "rare disease" care than other countries.

Aren't all those case handled by Gregory House?

Originally Posted by JMS

Lets start with this:10 Surprising Facts about American Health*Care - Brief Analysis #649

Ummm, Mark... have you seen the board of directors of the 'thinktank' that came up with that article?

The mission started to sound a little fishy to me: "The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization, established in 1983. The NCPA's goal is to develop and promote private alternatives to government regulation and control, solving problems by relying on the strength of the competitive, entrepreneurial private sector."

You see, that sounds like a pretty big in-your-face agenda that says to me they have vested interests in keeping the status quo.

SO I looked into who's on the board of the NCPA. Who's calling the shots? Who's driving the agenda? Quite an impressive list it turns out. Amongst all the CEOs of large businesses, they include:

WILLIAM J. GEDWED serves as President and Chief Executive Officer of HealthMarkets®. Mr. Gedwed serves as a Director and Chairman of the Board of Directors of The MEGA Life and Health Insurance Company, Mid-West National Life Insurance Company of Tennessee based in Texas, The Chesapeake Life Insurance Company and Fidelity First Insurance Company.

W. Mike Baggett has been Chairman and CEO of the law firm of Winstead Sechrest & Minick P.C. since 1992. The firm has more than 300 attorneys in 7 cities.

John C. Goodman is NCPA president and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis. The Wall Street Journal and the National Journal, among other publications, have called him the "Father of Health Savings Accounts," ... Dr. Goodman's health policy blog is the only right-of-center health care blog on the Internet. It is the only place where pro-free enterprise, private sector solutions to health care problems are routinely examined and debated.

Plus some investment bankers (I wonder if their investment funds have any interests in insurance businesses? Hmmm...) and Chairman of the Board is Pete du Pont who has served as a state legislator, U.S. Congressman, Governor, and in 1988 was a Republican candidate for President of the United States.

If you were to put together a team to cherry-pick the studies which will further the agenda of the current US health system, I'm not sure you could find a better crew.

What next? A link in the religion thread to the Vatican website to show how science is not the way forward?