Thursday, September 25, 2008
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a thread, in which I suggested that it seemed to me that Americans have accepted the status quo. I was happy to read today that I was wrong about at least 200 Americans in Mason, OH.
Earlier this afternoon about 200 people showed up at the headquarters of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Mason and launched a protest calling for more responsible (and by responsible I mean actually providing care rather than focusing purely upon profit) healthcare insurance.
From what I read, it seems that the protestors were keying into, what seems to me at least, to be the primary problems with for-profit privately run healthcare insurance. With the current insurance system in the United States insurers don't have a driving motivation to actually get their customers healthcare. Indeed, to maintain adequate profit margins they have the pressing motivation to try to deny care for as many people as possible.
As the protestors noted, private insurers such as Anthem have for quite some time had the practice of denying insurance for those with existing conditions or denying claims for more expensive procedures, which they dismiss as "not necessary" or "experimental" (whether or not those procedures are in fact not necessary or experimental).
While currently, the cost of insurance prevents many from accessing adequate healthcare in this country, that isn't the biggest problem when it comes to the insurance system here. The problem is the unavailability of insurance for a great number of folks who are the sickest. With insurance companies needing to make a profit and there being no legislation mandating the provision of insurance to all Americans, we're going to continue to find that large numbers of people will remain uninsured.
This is an issue that folks in this country will have to continue to think about when they go to polls to vote. If having available healthcare is important to you, you have to think about who is actually arguing for a reform of the insurance system in this country that requires either private or public insurers to provide folks with insurance, whether they have pre-existing conditions or not.
More about the protest can be found at Cincinnati.com.
P.S. To any and all the folks who attended the Mason protest. Good work, keep fighting the good fight.
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