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1. 

   Alsboi said, 5 months ago

   Someone once said that every joke is a protest…. this is a topic that hits close to home. Auth did it well here and ought to continue….. while I still have health insurance: I won’t be able to afford it in another year or two.

2. 

   Michigander said, 5 months ago

   I’ll add car insurance to the realm of things, too.

3. 

   cdward said, 5 months ago

   Yeah, but let’s start with health.

4. 

   M Henri Day said, 5 months ago

   What a strange way to run a country - allowing something so basic as health care to fall into the hands of the insurance industry ! Could it be that massive contributions to the political action committees of political representatives at all levels of government together with a corporate media in the hands of the same persons has something to do with this anomaly ?…

   Henri

5. 

   M Henri Day said, 5 months ago

   What a strange way to run a country - allowing something so basic as health care to fall into the hands of the insurance industry ! Could it be that massive contributions to the political action committees of political representatives at all levels of government together with a corporate media in the hands of the same persons has something to do with this anomaly ?…

   Henri

6. 

   cdward said, 5 months ago

   normljones, private industry hasn’t done us any favors either. By the way, for two centuries, the postal service has done tremendously well and still does a lot better than the private companies despite being hamstrung by the government’s recent attempts to privatize every aspect of it - or at least run it like a private company and make it horrible.

7. 

   Tigger said, 5 months ago

   cdward, you are correct, we can mail a letter from Florida to Hawaii for 44 cents.

8. 

   deadheadzan said, 5 months ago

   Some important government programs, postal system, penitentiary system, social security, medicare, Hurricane, tornado disaster relief, interstate system, military, public schools, to name some that come quickly to mind.

9. 

   oldlegodad said, 5 months ago

   http://tinyurl.com/puzqur

10. 

    pbarnrob said, 5 months ago

    OK, so call it Medicare for all; I still want the plan my Congress-critter has!
    If we trim the 30+% overhead of the legalized gambling (insurance) industry overhead, down to something like 4-5%, every business, including mom-n-pops, will be better off.

11. 

    believecommonsense said, 5 months ago

    oldlego,and you don’t think there are similar consequences to decisions by health insurers? there are, I’ve cited many ….
    the patient in Louisiana who went to ER with chest pains, his doc, who knew best the patient and his history, wanted the hospital to keep him overnight but the insurance co. said no, didn’t meet their protocols, patient went home and died from heart attack that night. he was my sister’s next door neighbor. only in his late 50s.

12. 

    Anthony 2816 said, 5 months ago

    How about this one: Patient comes into the E.R. on Sunday, bleeding from uterine fibroids. Her insurance has already approved her to have a hysterectomy on Wednesday for the same problem. We tell them we need to do the surgery now, just three days earlier than their approval.

    They won’t approve it.

    So instead we take the woman to surgery and just scrape the walls of the uterus to remove the bleeding tissue. Her insurance approved this as an emergency procedure (which would have been appropriate had she not already been scheduled to have the uterus removed.)

    And on Wednesday she got her uterus removed.

    She got two surgeries instead of one.

    And the insurance company paid for two surgeries instead of one.

    The government can’t do any worse than this.

13. 

    believecommonsense said, 5 months ago

    Anthony, the bureaucracy of private insurance cos is astounding … as one physician told me it’s like anthropology majors are making medical decisions on the phone (often overruling physicians) by following policy protocols written by attorneys

    your example sounds like one of those cases

14. 

    Anthony 2816 said, 5 months ago

    Yeah, you can tell the decisions are made by someone who is just following a flow-chart, with no educated thinking.

    Bleeding from uterus? Emergency scraping allowed. Hysterectomy not indicated. End of discussion.

    Unfortunately, the flow chart didn’t allow for the possibility that a hysterectomy was already approved.