Recommended Reading

Michael Hiltzik discusses efforts to kill the "public option" proposals for health care…and he asks the musical question why some folks are so desperate to protect the mega-profits of the insurance companies. Here's one paragraph of many worth quoting…

The firms take billions of dollars out of the U.S. healthcare wallet as profits, while imposing enormous administrative costs on doctors, hospitals, employers and patients. They've introduced complexity into the system at every level. Your doctor has to fight them to get approval for the treatment he or she thinks is best for you. Your hospital has to fight them for approval for every day you're laid up. Then they have to fight them to get their bills paid, and you do too.

That has all been my experience, the experience of most friends, and a constant gripe of darn near every doctor I've had in the last decade. When someone asks me, "Do you really want the government coming between you and your physician?," I have to remind them that right now, that's the position of insurance company employees whose job description is to pounce on every possible loophole to deny coverage and payment.

Unfortunately, I don't think the mounting public debate about Health Care Reform is going to be about things like that. Looks like it's going to be about arguing if the bills really contain provisions for killing Grandma when her nitroglycerine tablets get too expensive.