Who Will Stand Up Against Cigna And Say No More To The Killing Of Americans For Profit?

Mr Willis, I went to John Edwards campaign website, and looked up his health care proposals, and, just like almost everyoen else's, they depend on using teh government and mandating employers to help people buy private health insurance. So, when Mr Edwards says:

Are you telling me that we're gonna sit at a table and negotiate with those people? We're gonna take their power away and we're not gonna have this kind of problem again,

he's lying to you!

Mr Edwards has promised to:

Making insurance affordable by creating new tax credits, expanding Medicaid and SCHIP, reforming insurance laws, and taking innovative steps to contain health care costs. Creating regional "Health Care Markets" to let every American share the bargaining power to purchase an affordable, high-quality health plan, increase choices among insurance plans, and cut costs for businesses offering insurance.

He is saying, in effect, that health insurance will cost less. That means that insurance premiums paid to companies like Cigna will be lower.

Well, Cigna has to make a profit to stay in business, and one of the ways that Cigna, or any health insurance company, does so is through the use of means to reduce payouts, to resist paying for things for which they are not contracturally obligated to pay.

If you lower premiums (corporate income), and raise costs, you destroy profitability. Mr Edwards would be killing the very industry on which his universal health care coverage plan is based!

And you ought not to be surprised that companies like Cigna would try to reduce costs; even in the socialized medicine countries, the government run health services are facing mandates to cut costs, via the rationing of health care. In single-payer plan Canada, the average waiting time for a new appointment is measured in months, and in Prince Edward Island it's over half a year. Britain's National health Service has issued orders to drag out appointments for up to eight weeks in some regions.

Dana,

If you've watched Edwards talk about health care, his stance is that he is not naive enough to think that insurance companies are going to fold overnight.

His universal health care plan includes insurance companies but gives consumers a choice by expanding SCHIP and Medicare. Insurance companies would have to lower their rates to remain competative and more and more people would switch over to government run health care; the same health care that our elected leaders use. Just because the insurance companies go away does not mean that the health care does.

As far as the "wait times", that is a false argument as my wife will attest to when trying to book an OBGYN appointment and they tell her that it's a 4 month wait for the next available spot.

As long as insurance companies are for profit, the health of every American they are supposed to cover will be in jeopardy. If their first instinct is to deny coverage for the sake of the bottom line, then what the hell are we paying for? We're just giving our money away.

Take a look at this video.

Dana said: Well, Cigna has to make a profit to stay in business, and one of the ways that Cigna, or any health insurance company, does so is through the use of means to reduce payouts, to resist paying for things for which they are not contracturally obligated to pay.

Are you kidding? So if a doctor tells the insurance company that a liver transplant is necessary for the survival of an individual that is supposedly covered by said insurance company, and a paper pusher denies coverage because they think they know better than a qualified physical or surgeon, that's okay with you because they need to make a profit?

A sign of life from the Edwards campaign. Being a realistic Kucinich supporter, Edwards is the least odious of the real candidates, so I'm happy about this.

Shorter dana: The health suystem is fine as it is, and so much better than those SOCIALISTS.

Shorter me: dana and reality do not agree.

It's funny that the regressives always point to Canada for wait times. They are a bit worse than the US, but the US isn't very high on the list either. The UK for instance is quite a bit faster with quicker same day availability and fewe 6+ day waits than the US. It's easy to cherry-pick the stats.