Government-run health care
To the Editor:
You don't trust government-run health care? You think corporate-run health care is better?
Hmmm. Think about it. Who runs the government? Who, in fact, is the government? That's us, folks. We have a say in how we, as the government, manage our health care. When money is in a government-run fund, the government uses it on us. No one gets bonuses, no shareholders are standing in line to take that money from us.
On the other hand, who is in charge of corporate-run health care? I'll tell you: CEOs who want multi-millions of those dollars every year and shareholders who want more and more of that money.
Where does that money come from? From the money you pay for insurance. Did you think that money was intended to take care of you and your families? Not if the corporation can help it.
Corporations are in business for all the profit they can make. And they only make money if they don't spend it on health care. In fact, if they pay out too much for your health care, their shareholders complain. Then what? The executives go through the list of folks they insure, find those who are sick, and cut millions of them off their lists.
Voilà! Now they have money and every corporate person is happy. (That's how those executives earn the multi-million-dollar bonuses you hear about.)
Have you never heard of a pharmacy refusing to give sick persons their medications because the insurance company wouldn't pay for them? Have you never heard of doctors canceling surgery because the insurance company wouldn't pay for it? If you haven't, just wait -- you're more than likely to have that experience before you're through with corporate-run health care.
The insurance companies say our government is going to demand that we kill our seniors. Medicare has saved the lives of millions of seniors for many, many years. How can anyone not
be aware of that? When seniors are sick, Medicare money is used to pay their doctors and hospitals.
The program is so good that insurance companies decided they had to get their hands on it. Now we have the “right” to turn that money over to an HMO. For each person who signs up for an HMO, Medicare now sends the HMO -- a short name for insurance company -- many hundreds of dollars each month, money that is intended to be used for that individual's health care.
Does the HMO spend that money on the individual? Again, not if they can help it.
When do we begin to see the light? Whenever we send money to a corporate health plan, they see it as intended for their profit column. It is intensely painful for them to spend it on people. They lie awake at night, thinking of ways to keep it away from us. In fact, they will be fired if they don't come up with ways to keep it in their profit column.
We have no say
over corporate-run health care, over their CEOs, or their shareholders. In a practical sense, they don't even know we exist. We are no more to them than a monthly check that they want to file under “profits.”
I'll go with government-funded health care every time. If it needs to be improved, we, the people, own it and we, the people, have the power to improve it.
Genevieve Beenen
Sheboygan
