Health Insurance Fine Print

Thanks for the article reference, Robin. Most people with health insurance do not realize how much is not covered. Consequently, there is a growing shift in the national discussion from concern about universal health insurance to universal affordable health care.

Through my volunteering, I meet innumerable middle class people with health insurance who are not getting the medical treatment their doctors recommend because it is not covered by their health insurance.

Many only get coverage after huge fights with their health insurance company, at a time when their energy would better be focused on their own healing.

I am embarrassed by the USA's low life expectancy, high infant mortality, and other poor measures of health and health care. No Americans should have to go through the financial devastation that Sandra Hightower, who had health insurance, went through when her daughter got sick. I think that we can and should do better for our citizens. I hope that all Americans have affordable health care soon.

People are in La La land if they think that for profit insurance companies give a crap about curing people. They don't. Like any other for profit organization their primary obligation is to stockholders NOT to policyholders. That is why it is ridiculous to have life & death decisions in the hands of profiteers. I don't care if they are Dr.s or nurses. If they work for the insurer their interest is in keeping costs down and profits up- it's a happy accident if someone stays alive. Until their profits are based on how many people they cure and or keep alive, the same horrible state of affairs will exist. They will fight life-saving therapies as "experimental" and will do whatever is cheapest and most minimal. It's about time insurance companies especially HMO's become subject to the derision, and public hatred they so richly deserve. If they don't want to pay for treatments, quit fighting efforts by the government to pay for catastrophic surgeries. The insurance industry wants it both ways. They want to deny 8 year olds bone marrow transplants and then lobby for all they are worth against efforts to have the gov't take these on. So they develop fine print like the annual maximum in order to evade obligation for these types of treatments. I just hope there is a special place in hell for insurance companies and their management, who will probably just whine and respond that the healthcare crisis isn't their fault. We'd be a lot better off without insurance companies interfering with efforts to remove life & death decisions from their purview. A "Facilitation Specialist" just should not be the one to decide that someone does not get a lifesaving treatment or medication.

That's allright folks, Hillary is going to come up with a great Health Plan, NOT!! Just like she did years ago, when her then President-Husband charged her to come up with one. Funny how it just drifted out of sight with no apologies for failing, just vanished--POOF!!! The Clintons have mastered the art of Verbal Tap-Dancing !