"Uninsured" is a CONSEQUENCE not the cause of our health services crisis

Uninsured is a consequence of the biggest problems with our system rather than the cause.

*Uninsured is the result of "insurance" that focused on excluding more and more "insurance" over the years in exchange for "coverage" of the finite costs of preventive care.

*Lack of insurance, the contractual right to receive help in paying for needed medical services when a person is sick in exchange for the payment of premiums, is the result of a shift in the industry to the fine print documents that largely describe what they won't cover in exchange for higher and higher premiums.

*The role of uncontrolled costs of services and physician fees have shifted the cost of care...even for largely healthy patients.

*Finally, the disparities in the large segments of populations covered by preferable insurance policies negotiated on their behalf according to older formulae that promises a large customer base...specifically governmental civil servants at local, state and federal levels has enabled insurers to charge more to the rest of the citizenry left to find their own best deal which is NEVER as good (most coverage for least cost) as those cushy benefit plans. Instead of focusing on the sacred cow of governmental civilian employee benefits, including those given to all the brazen Congressmen who lecture individuals about how such plans are un-American while they participate and receive the benefits of such plans year after year. Our government representatives have no incentive to resolve the health services problem because THEIR insurance coverage has been and continues to be treated as a non-negotiable perk that exists off the exploitation of the rest of the citizenry.

The dialog about health services needs to start at square one: Health services are a consumer transaction. If only the healthy and the wealthy and the public civilian population are eligible for affordable health insurance that provides them with sufficient access and quality to needed medical services then the rest of the citizenry will not have health insurance. This means that in order to obtain needed medical services, that population will have to find another way. Here's the kicker...the healthy will not always be healthy, and the civilian governmental workforce will be charged more by insurers who do not have access to the rest of the citizenry's wallet so that ultimately, only the wealthy will have adequate health insurance. In our system, the poor and the elderly will also have limited access based on Medicaid and Medicare. So what's wrong with that?

Maybe nothing. Throwing money and compromise out at the health insurers and the medical services providers and begging them to ACCEPT the fat, smoking, diabetic, alcoholic masses that have supported them for decades has resulted in ingratitude. Doctors don't want to accept health insurance. Many of the specialists you will need when you are sick will not participate in your insurance plan...so much for those premiums. Governments want to sort people by profile to charge them even more to make it easier to increase the numbers of insured. Really? Read the governmental plans, most include provision that governmental employees cannot be excluded for pre existing conditions. Further, most provide opportunities for LIFETIME coverage with as little as five years of work. Not quite the deal the rest of America gets.

Consumers built the mammoth profit centers of insurance companies. 47,000,000 have rejected this consumer product. That should be reason enough for health insurers to be improving their marketing strategy including working to negotiate with more physicians to add to their lists of providers, including auditing themselves (INTERNAL fraud at health insurers amounts to billions of dollars), including not EXCLUDING.

Instead of arguing over whether health care is a right, citizens, Americans should be considering how we want to react to the terrorist tactics of the health services industry providers, insurers and governmental programs.