Guaranteed Healthcare

So this is what it’s come to.  This isn’t a plot point from the set of a disaster film.  This is the front line of our healthcare crisis: Oregon is holding a lottery for health coverage.  3,000 or so winners gets to sign up for health insurance with the Oregon Health Plan.  We'll take our chances, below...

How do people feel about this?

'"It's better than nothing, it's at least a hope," said Shirley Krueger, 61, who signed up the first day.'

We’ve got 600,000 people without medical coverage in Oregon, half of the nation’s bankruptcies caused by medical bills, and the worst healthcare access of any industrialized democracy?  And this is what we're left with?  Powerballs or placebos?  People are convinced that they have no hope?

This doesn't happen in other industrialized countries.  They've figured this out.  We're the last one experimenting with making health insurance a for-profit commodity.

Meanwhile, right-wing columnist Froma Harrop has identified the real problem: free riders!

What’s that? “A free rider is someone who can afford a health insurance policy but won't buy any.”

Oh, our healthcare crisis is the fault of the poor people and those without coverage.  That’s a great way to divert attention from the huge insurance corporations making billions in the market, such as Blue Shield, who just saved themselves a few bucks by kicking a 12-year-old boy off their rolls.  He suffers from bipolar disorder, Tourette’s, and obsessive-compulsive disorder…all of which means he is completely uninsurable, because what insurance company wants sick patients?  That is your premium dollars being used to fight his Mom in court.

Meanwhile, a moment of consolation for Deval Patrick—he has to implement Mitt Romney’s individual mandate plan, but, well, here’s what he thinks about the idea: "I think it's a component; if it were freestanding, if it were all on its own, it wouldn't make any sense. Otherwise, you could cure homelessness by ordering everybody to buy a house."  Of course, why would ordering everyone to buy a house be even a component of curing homelessness?  Anyway.

Finally—our friends at Physicians for a National Health Program lay out why we need to move to single-payer healthcare, in this essay called “Mandate single-payer.”