Bastards

Who would want any of this from a health insurance company?

That's just not right.

The Commies Are Here!!

Damn!! When did that happen? Gallup (07.30.09), via DailyKos:

"The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index reveals that currently 29.0% of adult Americans who have health insurance get their coverage through the government, a percentage which has increased since early 2008."

More than half of insured Americans (56.5%) rely on an employer-based program and another 13.3% of the insured obtain their healthcare coverage through some other means, which includes purchasing it privately for themselves.

Nearly 30% of Insured Have Government Plans

Didn't even notice, did ya.

In the meantime, as of 2007 or thereabouts, there were only around 45.7 million folks without health care. But what the hell? Guess only about 36 million of 'em were card-carrying Americans, so who gives a shit?

Those Socialist Bastards

Trust Medicare more? How dare they. Obama's brainwashed 'em. Yeah, that's it. National Journal (06.29.09), via DailyKos:

"So if Americans live in fear of government intrusion into health care, why does likening the public option to Medicare make reform more popular?

Consider some results obtained by the same Kaiser tracking poll. When asked how much they trust various health care players 'to put your interests above their own,' respondents rank doctors (78 percent trust 'a lot' or 'some') and nurses (74 percent) at the top of the list."

Who's Afraid Of Public Insurance?

"Among those insured through Medicare, however, 'the Medicare program' (68 percent) scores nearly as high. Among those with private insurance, 'your health insurance company' earns much less trust (48 percent)."

Jeepers. Why wouldn't they trust private insurers?

We're Number One!

This is fucking pathetic. Financial Times (01.08.08), via Jerome a Paris:

"More patients die in the US from diseases that could be treated by timely intervention than in any other leading industrialised country, a study by senior health academics showed on Monday.

A decade ago, the US had the fourth worst record among a group of 19 industrialised countries in terms of deaths per 100,000 people from diseases that are amenable to treatment."

US leads on deaths from treatable disease

"Over the succeeding five years, the number of such deaths in the US fell from 115 per 100,000 to 110. But other countries improved faster, leaving the US with the worst record, behind Portugal, Ireland and the UK, where the preventable death rate runs at 103 or 104 per 100,000."

"'If the US performed as well as the top three countries in the study' - France, with 65 deaths per 100,000, and Japan and Australia, both with 71 per 100,000 - 'there would have been 101,000 fewer deaths per year,' the authors write in the journal Health Affairs."

Heaven Help Us, One And All

SCHIP. It's not just for Commies anymore. National Center for Public Policy Research (09.07):

"(F)airness has never been the primary concern of the political left on health care. The primary concern has been achieving a universal, government-run system. Providing near universal coverage for children, and funding it via cigarette taxes, is a big step toward achieving that goal."

SCHIP Expansion: Socialized Medicine on the Installment Plan

Which is pretty funny, considering this. NYTimes (09.28.07), via FireDogLake:

"No one has the nerve to brand this country’s purest systems of 'socialized medicine' — the military and veterans hospitals — for what they are. In both systems, care is not only paid for by the government but delivered in government facilities by doctors who are government employees.

Even so, a parade of Washington’s political dignitaries, including President Bush, has turned to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., for checkups and treatment, without ideological complaint. Politicians who deplore government-run health care for average Americans are only too happy to use it themselves."

The Socialists Are Coming! The Socialists Are Coming!

And SCHIP? "The State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-chip, was denigrated by one Republican congressman [ed. - that would be Jeb Hensarling (R - TX5)] this week as 'a government-run socialized wolf masquerading in the sheep skin of children’s health.'"

"It might better be thought of as a 'double-payer system' in which the states and the federal government put up the money, the states take the lead in defining the program and the actual care is typically delivered through private health plans by private doctors and hospitals."

And you can't get more socialist than that.