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Well yeah, there's no getting around that the term "health care reform" needs to be a code-word for radical re-structuring and regulation of the insurance industry.
I was listening to the last This American Life episode on podcast this evening, and they did a piece on the recent house committee hearing on insurance recision. You know, where a person's expensive medical need triggers a review of their policy for any little reason the company can find to revoke their policy? Including their own clerical errors, their own agents' errors on the application, in some cases. It happened to over a hundred thousand Americans in 2008. Can you imagine dealing with a diagnosis of a serious illness, plus suddenly being uninsured? The three insurance companies whose CEOs were at the hearing made over $100 million on revoked policies.
This is just exactly the thinking that has made the insurance industry so powerful. I've made the analogy elsewhere on this thread, but... An insurance company CEO would be completely at home running a casino. Breaking the knees of anybody who wins big, running them out of town. Hope they have insurance for those knees, too...
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