Two videos on YouTube should be required viewing for anyone who honestly thinks a single-payer (universal) health care system is better than the private sector when it comes to health care. Both are a few years old, but their impact is not diminished.

The first one (titled “A Short Course in Brain Surgery”) is about five minutes long and is anecdotal, but speaks volumes.

The second one is about 25 minutes and shows what Canadians really think about their country’s form of socialized medicine.

An interesting footnote to the first video deals with a medical care broker — an interesting industry that has cropped up in Canada, where brokers actually search in other countries for basic medical care that Canadians cannot obtain in their own country. The medical care broker is worried that if the U.S. adopts single-payer health, he will have no where to send Canadians for quality and timely health care.

Without question, a recent opinion piece by Robert J. Samuelson in Newsweek is THE most definitive I have ever read about universal health care.

Enough said. Just read it already.

One of the worst jobs to have in insurance right now would be head of a managed care company. Okay, maybe the $3.9 million proposed salary for Pittsburgh-based Highmark Inc.’s CEO, Kenneth Melani, if Highmark Inc.’s merger with Independence Blue Cross is approved in Pennsylvania, would make it a bit easier to handle. But still, the world of managed care is in great flux and nowhere is it more evident than in the region’s Blues affiliates.

The nation’s health insurers don’t know what to do as medical costs spiral upward and people live longer. Add to that the growing calls for universal health insurance, even though there’s no way to afford it.

Each of these issues would in and of itself be a concern. But collectively, they present a perfect storm. Examples in the region show how health insurers are battening the hatches. Read the rest of this entry »

An op-ed piece in the Baltimore Sun Aug. 3 suggested that universal health insurance is the great panacea for the workplace. The author, William J. Evitts, a historian, builds on the ideas of William Bridges, who in 1995 wrote a book called JobShift, which called jobs a present list of consistent responsibilities for one or more people to accomplish. Evitts argues that given that the definition of a job is shifting and more jobs are consequently being outsourced, the need grows for a non-employer-based health insurance system.

“Freed from the tyranny of employment-linked health insurance, we’ll follow our dreams and take control of our work,” Evitts writes. “The creative energy unleashed by this will electrify the economy, facilitating entrepreneurship and innovation by reducing the risk of doing without the swaddling security of a long-term job.”

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An article in the Baltimore Sun,  “Life, Death and Health Insurance,” chronicles the struggles of a 32-year-old Maryland woman who found a cancerous lump on her breast and has battled to obtain treatment because she has no health insurance. The article explains that several doctors wouldn’t treat her because of concerns about payment. The quest for treatment and a cure for cancer is a horribly difficult situation and not one I would wish for anyone.

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New Jersey is joining a small but growing list of states that wants to institute universal health insurance coverage by throwing money at the issue (i.e. raising taxes) instead of understanding the perceived problem and working out a viable solution. And the excuse legislators are using is that the new law is “for the children.” The second phase would come out later this year and force everyone in the state to carry health insurance.

According to figures, nearly 1.5 million New Jersey residents don’t have health insurance. Some would say that means they don’t have access to health care, but it is an apples to oranges argument. Not having health insurance does NOT mean that a person does not have access to health care, as is evidenced by the millions each year who use the local emergency room as their primary care physician.

But that is a different argument.

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