All Life Is Problem Solving

The people of America have an important business decision to make. Right now, we’re paying roughly $2.4 Trillion per year for medical products and services. It is said that we could save roughly $450 – $600 billion of that per year if we eliminated the private for profit health insurance system and replaced it with a Medicare for All insurance system funded by taxes.

Now my simple question is this: What social value in addition to the funding of health care providers, which can also be performed by Medicare for All, is produced by the private health insurance system that is worth $450 – $600 billion per year?

I think the answer to this question is clear. There is no positive social value. However, there is plenty of negative social value in the form of needless deaths, bankruptcies, insecurities, divorces, homelessness, increased inequality, distorted politics, lack of freedom to quit jobs and move to other jobs or start one’s own business, and many other negative consequences. So why are we agreeing to maintain and proposing even to expand this system through mandates and subsidies?

None of this political backing and filing Congress is going through now makes business sense. The Baucus bill is a travesty, and all the other committee bills offered by the Congress are inadequacies. They are all, relatively speaking sell-outs for the sake pf preserving the private insurance system. The proper business decision here is to ruthlessly eliminate the private, profit-making health insurance companies. Stop the bleeding as soon as we can. Pass a Medicare for All bill, and implement it for the whole population inside of a year. Over the next 10 years save us all at least $4.5 Trillion and invest that money in re-inventing our economy and re-building our educational system. Any Congressman or Senator who stands in the way of this needs to be defeated in the next election, because he or she is not voting in the real interests of the American people. What else is there to say about this, really?

(Also posted at firedoglake.com where there may be more comments)