Things must be getting serious. The local shop/post office was closed yesterday for the holiday and it took a trip to a garage to find a newspaper. As buying two editions of the Telegraph in a month is obviously unthinkable, a pound and a half was deposited in Murdoch's piggy bank to purchase the only other available paper, The Times. And this rather rash act leads to today's cautionary tale.
Regular readers of this blog are accustomed to dire warnings about the future of the NHS if PRDave and the Tory government get their way. However, what do you know about the state of healthcare in the United States, where as we all know Obama has been fighting to reform healthcare and bring affordable health insurance to 30 million poorer Americans for the first time.
The Times on page 33 has an article headed rather strikingly,
Insurers 'condemning patients to death' to preserve profits in the wake of reforms
The Times has put a financial firewall around its website but here are the main points of the article.
The US healthcare system costs roughly twice as much per capita as those of other advanced nations but fails to deliver better outcomes.
Wendell Porter a former health insurance company executive whistleblower says,
Insurers are refusing to pay for life saving treatments to preserve their profit margins.
Because of healthcare reforms healthcare companies will be stricter about getting prior authorisation from insurers before providing treatment.
Porter is quoted as having a change of heart when he attended a free health fair for the needy run by a Briton, Stan Brock in Appalachia.
"It was the most dramatic thing I've ever seen." Thousands had arrived before him, 800 before dawn for a 5.30am opening. "All these people in lines going into barns and animal stalls and tents. There was no privacy." Later that year a 17 year old girl died for want of a transplant after doctors begged Cigna, Porter's company, in vain to fund the operation.
President Obama in his 2010 State of the Union address said "Insurance companies are not only encouraged to find reasons to drop the seriously ill, they are rewarded for it."
This is a link to an article by Wendell Porter, Health Insurance Industry Corruption
This is just the tip of an iceberg that condemns many Americans to poor or non existent healthcare because of rampant privatisation and vested interests. Aren't you angry now? You betcha!
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