Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Health Care – Anybody Care?, Pt.4 – Who’s interested?

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Next comes the American Medical Association. They are praised for their “consistent voice for covering the uninsured”, but criticized them for diverting energies to more popular issues. It is noted that numbers of physicians that have been providing treatment to those without health insurance are going elsewhere. Another group addressed was the American Cancer Society. There was dissention among the members when they “decided to focus its marketing budget on coverage for the uninsured”, Mr. Millenson explains. When some detractors argued that universal health insurance wasn't "their fight," the society countered that some or the would-be patients may have cancer. If let go, and without health insurance, they may be diagnosed too late. Then those people would have a far greater chance of dying.

There may have been more interest groups willing to follow the AARP and AMA "stick to it" minded than the ACS was. These would be large unions that advocate universal health insurance/care, but the problem is, they only end up worrying about benefits for their own people. There are many happy members of municipal health insurance unions only paying $25 per month for a full-blown family plan. But when conversation comes up in public concerning the “health care crises”, it is generally centered around things like the high costs of medical care. It’s been that way for a century, since Hoover. Same during the Nixon years. But now, it’s time to talk about, not only about the 22,000 who die every year for lack of health care, but to also expound on the fact that funding to have covered them might “actually save the rest of "us."

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