Two Great Pieces on Health Care Reform in the Des Moines Register

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Unsurprisingly, our new troll wants to use a technicality to make discrimination against women legal. I shouldn’t be shocked, but I am. Pigs like PrivatePigg are actually seeking ways to pay women less for equal work. That’s a political opinion that I would think would belong in the dustbin of history, right next to segregated buses. But I have zero doubt that if they tried to bring back “black people in the back”, Pigg would defend that and claim it’s not racist, and how dare you suggest otherwise. - Amanda Marcotte

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Sure, PrivatePigg. Lie your head off. But don’t forget that I’m a) white b) half redneck and c) not sheltered from the private opinions assholes like yourself spout when they feel safe. And I know a racist dog whistle when I hear one. It’s just “ACORN” when it’s spoken in public, but in private homes, the meaning of it gets spelled out more clearly - Amanda Marcotte
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Two Great Pieces on Health Care Reform in the Des Moines Register

By PrivatePigg ~ October 29th, 2009. Filed under: Uncategorized.

I’ve always found it interesting that we label a doctor’s choice to run MRIs and other sophisticated tests on patients as “defensive medicine.” This is a label concocted by the insurance companies and their lobbyists to cause people to believe that the testing is somehow illegitimate or wasteful.

The truth is that no doctor would run these tests if the doctor already knew what the patient’s particular health issue was.

Exactly. The only time they practice so-called “defensive medicine” is when they haven’t figured out the problem and still need to perform additional tests to correctly determine what the problem actually is. And if they felt some other test was likely to diagnose the problem, that test would be run first.

Piece #2:

Do you think you’re OK because you have insurance?

But what if your health-insurance company refuses to pay for the care your doctor says will save your life? You can be denied coverage by your workplace insurer and you have no real remedy to fight back.

The Employment Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 covers employee health plans. Once Congress acts in a particular area, all state law on the subject - including normal civil remedies - is gone.

ERISA eliminates remedies that used to be available if your insurer denied you coverage in bad faith. You could sue for damages to compensate you for the lost income, pain and disability caused by a delay in treatment caused by refusal to cover a necessary procedure. Now, those remedies are gone.

The only recourse you have is to sue for the benefits denied. That’s it. All the insurance company ever has to pay you is what it should have paid you in the first place. Insurers engage in rampant coverage exclusion and claim denial. They get rich saying “no” to policyholders who need health care.

Is it any wonder that insurance is so costly considering how much it is regulated by government? From ERISA pre-empting your right to seek redress in a local court in front of local people, to your entire policy basically being dictated by state statute, and insurance companies being permitted to monopolize care within individual states (unlike other industries), it is really not a shock that the industry is such a mess - and so inefficient for consumers.

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