BODY ASSURANCE!

BODY ASSURANCE!

(J. Holahan L. Dubay, A. Cook, Kaiser Family Foundation)

(Congressional Budget Office, Chumbelievable, Max Fisher)

(Kimberly Amadeo, Leigh Ann Otte, John S. O’Shea, M.D., Thomas P. O’Hare)

(ProCon.org, Yale Journal of Medicine & Law, Breitbart, Fox News, Frazer Chronicle)

 

It’s true; everybody needs Body Insurance, or as people popularly refer to it today, health insurance, that was the bold printing in an ad for the American Assurance Co. in Philadelphia in June of 1912. The ad stated that the employer needs the insurance just as much as the employee. We issue a full line of personal health and accident policies, and can meet the requirements of men of all kinds to their entire satisfaction…..Write to us for an agency.

 

With medical costs approaching the outer limits of the atmosphere were people simply can’t afford the Body Coverage necessary to meet the minimum basic coverage, the Democratic Party, (mostly) floated the idea of what has come to be known as Obamacare.

 

Actually what happened was the act opened the floodgates of patrician bickering the like that haven’t been seen since the run-up to the Civil War, and the years directly after its end. All sorts of connotations have been used to explain, or debate, or cause dissatisfaction with the idea and the act.

 

The fact of the matter is that the U.S. House of Representatives have voted twice to repeal the law altogether, and 31 times to either eliminate portions, or tinker with certain parts of the 2,200 page law. The act may not be the best law that has found its way through the house, or the Supreme Court, but nobody can argue the fact that Obamacare has caused a firestorm of controversy.

 

The American life insurance system was established in the mid-1700s, while the earliest forms of health insurance did not emerge until the 1850’s when the Franklin Health Assurance Company of Massachusetts began providing accident insurance, to cover injuries related to railroad and steamboat travel. From this, sickness insurance covering all kinds of illnesses and injuries soon evolved. However it would be 80 years, 1930, before the first modern health insurance plans and policies were formed and offered.

 

EARLY HEALTH CARE

During the first few decades of the twentieth century, health care underwent major changes, from identifying infectious agents to the development of antitoxins, vaccines and new medical technology such as X-ray radiography and blood pressure meters. These developments among others completely transformed the public image of medicine, and people began to place more trust in medical institutions. Another reason that the medical profession was further legitimized was the creation of the American Medical Association and governmental rules and regulations designed to better monitor the health industry.

 

With the rise of regulations and the further elevation and quality of health care, demand for medical services increased while supply of physicians and hospitals was limited. The combination of these factors brought an increase in medical costs, which prompted the development of modern day health insurance.

 

Medical health insurance leapt into the twentieth century with one single bounding step when, in 1929, Doctor Justin Ford Kimball, an administrator at Baylor University Hospital in Dallas, Texas discovered that many schoolteachers were not paying their medical bills. In response to the problem the good doctor developed the Baylor Plan – teachers were to pay .50 cents per month in exchange for the guarantee that they could receive medical services for up to 21 days of any year. With the onset of the Great Depression many hospitals followed the model of the Baylor Plan.

 

Other landmark dates in the development of health care insurance for United States residents, hospitals during the latter part of the depression years began to band together developing health coverage plans. In 1939 the American Hospital Association, (AHA) first used Blue Cross to designate health care plans that met their standards.

 

In 1960 these plans merged under the AHA which were considered to be nonprofit organizations, and were exempted from paying taxes, enabling them to maintain low premiums. Pre-paid insurances covering physician and surgeon services, sponsored by physicians combined into Blue Shield in 1946, merged with Blue Cross in 1971 to form Blue Cross-Blue Shield.

 

In the 1940’s and 1950’s there was a proliferation of employee benefit plans that effectively blocked governmental intervention until the late 1950’s. In 1954, Social Security coverage included disability benefits for the first time, and in 1965, Medicare and Medicaid programs were introduced, in part because of the Democratic majority in Congress.

 

In the 1970’s and 1980’s more expensive medical technology and flaws in the health care system drove the cost for medical care and treatment to unprecedented costs for health care insurance. Along about this time, responding to the increasing costs, employee benefit plans changed into managed care plans, and Health Maintenance Organizations, (HMO’s) emerged. These plans are unique in that they involve a particular network of healthcare providers that abide by a set of price guidelines.

 

Originally HMO’s were established as non-profit organizations but soon realized that there was huge profits to be made, and quickly were replaced by commercial interests with that good old American bottom line mentality.

 

Since the middle to late 1980’s with a half hearted effort by the Clinton administration to stem the tide,  health care prices have been on a relentless drive to new and better profit for the insurer, the doctor, and the pharmaceutical companies. Left in the dust has been the American public and how to deal with ever increasing health care costs.

 

2013 AND BEYOND

I don’t have answers, I haven’t read the Obamacare package, I’m like most of the country, setting on the sidelines of probably the biggest game of our lives. How in hell to get next to affordable health care and I’m in better shape than a lot of people…..I’m retired, am on Medicare, and have a supplement. How much will Obamacare affect me…..not much, of that I’m pretty confident.

 

What can be done about the $75 band aid, or the $25 aspirin, your fricken guess is as good as mine, I do know one thing, until we completely eliminate the greed factor from health care services, we will be a troubled nation, blunted from reaching our potential by a bunch of suits sitting in their posh offices writing paychecks to their lobbyists.

 

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired about the pros and the cons of Obamacare, I’m sick and tired about hearing about 50,000,000 Americans not having any kind of health insurance, and I’m sick and tired about those people who use emergency rooms across the country as their personal doctor’s office…..it costs us all.

Opponents of the Obama health care act talk about the billions upon billions of dollars that the plan will cost…..well guess what, insurance, any kind of insurance plan costs billions and billions of dollars, exactly which planet do these people come from?

 

There are several ways that U.S. citizens can get health care coverage today, they can work for the federal government and reap the benefit of possibly the very best health care plan on the entire planet. People can purchase, (on their own) a health care program and pay thousands of dollars a year, depending on the size of the premium can pay a decreasing deductable, get some sort of employee health care benefit with varying deductibles, or use the local hospital emergency room as the health insurer.

 

That’s it, the only way to obtain health care today in the United States, it isn’t complicated, in fact it’s really quite simple, you either have access to health care…..or you don’t. If you break a leg, need emergency surgery, or need to birth a baby, it’ll be taken care of…..whether you have insurance or not.

 

The skinny on the problems that a nation with its citizens either without health care, are under-insured, or use the emergency room visits for medical problems run into…..long term is pretty simple to understand, there is no preventative medical assistance programs…..you know, the early detection method of keep a nations people reasonably healthy…..and productive.

 

THOSE JERKS WITH ABSOLUTELY NO FORESIGHT SEEM TO BE RUNNING THE COUNTRY

As with anything else, business or a sports club, or country needs to be operated by people with foresight, people who realize that a vested interest isn’t confined to a special few, the interest of a country the likes of the United States are intertwined one with another. In the end, there really aren’t any special sects of people that are more important than another.

 

A business owner posses special abilities, foresight, strength and an unflagging belief and confidence in his idea, his abilities, and knows how to get the most out of the key people that he assembles for his idea. Without a doubt this person is adventuresome, and is willing to get knocked down, but has the ability to jump right back up, and rejoin the game.

 

There are also the labor sectors of the United States, to coin a phrase, the hands that build America, these people are invaluable to the success of any business venture. These people are strong of back, and will, and usually won’t quit until the job is done and success is met.

 

There are several other types, you get the idea…..which is, each group or strata is no more important than the other. Each level of person needs the other levels for success, whether in individual life, or the strength of the country.

 

Why don’t we sit down, quit this partisan bickering and solve one of our nation’s biggest problems…..how to protect a really important commodity…..the American citizen.

 

HAVE A NICE DAY!