Why Are They There?

By Keith R. Schmitz

I've raised this question before with no response, so let's float it again. Bet the comments will register 0.

It is clear that private health insurance takes billions of dollars out of our health care system to pay for their buildings, big salaries and shareholders. It is also clear that health insurance companies stand in the way of people getting health care. The simple-minded will tell us that this is the best health care system on earth and everyone has access. Just go out and get it.

But in this country access takes dollars. If an insurance company denies coverage up front in terms of pre-existing conditions, or pulls a surprise, welshes on their agreements and jerks coverage because of some ginned up technicality, that can be a death sentence and certainly send a torpedo into family finances. These families then have to watch their relative die while their financial future ebbs away as well.

No one in their right mind really loves the health insurance companies. Many will say in polls that they are satisfied with their coverage, but what looms in the back of their minds is that this coverage can disappear if a job is lost, a real possibility for many of us.

People on the other hand who enjoy Medicare are truly happy with it, partially because they know it will be there when they need it. As for another public health care plan, one independent source -- the Rand Corp. -- says it is working very well.

So for those of you who are spreading horror stories about pending public health care plans and lies about systems in other countries that are clearly working better than ours, let's focus on what we have.

Despite what many of you fantasize, I believe capitalism can be the greatest system on earth, so long as there some level of control.

Why do you think we need to keep private health insurance in our medical delivery picture?

You're on.

Let's not bay at the moon about the socialism in the Obama proposals that does not exist, but give us a full throated defense of what to many of us appears to be a parasite.