The High Cost Of Health Care: From Then To Now

For Any And All Conserve-ative Constitutionalists:


With all the hard sell both the Democrat and Republican Global Socialists on the Hill have been doing and will continue to do this month before they "readdress" Obama's call for health care reform and using it as public forums for re-elections in their "versions" and the revisions they personally have either included or attempted to place in this heinous Big Daddy government again legislation, maybe it might be worthwhile to take a stroll down memory lane to see how we got from affordable health care now to the astronomical rise which has occurred, along with our progressively declining infant survival rates.

First, global and national insurers formed a union of insurance providers and started meeting supposedly in order to increase the quality of health care in the United States. During those meetings, however, they also began standardizing health care coverages and price fixing the policies which were offered to the public.

Initially simply businesses that existed as a "shared pool" for the premium payers, they instead became megacorporations and took on a "business model" mindset in that profit, and profit alone, was their driving force. They then hired lobbyists with their extra premium monies from their policyholders, and began lobbying the federal and state legislatures throughout the country in order to gain more profit at the policyholder's expense.

The politicians, of course after being wined and dined, complied. Instead of regulating those large now "commercial" corporporation, they began to write more and more industry favoring laws which then also afforded these large global and national insurers to invest those premiums in high risk stocks and investments, and then to also to conglomerate and branch out into other areas of the financial sector such as also owning banks, real esate companies, and other forms of commerce.

Hence Prudential Insurance also owned Prudential-Bache Securities, and Prudential Real Estate. All with the policyholder's premiums and then individual shareholders as their main sources of investment capital. Thus, the insurers used the premium payers premiums actually against them in order to gain more.

Congress then passed an Act attempting to negate the provisions of the Commerce Clause with respect to insurance companies forbidding any and all states from effectively also regulating the insurers who were incorporated within their state borders. Although, of course, this was also not within their Constitutional authority to so do, as the federal government actually was intended to work for the states and people and accountable to them, not as their sovereign ruler as it were dictating extra-Constitutional authority at the state level then also affecting the rights of the people, not corporate interests, in the process. An amendment, of course, would be needed for such a "privilege or immunity" with respect to regulation of this now commercial industry being exempt by the feds for any nationwide or global insurer. And could not ban in any event the states from regulating any that were incorporated within their own state borders with respect to policies sold to state citizens as "intrastate" and not "interstate" commerce.

Then, the Trial Lawyers Association progressively also started its own lobbying efforts at the state level in order to remove and rewrite the civil codes under the common law in the states which then removed the "lid" on punitive damages for medical malpractice claims which had been in effect since the Magna Carta and under the British common law at a maximum of three times the amount of the actual damages in any negligence claims on the part of doctors. Doctor's malpractice insurance rates then skyrocketed and went off the charts. Many in high risk fields simply left the practice of medicine, such as obstetrics, or went into other areas where their insurance was more affordable.

Due then to inflation and spiraling costs of college tuition which bore no relevance whatsoever to the cost of living, the cost to train new doctors made most of those who graduated paupers and bankrupt before they even graduated, much less were able then to pay the costs for setting up their private practices. Many ended up filing bankruptcy, and then working for othe physicians as lab assistants or hospitals until their bankruptcy records were cleared and the were able to qualify for loans.

Then, Richard Nixon during his last term of office, also succumbed to more lobbying pressure and afforded the health care providers to "unionize" also in order to spread their risk and costs since the costs of malpractice insurance then continued to climb with each and every outrageous punitive damage award that then came down the pike. Now there are HMOs and health care networks which involve seeing multiple doctors many times in order to simply get a diagnosis, or even your average physical. Boards of Directors of these huge networks then were evaluating and determining patient care rather than the physicians themselves. Factory line operations then became the norm, as did the 24 hour childbirth or mastectomy.

Doctors were "fined" huge sums, but due to the fact that their medical licenses are issued by the states but for which there is also little regulation or procedural statutes addressing consistently negligent doctors for removal of their licenses, many of these awards became even greater still upon successives suits and claims.

Of course, the lawyers got the bulk of the "extra" awards over the compensatory losses, rather than the one third that was also provided under common law for contingency awards. And started factoring in profit margins for their costs for the expert witnesses also needed in such claims for lawyer profit.

So there you have it. The history of the high cost of health care in this country, and why we now are where we are with respect to both the decline in quality of care, and exhorbitant increases in cost.

And Obama and this Congress have been busy little bees this past few months colluding with the very same industries and associations which are responsible now for where we are today due to their huge profits and campaign lobbying efforts. Instead of backing up, and closing the door, and reviewing all the industry favoring statutes and laws which have progressively occurred in their failures to truly regulate commerce and these huge commecial corporations at both the state and federal levels in order to protect the citizens who actually have provided the profits which afforded them this unconstitutional leverage from the wolves. THEY are not their constituents. They are industry.

Somehow, it appears the name and provisions of of this bill as is being reported and presented as any true reform under the title, "The Affordable Health Care Act," smacks of the same mockery and betrayal of the American people on behalf of "foreign" interests and commerce that the "Patriot Act" consisted of.