Health Care Reform

If you're like me and spend a minimum of 2 hours in your car daily and listen to NPR, you are probably tired of hearing about Obama pushing for Health Care Reform. I hate it because I don't know jack about it and you have to be a scholar or have some kinda specialized degree to understand the shiz.

Well, thanks to Between Two Worlds, I was directed to a VERY informative (and ridiculously long) article on the problems with American Health Care and Health Insurance. I strongly urge you to read the whole article (i'm 1/2 way through) so you can see how much of a problem our current Health Care System is. It opened up my eyes to what kind of a mess we're in.

Here's a little snippet:
How often have you heard a politician say that millions of Americans “have no health care,” when he or she meant they have no health insurance? How has a method of financing health care become synonymous with care itself?

The reason for financing at least some of our health care with an insurance system is obvious. We all worry that a serious illness or an accident might one day require urgent, extensive care, imposing an extreme financial burden on us. In this sense, health-care insurance is just like all other forms of insurance—life, property, liability—where the many who face a risk share the cost incurred by the few who actually suffer a loss.

But health insurance is different from every other type of insurance. Health insurance is the primary payment mechanism not just for expenses that are unexpected and large, but for nearly all health-care expenses. We’ve become so used to health insurance that we don’t realize how absurd that is. We can’t imagine paying for gas with our auto-insurance policy, or for our electric bills with our homeowners insurance, but we all assume that our regular checkups and dental cleanings will be covered at least partially by insurance. Most pregnancies are planned, and deliveries are predictable many months in advance, yet they’re financed the same way we finance fixing a car after a wreck—through an insurance claim.

The whole article can be read HERE.