Get insurance out of health care

Bill Moyers:

RICK KARR:Rose Ann DeMoro is executive director of the CNA. Under her leadership, the union launched an ad campaign that's designed to shock: It claims that if Cheney were just a regular American, he'd probably be dead by now. The ad has run in newspapers across the country and on the internet and it calls for radical change in the country's healthcare system so that everyone can have access to the kind of care that saved the Vice President's life.

ROSE ANN DEMORO:What the nurses are saying is, there shouldn't be a double standard. There should be an excellence in care that applies to all people. We, as the public, pay for Dick Cheney's care. Why not-- why is the government not providing the same type of care to all Americans?

RICK KARR:The Vice President isn't the only government employee who gets what the nurses call "Cadillac healthcare." It's all government employees — members of Congress, workers at the Justice Department, and Interior, and the EPA — a total of more that two million people on the federal payroll. Like Vice President Cheney, they get to choose from a wide selection of health plans — and you, the taxpayers, pay about seventy percent of their monthly premiums. Everyone within a plan — no matter how sick they are — is charged the same rate. There's no waiting period before coverage kicks in. And perhaps most importantly, no one can be denied coverage because of a pre-existing medical condition. Rose Ann DeMoro says compare that to the approximately forty-seven million Americans — that's one in six of us — who are uninsured or the ninety million with insurance who say they've had trouble getting the healthcare that they need.

RICK KARR:The California Nurses Association is one of the few union success stories these days. It's been growing: It now represents some eighty thousand members in all fifty states, not just California. Like other unions, it fights for better wages and benefits and working conditions. But its members don't think the union's mission stops there: They believe it's their duty to fight for better health care for all Americans, which means that along the way, they've picked fights with some huge corporations, and powerful politicians, like they did with their ad about Vice President Cheney.

[snip]

It can't be said anymore clearly than this: (my bold)

GERI JENKINS:I think when you interject into the middle of the delivery of healthcare an entity whose sole purpose is to make a profit, it totally skews the whole intent of what insurance is supposed to be, or what care is supposed to be.