Jeffery Feldman, author of several books and founder of The Frameshop blog has a great piece on Huffington Post about the health insurance industry and what it might take to overcome their incredible grip on American culture. He compares it to the 40 year fight we've waged on the tobacco industry.
To read the whole piece click here.
Here are some highlights:
It could well be that in order to break the grip of the insurance industry on America, we need a twenty year long process of education.
Imagine if the next time you went to the doctor for a physical, at the end of the exam he turned to you and said, "You're in good shape now, but I need to warn you that your health insurance policy could endanger your life in the next ten to fifteen years." The doctor would then give you three or for pamphlets explaining the various ways that health insurance companies deny claims, cancel policies, and refuse coverage. "There is no cure for health insurance at this time, but for now we wanted to make sure that you were informed." What an eye opener that would be.
Imagine kids in schools giving book reports on the ways health insurance companies endanger American lives. Imagine goofy, "School House Rock" style cartoons where a walking, talking health insurance policy with a folksy accent explained how private insurers process reimbursement denials, how they blacklist children with leukemia, or how they cancel policies when people receiving care from brain injuries hit their coverage limits. Imagine public service posters in schools warning kids not to talk to health insurance salesman.
It took all of these approaches, plus millions of people dying from lung cancer, to break the grip of big tobacco on the American public. Government standing up to big tobacco in 1964 was just the beginning. What finally brought that industry to its knees after thirty years of public education was a combined legal and legislative strategy by the Clinton administration, resulting in historic wrongful death settlements. But even then, cigarette smoking still remained deeply entrenched in American society.
Only in the past few years have most major cities finally passed laws banning smoking in government buildings, the workplace, bars and restaurants. Forty years after the first "Caution" labels appeared on boxes, a set of state and federal policies finally took shape that once and for good curtailed the dangerous impact of cigarettes in our lives.
How many of us are prepared for a forty-year struggle against the health insurance industry? Not very many, I suspect. But we better prepare ourselves.
Feldman goes on to say that the only way we can make progress on solving this problem is to have a long term alternative to health insurance. That's why the public option is so important.
