Reading the responses I have received to my commentary on the health care debate, I would like to add a few responses back.
My “longtime (and profitable?) associations with insurance companies” provides no conflict of interest. Amica Mutual Insurance Company is solely a personal lines insurance company and has no interests in or involvement with any form of health care. I have been on that board since 1992. J.D.Powers and Associates has ranked Amica “Highest in Customer Satisfaction” for seven years in a row. It is a privilege to be part of an insurance company that serves its customers so well. The other insurance company on whose board I sat for three years was NEIL (Nuclear Electric Insurance Limited) which insures all the nuclear power plants in this country. It has no interests in health insurance.
Medicare recipients (of whom my husband is one) generally do give good grades to the service, but they do not foot the entire bill for Medicare. Their coverage is subsidized by those of us who have not yet reached the age of 65. Were they to have to pay the entire freight, they would in many cases be broke. Until President Bush signed into law an expansion of Medicare benefits to cover prescription drugs, many people over 65 had to take out supplemental insurance for their drugs.
On the issue of tort reform, is it hardly an issue unto itself. It is a large part of the reason that health care in this country is so expensive. Republicans and Democrats as well as the White House are to blame for not tackling this issue. The lawyers’ lobby must be the most powerful in this country to have our legislators so scared to take them on. Until there is some kind of resolution to the open-ended liability for doctors, they will be forced to practice defensive medicine, which is hugely costly and wasteful.
