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One summer during college a buddy and I worked for a concessions company that played many county and state fairs in the Midwest. We sold products on the midway with the carnival rides and shows because that’s where the money was. Our specialities were ice cream bars and footlong hot dogs. After a fair we got into an old truck and rushed with the carnies to the next gig. Traveling with freak shows, honest and rigged games of every description, and all of the characters that love that kind of life, we got a PHD in chicanery, quackery, bombast, and an occasional sliver of honesty. We saw a lot of snake oil, liver pills, drug and alcohol-laced tonics, and “massages.”  It reminds me of the current controversies over ObamaCare. But I will discuss the obscene quackery of mainstream and crooked-creek health insurance companies later.
The Obama administration--and the national network and cable news outlets owned by huge corporations that oppose universal health care---have neglected to emphasize the ten essential benefits of the Affordable Care Act. The ten benefits should be imprinted on the foreheads of everyone by now. Only two percent of present individual health policies contain the ten essentials, while 76 percent of all plans do.

The Ten Legal Essential Benefits In Abbreviated Form

Policies must:
1. Include outpatient care. If you walk into a doctor’s office for treatment and then walk out, such care must be covered.
2. Cover at least one drug in every category and class of approved medications. (It’s hard to get around this rule.)
3. Cover emergency room visits for a sudden and serious condition and patients cannot be charged more if they are away from their area hospital.
4. Cover mental health services. Patients may be billed up to $40 per session.
5. Cover hospitalization. This year 650,000 households, many with lousy insurance, will go bankrupt because of poor coverage. Let’s remember: On average a hospital room alone runs $2,000 a day for room and board. With medical services the average daily cost is           $20,000. Welcome to the world of $17 rubber gloves and $10 aspirins.
6. Cover rehabilitation therapies to relieve pain and regain your ability to speak, walk, or work. Medical equipment such as wheel chairs, braces, walkers, and canes must be covered.
7. Include all of the 50 preventive services recommended by the U.S. Preventive Task Force. They must be provided at no extra cost.
8. Cover ACA-required screening tests. Examples: Prostate and Pap.
9. Cover children under 19 for eye exams, eyeglasses, and contact lenses each year. They are also covered for two teeth cleanings a year, x-rays, fillings, and other necessary orthodontia.
10. Cover prenatal, childbirth, postnatal, and newborn care. Some individual men are protesting that maternity care is a part of all policies. (Last I heard, males had something to do with pregnancy. Now all males can help pay for it.)
There are four other very important points in the ACA, so think of them as essentials also:
11. Lifetime limits on essential medical expenses are eliminated.
12. You cannot be denied coverage with a “pre-existing condition.”
13. Children can stay on their parents policy until age 26.
14. Caps annual out-of-pocket medical and drug expenses up to an estimated $6,400 for individuals and $12,800 for families. (A great help in preventing individual       bankruptcies.)

Why Do Americans Spend $8,508 Per Person For Lousy Health Care While Leaving
84 Million Without Insurance During A Year And France Spends $4,118 Per Person And Has The Highest Rated Health System In The World - While We Are 34th?

I put that question in heavy type because it is the most important question facing Americans. We are in such a Rube Goldberg, Rubik’s cube, Ponzi-type mess because of voracious greed, unlimited quackery by doctors, hospitals, and health insurance companies, my view is the only possible solution to this mess is a government single-payer law. But our corporatocracy won’t allow that —yet.
   Facts can be boring but decisions must be based on them instead of the senseless rantings of people like Speaker John Boehner who keep insisting “we have the best health care in the world!”
Example: Since 1960 wages have gone up 16 percent, the Gross National Product 168 percent, and health expenditures 818 percent. Why? Good service? Greed?  
Example: The average hospital stay is 7.5 days in the U.S. at a cost of about $17,000. Hospital stays in France average six days at a total cost of $4,300. A German patient averages about 12 days at a total cost of $4,000. Why?
Example: Medical bills have now become the main cause in 1.7 million household bankruptcies—over 650,000, many with insurance. Between just the ages of 35-44 there are about 190,000 bankruptcies affecting 630,000 people. It is estimated that 56 million households will struggle with medical bills, with 10 million unable to pay the bills in one year. Another 10 million will not be able to pay rent, food, and utilities because of medical bills. Why? North Dakota Blue Cross is raising all premiums 10 to 30 percent although the Council of Economic Advisers has reported health care inflation is the lowest in 40 years at only 1.3 percent since 2010. Blue Cross premium payers should demand why the increases are so dramatic.

Quack: “A Fraudulent Or Ignorant Pretender To Medical Skill”

   We are loaded with quackery. From the snake oil of the 19th Century made of mineral oil, lard, red pepper, turpentine, camphor, and no snakes, we now have rows of colorful bottles and packages in grocery stores containing stuff, junk, exotic plants never blind-tested by any authority except grandma. Over 29,000 herbal products are sold in this country, most of them untested and useless. Radam’s “Microbe Killer” was the big seller in the United States starting in the 1880’s, “curing all diseases.” It was a  useless concoction of whatever could be picked up plus sulphuric acid. If taken in large doses it could kill you. Radam also sold “Reanimating Solar Tincture,” a mixture of brandy and herbs, which “could restore life in the event of sudden death.”  The “Cordial Balm of Gilead” was advertised as a multiple cure for victims of gonorrhea as well as excess masturbation. But don’t laugh at these folks. Quackery has multiplied a thousand-fold.
With the ten essential components of a good insurance plan, ObamaCare was designed to eliminate worthless policies loaded with quackery. Thirteen Missouri companies were fined in 2010 for advertising “AFFORDABLE HEALTH PLANS!” One company sold a “policy” with the incentive of a free flu shot. In a year and a half the single mother paid in $1,717 and had only one claim. It was denied immediately. It was the claim for the flu shot!

Salesmen peddling discount mini-meds, as these junk policies are called, often refer to their customers as “Stealing from Stupid.” What “insurance” do you get paying $49 to $79 a month? Health insurance companies have their own pre-existing condition—terminal greed. These policies flood the individual market in Florida. Donnamarie Palin of New Port Richey has a $79 Go Blue Health policy. (Guess why the company calls itself “Blue!”) She gets $50 for each primary care doctor visit and $15 toward each prescription. The last time I had a primary doctor visit I was charged $181. I assume the rate is higher in Florida. And hospital stays? They aren’t covered at all in her “hospitalization” plan!

   Some of the companies selling these junk policies to the unsuspecting are not fly-by-night. Many major health insurance companies are heavily involved in this scam: Cigna, Aetna, the various Blue Crosses, and Allstate to name a few.  The four named have “insured” about 650,000 suckers with this worthless junk. California’s Kaiser Permanente had to cancel 160,000 junk policies. California authorities estimate that up to a million junk policies have been sold in the state.  Florida Blue has over 300,000 junkers. Even the Republican Party’s Heritage Foundation’s senior research fellow in health admits that 16 million Americans are saddled with junk. What other civilized country has citizens sponsor chile dinmners, spaghetti feeds, and silent auction fundraisers to help desperate neighbors pay medical bills?

Does Anybody Know If The Republicans Have A Health Plan?

   I’m a news junkie. The only health program the Repubs have is the status quo, which is tied closely to “Let Them Die.”  Early deaths will lower Social Security, Medicare, and other retirement costs. When asked about a plan they have no answer. Their actions betray them. They must destroy ObamaCare before it is implemented in total. They know that their  culture will not be able to handle the success even of a mediocre health program like Obama’s. The ten essential parts of the ACA and the elimination of pre-existing conditions might put them in a political grave next to the Dixiecrats and Bull Moose.  Even if ObamaCare fails in certain aspects, the health insurance industry has been revealed as a money-grubbing Mafia absent moral compass, ethics, integrity, and community awareness. The next step will be single-payer. German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck figured out about 140 years ago that his citizens needed universal health care. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill also came to that conclusion right after World War II and the English national health system was formed. Two hard-rock conservatives.
                                                                                                                                  
The Shame Of American Health Care

   The Commonwealth Fund recently surveyed 11 of the top industrialized nations on health coverage and costs: United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Britain. We spend about double per capita than any other country and have the worst health care among the top 33 countries. Over 37 percent of American adults went without recommended care in 2012 because of costs (killing an estimated 45,000 adults), compared to 4 percent in Britain and 6 percent in Sweden. A quarter of American adults could not pay medical bills, with less than 13 percent in France and 7 percent in other countries. ( Most countries with universal care do not pay 100 percent of medical bills. They also have supplementary insurance as we do for Medicare.)  Americans lead the survey in only one category.  We get to see specialists quicker than citizens of other countries!

Republicans Have A Terminal Case Of Obamaphobia

   Republicans couldn’t destroy Obama in one term, even if that was their top goal, so when he said in his second term people could keep their health policies and doctors, they threw tantrums and pounced like zombies armed with Texas chainsaws. Over 45 repeal attempts later they have succeeded in implanting a few festering butt pimples on him, but they can be cured quickly by a functioning website.
   The ACA  website, probably the most complex in Internet history, may require many starts and stops before total efficiency is reached. Buying health insurance over the Internet is not like buying a book from Amazon or pills from E-Bay as some ignorant pundits have said.
   A study by Computer World reveals that 94 percent of websites with $10 million budgets or more have failed miserably on the first go-round. Rough launches and major flops happen all the time. It reports that a website set up to handle student applications for 500 universities is so troubled it is being called “Application Armegeddon.” The ACA website will eventually get sorted out.
   If “government health care” could keep Dick Cheney alive through five heart attacks, numerous related operations, and a heart transplant (all costing several million dollars) to the point he can criticize ObamaCare with selfish passion, ObamaCare will end up OK.