Let's Picko on Sicko

I think when they say that those cases are isolated they mean there are very few of them. If they were the norm at all I'm sure they'd be all over the
news.

Of course that's what they mean.

But "all over the news"? Perhaps you've heard the saying, "News is what powerful people want to suppress; everything else is advertising." The mainstream media are in the advertising business, not the news business. They're in the business of delivering audiences to advertisers, including the insurance, HMO and pharma industries, and conveying the messages those advertisers want those audiences to hear, both during and between the commercial breaks.

If by "the norm" you mean more claims being denied than paid, then, yes, that would have been harder for the mainstream media to ignore.

But when "the norm" means skimpy and shrinking coverage and ever-increasing premiums, deductibles and co-pays, plus an SOP of stiffing occasional claims for expensive lifesaving surgery for no good reason, then it's harder for the victims to make themselves heard, and it's easy to blow off the victims as "isolated." At least until someone like Michael Moore comes along.

Universal health care will just change where the money comes from to cover the overhead costs but won't change what the costs are.

Not so. The whole point is to redefine that word "overhead." The for-profit system makes it the corporations' fiduciary duty to maximize profits for shareholders. Patients are considered overhead, and they get squeezed to maximize profits. HMOs put doctors on notice that the "customer" is the HMO, not the patient.

A truly humane system would regard shareholder profit -- not to mention multimillion-dollar CEO salaries and golden parachutes -- and advertising, PR and lobbying budgets -- as unconscionable overhead. It would reinstate the patient as "the customer" and would serve the patient a lot better. And many other countries' systems do just that.