We need to remove the word "insurance" from the health care debate, and ban private, for profit insurance companies from the business entirely. It is time to stop having insurance company bureaucrats deciding what medical care we should and shouldn't get.
They have proven only one thing, over the years. When the incentive is to make a profit by offering less health, profit wins, and health loses.
A public health care system is the best way to go, without any money flowing anywhere except to those who actually make people well.
Tony Benn, former member of the British Parliament explained so succinctly in SICKO at 1:00:07, how the debate played out when England went to a public health care system decades ago:
"It all began with democracy. Before we had 'the vote,' all the power was in the hands of the rich people. If you had money, you could get health care, education, look after yourself when you were old... and what democracy did, was to give the poor the vote, and it moved power from the market place to the ballot--from the wallet, to the polling station. And what people said, in the 1930's, we had mass unemployment but we didn't have unemployment during the war. If you could have full employment by killing Germans, why can't you have full employment by building hospitals, building schools, recruiting nurses, recruiting teachers? If you could find money to kill people, you could find money to help people."
For each citizen who gets to talk to their congressman, there are hundreds if not thousands of lobbyists whining to and dining with our congressmen about their perspective on this issue.
We have to call our congressmen and tell them that we have their back. That no matter how much these profiteers threaten, we are ultimately the ones with the power, at the ballot box.