March 28, 2024

News Cymru

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How Private Health Insurance Saves The Environment – How Obamacare & The NHS Damages It

Obamacare is still in the news and all focus is on the increased healthcare costs but what no one is talking about is how private health insurance conserves the environment.

Imagine for example a local factory releases poisonous chemicals into the atmosphere accidentally.

It results in people in the local area being told to stay indoors for 24 hours. Unfortunately a number of people where outside when the chemicals were released and required medical treatment.

In a private health care system you have the health insurance providers suing the factory that caused the injury to its customers so it can recoup the healthcare costs.

If the damage to the policy holders is long-term then the health insurance company will be seeking appropriate compensation.

In a public health care system like the one in the UK no οne is sued.

Sure the factory maybe fined but the fine will be in no way connected to the value of the healthcare costs incurred as there is no way to asses the cost of the healthcare provided to individuals under a socialized system. The specific cost of care for a specific person is seen as irrelevant.

In a system like the NHS or any socialised system the taxpayer is the one who has to pay for the damage caused to the environment or people by private businesses who pollute the environment.

In a socialised healthcare system the damage to the environment and to the people is completely taken out of the equation.

In short, socialised healthcare completely exposes the environment to pollution as there is no longer a cost connected to the damage caused. Not only does this massively damage the environment, the cost of the tax payer increases hugely both because taxpayers are paying the extra health care costs and not the people that caused the damage and also because socialised health care paves the way for government to create departments which look after the environment, something that would normally be done by insurance providers. In short the government creates a problem but instead of repealing the measure it piles on another layer of taxpayer money to pay for the previous mistakes. This type of behaviour is typical of government.

The movie Erin Brokovitch is a case in point. The victims involved were lucky enough to find Erin but private healthcare could have guaranteed them healthcare and more than likely given them recommendations on what they could do to help themselves to stop getting sick.

As it was, the people, in the film at least, were dependent on PG7E for the medical expenses.

A private health care company would have first provided healthcare to those that initially got sick but you would have to assume that after it became obvious there was a concentration of cases of similar types in the area that the health insurance company would start to look at the root causes of the issues.

It would be in their interests to find the root causes for a number of reasons.

1. Reduced healthcare costs. If the health insurance companies could identity the causes for the illnesses then their costs would reduce.

2. Compensation. If and when the health insurance company could identify the causes of the illnesses they could then go after the parties responsible for compensation against the healthcare expenses

It may be cold and unemotional but the fact of the matter is that if a company can save money it will do it and in the case of private health insurance saving money means keeping clients healthy.

And there are also knock on effects from the immediate health and compensation issues.

When the health insurance company has established what they to believe the causes of the illnesses it opens up the floodgates for other lawsuits to be brought by the victims for pain and suffering. This could be brought by someone like Erin Brokovich or it could be brought by the legal side of the health insurance company, its money for them right?

Whatever happened private health insurance would have been of massive assistance to Erin Brokovich in her case if they chose to work it with her.

In short private health insurance gets large companies working for the little man. To socialise medicine is to strip the environment of its protection from pollution and takes away people’s protection to stop pollution happening in the future and stops them from having access to services that will help prevent illness as well as offering the best treatment.

Socialised healthcare is a loser for the environment whichever way you look at it and I would argue anything bad for our environment is bad for us, the taxpayer.

While I was researching the is article I found this. http://abcnews.go.com/US/sick-families-nc-military-base-water-contamination-finally/story?id=16670758#.UFgYQLIgexU

You know the people who are the victims of this are going to have to fight tooth and nail to get anywhere with this. Why? Because they do not have private health insurance.

The health care was and is being provided by the government and the problem is the responsibility of the government. Talk about a simply massive conflict of interests. The first thing that should happen here is that one or both sides of the problem should be handed over to a private entity. Either the healthcare or the investigation into the polluted water.  But you know the government is going to take both sides.

So not only has the US government got an interest to give the most basic health care (if the healthcare is too extensive it shows how serious the problem is and also costs more) they also have obviously got an interest in not finding out the true cause of the issue because they are going to be opening themselves up to simply massive damages claims running into the hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars worth of damages.

Hundreds of millions in damages is appealing to any lawyer and the treating and billing of healthcare for hundreds of people is very attractive to health care companies. If the private sector were involved in this issue it would probably be less stressful for the victims and the outcome more favourable.

But granted, this looks like an extreme case but it does illustrate the conflict of interest that can occur when you have the government involved in healthcare.

Socialised healthcare damages the environment but removing its protection and in the process opens up the population to health problems created by polluters because it removes the cost implications of any pollution.

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