New Zealanders following the healthcare debate in the United States find it hard to work out what Barack Obama is up to.
When you look at the posters of Obama with the Hitler moustache and the attacks on Democratic legislators at community meetings you would think that he was introducing compulsory euthanasia rather than trying to give a better deal for millions of Americans who don’t have access to healthcare.
It is amazing that in the richest country in the world, that spends double the percentage of GDP on healthcare that is spent in New Zealand, over 50 million people don’t have access.
One of the Obama measures is to introduce long overdue regulations to the private health insurance market so that people can no longer be denied coverage or charged exorbitant premiums because of pre-existing health conditions, health status, gender or age.
Currently in all but five states insurance companies are free to deny coverage for these reasons.
Not only does this show the madness of using the insurance model for healthcare provision but it also shows why the insurance companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars in a campaign to keep this model in place.
