Health care reform or Insurance reform

All the buzz in Washington for months has been on health care reform, three bills in the House and two in the Senate,thousands of pages of worthy thoughts, but most of the discussion in the media concentrates on non-existing idea of Government's takeover of the health care of the population and threatening rationing of health care and resulting in the death of a lot of elderly who would be deemed by bureaucrats as unworthy of life. Physicians and their patients would loose the freedom of choice, and health care will be marred with delays and restrictions as we hear the case of the horror stories coming from England and Canada.
From where we are in the front line of the practice of Medicine, here in the trenches of taking care of real people,young,old and very old, we do see things differently, and we intend to share them.
Health care by and large is controlled by health insurance companies, often customers are not given adequate number of different programs to choose from, as this is often dictated by the workplace and based on cost. Often this fact is ignored as the current "pro-choice" defendants of capitalism are basing their opposition to the pubic option is based on.
Health insurance companies are protected against anti-trust law, they are for profit organizations, responsible more to their investors than to their customers, the higher the price they charge the higher their cut from it is, they have no real incentive to cut cost though they will pay lip service, then take actions to show control over their contractors on one hand and to increase their own profit on the other hand. And on the quality issue easy parameters are used because they could be measured from afar, these parameters in real life make a little difference in the quality of care delivered. These measure actually have affected the quality of care negatively, physicians especially in larger organizations concentrate their effort on treating their patients to satisfy certain criteria, not unlike a student who is studying for passing the examination, not for the sake of learning. Treating to satisfy criteria on paper clouds the physician's judgment and interfere with individualized therapy and also prevents young physicians from gaining experience.
Insurance companies rake in 30% of total premiums they charge, that adds up to billions of dollars in the cost of administration of the health care system, this cost dwarfs the cost of administration in any developed country, and doesn't add to the quality of care but it adds to the cost of care.
In 1929 Blue cross started as it seemed to have a need to protect against the high cost of hospitalization by buying insurance against the chance of being admitted to a hospital. The total cost of delivery and 10 days hospitalization was $60 at that time. As the cost of Medicine escalated over the decades further expansion of the scope of insurance became necessary; gradually it started covering doctors, procedures, laboratory work and many other paramedical personnel, rehabilitation and equipments. The cost of medicine in all its aspects became so prohibitive that no one can afford care without insurance. Increasing number of Americans now are without insurance or they are so underinsured that they can't afford the routine care.
If the "Raison D'etre"