Private health insurance- do we need it?

Could you imagine for a second how frustrating it is. I mean you
pay for medical insurance through your employer all your life, but
when you need to benefit from that money you find out your
procedure is not covered or your insurance company won’t pay for
it or you lose your job and therefore you lose your job sponsored
insurance (assuming your employer even provided insurance) or
your policy gets cancelled and you wonder where you are going to
get the money to even be treated....

Let’s talk for a minute about private health insurance
companies. Don’t you in effect give away control of your health
care to these insurance companies. They will decide, not you or
your actual health care providers, what doctors you see, what
treatment you receive or whether you receive any treatment at all.

I've been wondering if people with private health insurance are not paying
for health insurance twice, once to their private insurance and
then again through their taxes for public insurance (like Medicare).
Hey if you are paying for government insurance anyway....

While we were watching a television show on health insurance I
turned and asked my elderly father what would happen if all the
health insurance companies suddenly disappeared. He looked at me
and said, “Well I wouldn’t have any health insurance for one thing.”
I said, “No that’s not true, you’d have medicare” So what would
we lose? You might lose out on paying for the big salaries of
private insurance company CEOs, or paying for the company’s
advertising, or paying for their profits or paying the private health
insurance companies as well as paying increased government taxes
to shuffle paperwork back and forth to each other while they both
argue over who will pay for your care. And who's paying for all those
health care lobbyists and government contributions?

Health insurance companies are in the business of profit for
themselves and profit at the expense of some of the most
vulnerable people there are. Single payer health care as advocated
in congressman John Conyers bill , HR676 is merely an extension
of the medicare system we already have so that it covers everyone.
Unlike private health insurance it’s cheaper, simpler, and everyone
is covered.

"Everybody keeps saying we don't want the government involved in health care,
but the government is involved in Medicare, and it works"
D. Schneider MD

(Question: Are you "insured" if you don't get that lump in your
breast checked out because you just can't swing the $1,000
deductible?) L. McClure