An Elephant in Your House?

The Wichita Eagle

March 30, 2008  

Dr. Bill Roy:   U.S. Refuses to See Insurance Elephant 

More good people are spending more good effort and more good money trying to make our inequitable and tattered health care system sustainable than can be measured or imagined.  And the "system" per se is getting into deeper and deeper trouble, because Americans refuse to see the elephant in the room -- the health insurance companies.  

No country can long afford a health care system run by private health insurance companies.  They take 15 to 30 percent for their fees (and add 15 percent to the administrative costs of physicians and hospitals);  refuse to insure the sick, disabled, chronically ill and elderly; and generally distort the health care delivery system for their own profit. ...  

(Bill Roy is a retired physician and former member of Congress who represented northeast Kansas.) http://www.kansas.com/205/story/356501.html  

If you answer the multiple-choice questions below and e-mail to lessonanswers@mymontebello.com with “Lesson answers” in the subject field, you will be credited toward a “certificate of recognition in community affairs” to be awarded in 2008 by a local nonprofit organization.  

1. What is meant by an “elephant in the room”?

(a) This is a criticism of a repulsive person.

(b) The cause of a problem is obvious but nobody talks about it.  

2. What is the elephant of health care?

(a) Health-insurance companies.

(b) Poorly trained physicians.

May 22, 2008