Health Insurance

Quite a bit of attention is being paid to what was something of an open secret:

Illness and medical bills contributed to roughly half the personal bankruptcy filings in 2001, affecting as many as 2.2 million Americans, a new Harvard study says.

More than 75 percent of the filers had insurance, but many of them lost coverage during their illness, the research showed.

There are some easy solutions to this, at least in relation to people who are initially insured, including requiring that health insurance carriers build into their premiums a form of 'disability coverage' which will satisfy a worker's health insurance premium while the worker is disabled due to illness. But a little bit of honesty would be nice for a change - the biggest reason this is an issue is not because insuring every American would be too expensive, but because, for insurance companies and the politicians they own, rent, or lease, the present system is too profitable. (The richest nation in the world "can't afford" national health care, while many poor nations can and do? Yeah, right.)