This article comes from MSNBC.

” With the U.S. presidential election coming this November, health care reform is becoming a political priority in a way it hasn’t since the Clinton Administration in the early 1990s. What are the implications for health care companies payers, providers, and manufacturers? While it’s too early to say for sure, most of the solutions presented so far share underlying principles that we think enable realistic discussion.

We believe an ongoing flow of statistics underscores the current health care system’s flaws: In 2006, about 47 million Americans lacked health insurance, up 8.6 million from 2000, according to The Commonwealth Fund, a health care policy think tank. A Commonwealth study released in June 2008 noted that the number of underinsured American adults rose nearly 60% to 25 million in 2007, from 16 million in 2003. The underinsured have health coverage, but still face access and financial constraints similar to uninsured people.” Click here to read the rest of this article.

This article comes from Reuters. The United States fails on most measures of health care quality, with Americans waiting longer to see doctors and more likely to die of preventable or treatable illnesses than people in other industrialized countries, a report released on Thursday said.

Americans squander money on wasteful administrative costs, illnesses caused by medical error and inefficient use of time, the report from the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund concluded.

“We lead the world in spending. We should be expecting much more in return,” Commonwealth Fund senior vice president Cathy Schoen told reporters.

The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation, created a 100-point scorecard using 37 indicators such as health outcomes, quality, access and efficiency.

They compare the U.S. average on these to the best performing states, counties or hospitals, and to other countries. The United States scored 65 — two points lower than in 2006. Click here to read the rest of this article.

This article comes from Newsweek. This article illustrates why you should work with companies like Global Heath Insurance Marketing in order to avoid being ripped off.

“We panicked,” Jeanine Evans of Manitou Springs, Colo., told me over the phone. She’s thinking back to a terrifying day in February 2002. She’d stopped at a hospital pharmacy to pick up some essential drugs for her daughter, Krysta, a cystic-fibrosis patient who’d just endured a double lung transplant. But the druggist said, “No dice”; her husband’s group health insurance, written by American Benefit Plans, suddenly wasn’t any good. She’d have to pay $500 a month for drugs Krysta needed to keep her new lungs from being rejected. “I stood in the hospital in tears,” she says. “How would we get the medicine to save her life?” Worse, she learned she wasn’t covered for the $460,000 transplant cost.

American Benefit turned out to be one of many illegal health plans (not licensed by the state) that have trapped at least half a million people so far. They’re Ponzi schemes–taking in “premiums,” covering small medical bills, but stalling on large ones so the principals can skim off cash. Seemingly honest insurance agents peddle these policies. But eventually, fake insurers close up, or the state shuts them down, leaving you with unpayable medical debts. The plans’ soulless founders may promptly start the same phony deal in another state.

There’s a second kind of scam, which sounds like insurance but isn’t. I’m talking about the many discount health cards, sold by phone, mail and Internet. For a monthly or annual fee, you’ll be promised discounts “up to 80 percent” on medical and drug bills. But your actual savings may come to little or nothing, after other fees. Often the doctors and drugstores don’t even know about the card. (The few good discount cards, for prescription drugs, include those offered by AARP, YourXPlan and Together Rx–the latter for people on Medicare.) Click here to read the rest of  this article.