Frontline tonight: SICK AROUND AMERICA- Frontline investigates the failures of America's health care

[PA Democrat]

As the worsening economy leads to massive job losses—potentially forcing millions more Americans to go without health insurance—FRONTLINE travels the country examining the nation’s broken health care system and explores the need for a fundamental overhaul. Veteran FRONTLINE producer Jon Palfreman dissects the private insurance system, a system that not only fails to cover 46 million Americans but also leaves millions more underinsured and at risk of bankruptcy, in Sick Around America, airing Tuesday, March 31, 2009, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings).

At its best, American health care can be very good. For Microsoft employee Mark Murray and his wife, Melinda, their employee health plan paid for eight years of fertility treatments and covered all the costs of a very complicated pregnancy. “If it wasn’t for our health insurance,” Murray says, “we wouldn’t have a baby boy right now.” The Murrays’ medical bills totaled between $500,000 and $1 million, and their plan covered every penny.

But beyond large, high-wage employers like Microsoft, FRONTLINE learns that available, affordable, adequate insurance is becoming hard to find. Small businesses face a very bleak outlook for finding and keeping coverage. Coverage is becoming more expensive and less comprehensive, with high deductibles, co-pays and coverage limits. Georgetown University Professor Karen Pollitz explains that for many people, the current system is “like having an airbag in your car that’s made out of tissue paper: I’m so glad that it’s there, but if I ever get in a crash, it’s not going to protect me.”

Outside of employer-based health care plans, matters are even worse. Americans seeking insurance in the individual market must submit to “medical underwriting,” and if they have a pre-existing condition, they will likely be denied. Kaiser Permanente Chairman and CEO George Halvorson says frankly: “I could not get insurance. I’ve had heart surgery, and so I am completely uninsurable in the private market. So it’s important that I keep my job.”

More at:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundamerica/

[XOKCowboy]

1. America trusting it's health care to insurance companies is why we're in this mess

I'm glad Halvorson still has a job. Has he been out front trying to right this obvious wrong? I doubt it.

[PA Democrat]

2. Yeah, his comment really made me angry.

The insurance industry has played a huge role in creating the mess that is our current system. I'm no fan of the health insurers. My personal experiences with them have shown that they will lie and cheat to deny payment for health care.

[PA Democrat]

3. Kick.