Posted by
Glenn Flowers on Tuesday, September 22, 2009 7:26:54 AM
According to most of those who track things like this, a majority of Americans feel that the health care system in the US needs some reform to lower costs and to extend coverage to all citizens. Two schools of thought exist on how this reform should be done.
One says market based processes would force prices down if all of the government regulations on insurance and health care providers were repealed. Insurance providers being able to operate in all fifty states would provide competition among 3600 corporations. If employees were given the tax break that employers receive now, they could use that to purchase insurance themselves which would also promote competition. If a family could customize their policy as to services provided instead of having a standard, mandated catalog of every imagineable treatment, this would lower costs and promote competition. The ability for younger persons to purchase catastrophic coverage and pay for the more routine services themselves, would put the patient back in touch with the cost of services, promoting a competitive delivery system driving prices down. The best thing about this method of reform is, it doesn’t cost a single dime of taxpayer money to implement. And, it allows for far more competition than the other method, explained below.
The other school of thought says that more government regulation will solve the problem by creating a public option (government created and run) health insurance provider to provide competition to the private insurance industry. By mandating the coverage provided and treatments performed, by using a Comparitive Effectiveness Study as a guide to limit excessive treatment, and by mandating every individual buy insurance or be penalized thousands of dollars every year, every person would be covered. This method creates over 40 new government agencies and bureaucrat positions, 11 studies, over 300 new regulations, over 200 ammendments to the Social Security System, Medicaid, Medicare, the Retirement Act, the Internal Revenue Act, the US Code, and the rules of Congress. It is this second method of reform that the president and most Democrats are pushing through Congress and the Senate. The president says he will provide coverage for the 30 million who are not presently covered, lower costs, and increase the quality of care, and it won’t cost a single cent, except the $550 billion that will be tapped from Medicare waste and fraud. But it won’t cost anyone any tax increases. But, you will be required to buy your own coverage or be fined $3800 per year. But it won’t cost a dime. It will all be free, to the poor who can’t afford to pay. And the illegal immigrants in the US illegally. They don’t pay either. But this is the best and cheapest way to provide health care coverage for everyone.
Yeah. Me too!
Bye bye Doctor Family Practitioner. Bye bye HealthNet, Beaver Medical, BlueCross, Kaiser, Ross Loos, bye bye private insurance providers. Hello British National Health System. Hello Canadian Health Care.
And don’t think for a minute that once Obama gets booted from office that we can change it all back. That would be impossible. The insurance companies won’t stand around waiting for that to happen. Doctors who retired rather than become union members and suffer huge decreases in income won’t come back when Obama is gone. The entire government health care bureaucracy will be dependant upon its own survival and will never allow itself to be destroyed in the name of capitalism. Think DEA or EPA, only much bigger.
If we agree that reform is needed, let’s not start by destroying the elaborate system in place now. The present system provides the world’s best care to 85% of Americans already. With very little reform and huge amounts of de-regulation, the system would cover 100% of Americans, and it wouldn’t cost anyone anymore money, in fact it would result in lower cost of treatment, insurance, and higher incomes for doctors. Everyone would win under the market influenced reforms. Let’s start with these simple, no-cost, minor reforms to a system that is already near our reform goals, before we tear it down to start over from scratch. You know what happens when government gets into any business. Think sub-prime, think big three car makers. Think Medicare, to be on topic.
No one, except the elite ruling class in Washington, would benefit from the reforms promoted by they, themselves. No one but them.
Glenn Flowers