Obamacare and Effectiveness
I found this article on MSN, a notorious left-leaning organization. I use a lot of references from both sides when I write this blog including Huffington Post, WSJ, AMNews, USA Today, etc. I lean fiscally conservative but socially liberal. That’s just how I roll. I am NOT a Republican nor a Democrat. Actually, both parties make me sick but luckily I have health insurance. This brings me back to the MSN piece by Rick Newman. It is called The real reason Obamacare scares people. The answer, boiled down by the author, is that it is a “complex monstrosity that’s hard to understand”. He feels many will wiggle out of the mandate and many others will just get subsidies to cover the mandate for them. That can’t be good. He also goes on to say:
- The U.S. healthcare system was a mess before Obamacare, with soaring costs and millions of families who couldn’t afford care. But that doesn’t mean that shaking things up will automatically improve it. Changing things merely for the sake of change often makes things worse, and people are right to be skeptical.
- The new rules will also force millions of Americans to navigate one more government bureaucracy, even if they want to do the right thing.
- Anybody who’s tangled with the healthcare bureaucracy or a government agency is justified to say, “I’ll believe it when I see it.
- Meanwhile, in the four-year time vacuum between the passage of the law and the date it goes into effect, we’ve been left to ponder a mystifying set of new rules from a government that seems disinclined to do us any favors.
- These days, the government ought to first prove its worth and effectiveness and only then ask citizens to take a leap of faith and accept more complexity. It’s hard to believe we need to make the system even more confusing in order to simplify it.
Our healthcare system is broken. Insurance is unaffordable. I want it fixed. Adding more bureaucracy doesn’t seem to be the answer to me. Actually, I think removing most of those people and business who have their hands in the pot (and stealing money) should be our first priority.
Heard a report on NPR’s “The World” tonight about the German national healthcare system. It’s run by not-for-profit insurance compnies rather than the government, and everybody’s covered (haven’t I heard that Germans get time in “spas” when thy get sick too!?). I’m wondering why a non-partisan body doesn’t study ALL the world’s other systems and create a workable system here. I’ve seen that our taxes could be raised 5% and everybody would be covered if the government expanded Medicare. (Or the corollary would be to cut the federal budget by 5% and keep taxes the same…Sorry, no U.S.S. George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier…oops, it’s almost ready to be launched.)
Altho this argument makes sense…..
I’ve always subscribed to the maxim, if its already broken, you can’t really break it any further…
I think the real reason folx don’t want a mandate is that they KNOW that without insurance they can still walk into any ER and get treatment for anything. Until that changes, some of the peeps won’t want to buy insurance.
How could any rational person disagree on these points? BTW, thus far I have found the government bureaucracy far less burdensome than the one imposed upon my family and me by the insurance industry. Maybe, just maybe, the government bureaucracy might be much better than the pay-for-aggravation insurance system that we have now
Studies have shown the percentage of Uninsured DRIVERS in states with mandatory autoinsurance is the same 16% as the number of uninsured health insurance.
If you do not have assets, and can file bankruptcy and get debts eliminated for $400 there is no need to waste money on insurance. As long as we treat people under mandates like EMTALA, and state hospitals irregardless of their ability to pay, 16% of the population will not buy health insurance.
the only way to do this is a national sales tax. Everyone who spends at Wal Mart will pay the 10% tax that covers basic care, including drug dealers, prostitutes, illegal aliens, etc. Despite the left calling it regressive, if you claim you only make $3000 a year you will only be paying $300 for your health care, if you are a wealthy senior spending 200,000 a year you will now pay 20,000 a year for health care. Other countries do this. It would cover basic visits, trauma care, heart attacks and cancer costs that have been proven to be cost effective.
Add malpractice reform and a medicare pay scale for everyone and everything we are on our way. If you want total knees, angioplasty, liver transplants then you buy another own policy depending on what and how much you want.
I think “Medicare for all” could work, but it’d require proper funding, intelligent fraud safeguards. It’s a single-payer, not single-deliverer system. Philosophically, I’m not opposed. I’ve experienced insurance bureaucrats who get paid by the bottom line, and I’m now on Medicare, and I’ll the latter any day. The sky can’t be the limit for doctors, lawyers, pharma, hospitals or medical equipment manufacturers. We’re past that….
The point “removing most of those people and business who have their hands in the pot (and stealing money)” can really only be accomplished by a single payor system. Like it or not, the ACA at least keeps some alternatives to government-RUN health care. The price (literally) is added cost. I just don’t see “Medicare for all” as a viable alternative, but our current system IS broke, and something needs to be tried.