I Want the Government to Take Over Healthcare?
I hear this all the time. If we had a single-payor system run by the government then everything would be great. Really? This declaration continues in the midst of the VA scandal, the factor that Medicare is going broke and more of the elderly are getting soaked with the cost and lastly, that hardly any doctor takes Medicaid patients because is costs more to see them than you get paid. When the government is playing with your money they don’t give a crap. Here is a nice example I just saw:
Last year, the Air Force told Congress the estimated cost for developing the Long-Range Strike Bomber from fiscal years 2015 to 2024 would be $33.1 billion. This year, the service put the price tag at $58.2 billion between fiscal 2016 and 2026, a 76 percent increase.
Air Force leaders on Monday shrugged off concerns that the service got the projected 10-years cost of its next-generation bomber wrong to the tune of more than $27 billion.
“There has been no change in the costing factors over the last two years … it was a mistake. It was a regrettable mistake,” Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said during a Pentagon press briefing.
Regrettable mistakes. That’s what happens when it’s not your money. And we, as taxpayers, get soaked. Just like Medicare, Medicaid, the VA and Obamacare is soaking us now! And you want the government to take over the whole enchilada? Are you crazy?
I’ll take my chances on the govt over an insurance company. I notice you offered no alternative.
I could come up with millions of examples of overcharges and corruption in the medical and insurance industry. They may not have a whopping number like the example you cited, but That makes no difference to the millions of individuals who were denied treatment or were pushed into bankruptcy.
I have offered alternatives in this blog for years. The answer has to be catastrophic coverage (reasonable costing) which enable patients to shop around and price their care. The catastrophic coverage stops the bankruptcy issue and the shopping around brings costs down. I am seeing the latter happen here with people who have health sharing ministry plans. Nothing is perfect but it is pretty darn good.
Dennis, the problem is you are just taking “your” chances; you are taking chances for a lot of us who have learned to despise government intervention and have reason to fear more of it. There are crooked docs out there who have defrauded Medicare and Medicaid, but there are a hell of a lot more who live in constant fear of an audit due to participating with these damnable programs. There are a lot of accounts of physicians who, over simple clerical errors, have been ruined or driven to retire, and some have even gone to prison after the government was finished with them.
However bad Big Insurance is – and it is – it doesn’t have the power of guns and criminal charges behind it. Medicare/’caid has developed some truly idiotic policies that have cost the affected business, patients, and ultimately the taxpayer many billions in waste, which is the point of this article. At least if one’s boss is a private employer seeking profit, the expectation is that the company will try to do what makes the most sense. When your boss is the government – what you want, Dennis – then your boss is a moron almost guaranteed to make the worst possible choices and make things more expensive and less efficient.
Glad you are willing to roll the dice Dennis, but doesn’t it bother you to so casually choose for others? What if some of us don’t want to be gov’t employees? Increasingly we are de facto, because those of you who want big government compassion provide the political muscle to keep squeezing us into corners where we can only make a living by joining the collective. Again and again the notion of a “right” to health care is used to punish those who do the damn work, while increasing the power of the government that caused the problem in the first place.
Dennis, you fear bankruptcy for individuals? How about national bankruptcy, caused by a cartoonish debt and credit collapse, brought on by the sort of entitlement spending you would accelerate? Will it make you that much happier to drag your neighbor into the government-run soup line with you? You still will not have provided any more docs, nurses, beds, or care – just more misery.
Yep, Medicare, Medicaid, VA, how’s it working for ya so far?