Aug 29 2009
A Healthy Choice
The battle is on and the nation’s health care hangs in the balance. I’d love to be a fly on the wall in the rooms where all this wheeling and dealing is going on over what this final health care reform bill will be like. It’s certainly not going to be a one option one payer system since that would be too expensive. If people in this country want that option, ask them if they would mind paying triple as much in taxes to have it and see what the response is.
There is great potential in this for people to game the system. As soon as the government starts saying it will pay the bills on anything, all of a sudden costs become an infinitely increasing factor. We know full well that spending more doesn’t always get you more, but when it comes to government programs that maxim never seems to hold water. All it would do is encourage people to seek out more care that they may not actually need. Since the government will pay the bills to doctors and hospitals, what incentive is there not to encourage more care? As it is, there is always some debate or other because an insurance company refuses to pay for what it deems to be unnecessary care. If the government assumed all those responsibilities, all it would take is for one person to cry foul and it would all come apart. Someone would claim denial of care based on sex or race, a lawsuit would start, and next thing you know the big news item will be how the U.S. Supreme Court would have to hear the case.
I think the public at large is pretty confused right now. If you have watched any video of some of the town hall style meetings the you know what I mean. The majority of the fears and concerns people have are grounded in falsehoods. If you claim that there is a provision in a proposed bill that either doesn’t exist or that says something that isn’t true, then the basis for your arguments are null and void. It doesn’t help that the proposed legislation is over a thousand pages long. Even some of the House and Senate members admit that reading it would be a daunting task.
One good thing that has come out of this mess is that some of those untouched topics of health care are starting to gain some traction. Tort reform would be a good example. Medical malpractice is very costly and damaging to the system. Rationing of care would be another. If it takes delaying some reforms to make all medical care better for the future, I think that would be worthwhile. In the mean time, we still have people without it and it’s getting more expensive by the day. Might be worth considering tackling one problem at time. I could read 200 pages just fine, but 2000 pages is another story.