Following article is from an Op-ed piece penned by Congressman John D. Dingell. He has served Southeast Michigan for more than 53 years in the U.S. House of Representatives, making him the longest serving congressman in U.S. history. He has introduced and fought for legislation that would create health care coverage for all Americans since 1957.
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We have the best medical professionals in the world, but fewer and fewer Americans can afford to pay for the care they can provide. The trends indicate that problem will get much worse.
About 17 percent of our $14 trillion dollar economy is dedicated to health care. We pay more for health care than we do for food. Too much of what we spend on our care does nothing to improve our health. We pay for our highly bureaucratic and unwieldy health care system not just with dollars, but with the lives and well-being of millions of Americans. The Affordable Health Care for America Act will reform our health insurance industry so companies prioritize policyholders’ health instead of investors’ profits.
The insurance industry has done everything possible to make you think otherwise. This summer’s massive disinformation campaign – exposed by Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone magazine last month – has distracted millions of honest, engaged citizens during this debate. During two town halls in my District this summer, I witnessed first hand how fear hijacked a much-needed serious conversation.
But the facts scream louder than even the angriest protester – and the data tells us the current system could literally destroy our way of life. Consider these statistics:
• The top ten health insurance companies made $8.2755 billion last year and they stand to make more when medical costs go up.
• The average annual premium for employer-sponsored health insurance is $13,375 for family coverage.
• Approximately 45,000 people die each year because they lack health insurance.
This is why we must ignore pressure from the health care lobby, now spending $1.4 million a day spinning its story in Capitol Hill offices (that’s chump change when you consider the top ten health insurance companies saw profits soar 426 percent between 2000 and 2007).
This is not a time to give into fear. I say this to both the general public and my Democratic colleagues. Our party lost control of Congress in 1994 after voters watched Democrats cower in the face of massive pressure from the insurance industry. We must learn history’s lessons or again face questions on whether Democrats deserve to lead.
Reform is neither easy nor cheap, but the cost of inaction is far greater – in terms of lives lost, quality of life, and dollars. Make no mistake, if we don’t reduce costs we face certain economic disaster. My father was one of the first members of Congress to fight to change the private insurance system in place today. His fight began in 1943, 66 years ago. If we go another 66 years with costs continuing to rise at the same rate they have over the last three decades, estimates project health care spending to approach 100 percent of our GDP. This is simply not sustainable.
On the other hand, President Obama has said slowing the growth of health care costs by just one-tenth of one percent each year could reduce our deficit by $4 trillion over the long term.
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the House Democrats’ health reform bill reduces the deficit by $30 billion over 10 years, costing less than $900 billion over that time and meeting the benchmark set by President Obama. The President asked for a deficit-neutral bill and we gave him that and then some. It is a reasonable price when you consider the Democrats’ bill will fix the current system which has left so many Americans without proper care and/or bankrupt.
And just how is the health insurance industry spending your money?
• In 2007, each American paid more than $500 to administer health insurance. The U.S. health insurance industry spends roughly 20 cents of every dollar it pays for “nonmedical costs, such as paperwork, reviewing claims and marketing,” according to T.R. Reid, author of “The Healing of America.” This figure is often referred to as “medical loss ratio” or the money spent on actual care versus the money spent on non-medical costs.
That $500 you pay funds a small army, about 463,000 people (more than the active military in Iran today), employed by the health insurance industry. Many of those employees spend their days looking for ways to slow payments or deny your claims.
• No other country has a medical loss ratio close to ours. Our administrative costs are more than double any other country, including France, where Reid points out everyone is covered by non-profit, private insurers. The French spend just 5 percent on administration, while Canada, with a single-payer, government-run system, spends only 6 percent. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that $91 billion a year is excess insurance administrative costs due to complexity.
Look again at the previous points and replace “health insurance industry” with “government”. If that was government waste there would be protests in the streets. So why is it okay when your money is wasted by corporations? As I will explain later, Democrats are prepared to fix it, despite the best efforts of the insurance industry to stop us.
So what are we getting for our money?
• Better health? No. A 2008 London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine study looking at deaths that could have been prevented by access to timely and effective health care placed the U.S. last among 19 countries. If the U.S. had performed as well as the top three countries (France, Japan, and Australia) 101,000 deaths per year would have been prevented.
• More care? No. In Japan, citizens average an astounding three times more visits to doctors’ offices than Americans and twice as many MRI scans and X-Rays. Even with all these visits, the Japanese still spend less than half as much per person on health care as we do. Life expectancy and recovery rates for major diseases there are much better than ours.
• Fiscal health? No. In 2006, our economy lost as much as $200 billion because of the poorer health and shorter lifespan of the uninsured.
• Premiums for small businesses are up 129 percent since 2000. And the insurance industry is quoting increases of 14-15 percent for the next year.
• The high cost of health care causes a bankruptcy every 30 seconds. In 2007, 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies were due to medical costs. Reid points out medical bills force 700,000 Americans into bankruptcy, while there are ZERO medical bankruptcies in France, Britain, Japan and Germany.
• Security and Stability? No. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports last month “one third of Americans (33 percent) say they or someone in their household has had problems paying medical bills over the past year.” That’s up nine percentage points from August and represents the highest level in nearly a year.
• Health coverage for all Americans? Not even close, and believe me, the uninsured are costing you money. This year, every insured American family will pay the health insurance industry $1,017 — and insured singles will pay $368 — in premiums just to cover the medical expenses of the uninsured. This “Hidden Health Care Tax” will total $42.7 billion this year.
And there are signs the future could be worse. Employees’ premiums and out-of-pocket charges will go up 10 percent – with the average employee paying $4,023 – next year, according to the benefits consulting firm Hewitt Associates. An Aon Consulting survey of employers found 70 percent plan to increase employee contributions, while 67 percent expect to raise deductibles, co-pays, coinsurance or out-of-pocket maximums. About three out of every five Americans under 65 get their insurance through their employers.
Acclaimed Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt says if current trends hold, total health spending by or for a typical family of four will hit $36,000 a year in 2019. In 10 years, half of all American families will have to spend more than half of their income on health care.
That’s the future for those lucky enough to keep their health care. More than four Americans lose their coverage every minute. According to the think tank Third Way, the coverage for 88 million Americans dealing with factors like pre-existing conditions, expensive premiums, or high out-of-pocket costs could be at risk without reform. New findings from the Urban Institute indicate the number of uninsured could rise as high as 65.7 million in 2019 and the cost of uncompensated care could go up as much as 128 percent – that leads to higher premiums and taxes for all of us. So it is not enough just to create new policies, they have to be better than what exists and push other insurers to do better.
Our bill will boost the nation’s economic well-being and protect the pocket of patients and doctors
Under the Democrats bill, you can keep your plan and your doctor. The House bill will also create an insurance exchange with affordable options covering 96 percent of all American citizens, including millions currently uninsured and underinsured. Perhaps PricewaterhouseCoopers, in a report that was NOT paid for by the insurance industry, summed it up the best:
“Broader coverage, particularly if paired with an individual mandate, could reduce the cost shifting that increases medical costs to private payers.”
Other measures in the bill will put money back in your pocket, including:
• Ending co-pays for preventive care;
• Implementing a year cap on your out-of-pocket expenses with no caps on what insurance companies pay;
• 50 percent discounts on brand-name prescriptions for Medicare Part D beneficiaries and shrinking out-of-pocket costs by $500;
• Elimination of the donut hole (the gap in coverage that leaves beneficiaries on the hook for the cost of prescription drugs when the cost of their prescription drugs passes $2,700 in a year) by 2019; and
• Phasing out wasteful spending for Medicare Advantage (MA) – which costs beneficiaries an extra $1,000 per enrollee. Paying for the MA subsidies costs a couple using traditional Medicare an additional $78 to $90 a year.
Steps like this will strengthen Medicare, keeping the program solvent an additional five years. Medicare is one of the most successful government programs in our nation’s history. Without reform, large numbers of doctors, who face a 21 percent cut in payments next year, would certainly drop out. Already, physicians are burdened with both outrageous malpractice insurance charges as well as meeting insurance companies’ demands, which cost them on average 142 hours – worth $68,274 – a year. We’ve simultaneously introduced a separate bill which will prevent that 21 percent cut.
Many doctors will also applaud efforts to move away from the fee-for-service system. Over the summer, we strengthened incentives for the development of “accountable care organizations (ACOs)” which have lowered costs and improved care in several communities. Doctors and administrators at providers like Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania and the world famous Mayo Clinic haved used such systems after deciding they could do better by shrinking insurance-driven incentives. They instead make more money by keeping costs down and meeting quality-of-care indicators. ACOs are run by doctors and hospitals with no government role whatsoever. CBO scored the ACO provisions in our bill and found savings of $2.6 billion through 2019.
These doctors and hospitals have shown a real commitment to bending the cost curve. I wish I could say the same about the insurance companies.
Better Corporate Behavior = Savings for Consumers
Currently, insurance companies do not compete to offer better plans, cheaper rates, or even better customer service. “Successful” companies are those best at shedding risk. Our bill will stop discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions and rescission – the practice in which insurers search for problems with patients’ policies while they are waiting on the gurney for emergency care. Three insurance company executives acknowledged during an Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing this summer that rescission saved those companies $300 million by canceling about 20,000 policies over five years.
There may be no number that can state how many families have lost a loved one or were financially decimated by these practices. But it is clear that without reform, the companies will go on with these kinds of practices. It will be business as usual unless the government steps in.
But new health insurance industry regulations would only prevent the tactics the industry employs now. Americans need more choices to allow them to fight back against new forms of rascality, especially while insurers enjoy almost near monopolies in dozens of states. I believe a marketplace with increased competition, coming from a public health insurance option, will push the insurance giants to behave better than even increased government oversight could.
The public health insurance option would have leverage to force insurers, pharmaceuticals, and hospitals to bring their prices down.
As promised, back to medical loss ratio: when California state lawmakers tried to require insurers to spend at least 85 percent on medical care, hundreds of industry lobbyists worked to kill the effort. Our bill includes a two-year fix establishing the ratio at 85-15. That will deal with the immediate concern while in the long-term, the public health insurance option and other safeguards will force insurers to be more efficient and cut their administrative costs on their own. A public health insurance option would likely have administrative costs similar to those of Medicare, which operates at 3-4 percent. This kind of competition is the best way to drive insurers to spend our money wisely and more efficiently.
As for fears the public option would crowd out other healthcare providers, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated fewer than 5 percent of Americans would sign up for it.
Without the public option, what you have is 47 million more people being added to the marketplace that the health insurance industry can charge whatever price they want. It’s a wonderful way to drum up business for the insurance companies. How can we ask doctors, hospitals, drug makers and all other stakeholders to make enormous sacrifices without asking the same of the insurers?
The loyal opposition has provided no help. Neither the Republican leadership of the House nor of the Senate has offered comprehensive health care legislation for consideration. While they decry our efforts, they offer no alternative even though – as National Journal has reported – nearly half of the House Republicans (84 of 178) come from districts where the proportion of the uninsured exceeds the national average of 15 percent. Without a bill of their own, Congressional Republicans’ intractability is simply a thinly veiled defense of the status quo. Conservative think tanks cry for deregulation, but this to me is like trying to get a fox out of the hen house by letting in more foxes. The CBO said a 2005 bill allowing plans to be sold across state lines would have caused about 1 million people to lose employer-sponsored insurance. More bad plans and fewer people insured sounds like a step backwards to me.
In a recent Reuters poll, 63 percent of respondents said they’d pay higher taxes to get serious health care reform. I believe they realize this is one case where investing in reform now could put more money in their pockets later. They know the screaming should stop and reasonable discourse must rise above the rancor.
Let me close with a personal note. I make an effort to treat each class of Congressional interns to a lunch in the Member’s dinning room. During that lunch, I take questions about any topic they want to discuss. Almost every time, these interns – many of whom regard Ronald Reagan as ancient history – ask me about votes like the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In my more than 50 years here, I’ve cast ten to fifteen votes which are repeatedly revisited by the general public, both young and old, because they have such a dramatic impact on the world we live in today. And while public mood may color their sentiments or the way they ask the question, the basic premise behind the interns’ questions are always the same:
When history called, what did you do?
Without a doubt, the vote on this bill will join the list. I will tell my fellow members, when you explain a vote like this one to the generations that live with the consequences of these decisions there is no poll, not even an election result, that can justify your decision. You will be asked about this vote until the day you die. Years from now, none of these things we put so much stock in now will matter. All anyone will want to know is: did you do the right thing when history called on you? It is time for health care reform. We can’t afford to wait. We can’t afford to think small. We can’t afford to fail.
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackHealth Reform- What you need to know
The following considerations should be taken into account when deciding to move nearly 17% of the GDP ($2.23 Trillion) of the US into a government controlled program.
First, the US healthcare system is the envy of the world. America produces nearly 60% of miracle drugs and medical devices which save lives and costs of treating patients worldwide. Today, people take a pill on an outpatient basis when 25 years ago the same treatment would have required hospitalization, and invasive and risky surgery at considerable costs along with lost work and rehabilitation time. It is argued that some people are not covered by insurance and therefore have exposure to significant costs and reduced access to needed care. One figure used over the years is between 40 and 48 Million Americans have no health insurance. Few real studies have been conducted to verify this number. Let’s take a closer look at this.
So, who are these uninsured People?
1. There are 17.2 Million college students in America (according to the US census in 06). Many of these students do not have health insurance if their parent’s health policies drop them at a certain age or if they are not still living with the parents. But they do have an insurance plan covered under the University if they sign up for it. They do have basic coverage for routine medical problems and usually have a low utilization rate for hospitalization and advanced physician intervention given their youth and by definition general good health.
2. 15.9 Million of these uninsured are of predominantly Hispanic decent many of them illegal entrants to the US likely working for cash wages with no taxes taken out. They are living in Southwestern states as well as NY, NJ, etc. And millions more are still coming. The planned Universal healthcare solution appears to suggest that Medicare recipients who paid taxes their whole life are now going to have their benefits cut, in part, to pay for illegal entrants.
3. There are 21.2M white; 6.6 M Black and only 2.1 M Asian adults who have no health insurance. In a free country, there are young and healthy people who elect to not spend $400 per month on health insurance they don’t think they need and invest instead in a car payment.
Some of these 29 Million are simply people who lost or quit jobs. . It is also worth noting, that, 45 percent of uninsured people will be uninsured for less than four months according to the Congressional Budget Office. In other words they are uninsured for only a short time.
Accounting for all those factors, one prominent study places the total for the long-term uninsured as low as 8.2 million – a very different reality than the media and national health care advocate’s claim of 48 million.
But according to the same Census report, there are 8.3 million uninsured people who make between $50,000 and $74,999 per year and 8.74 million who make more than $75,000 a year. That’s roughly 17 million people who ought to be able to “afford” health insurance because they make substantially more than the median household income of $46,326. Apparently, they choose not to be covered for medical care. America was built on Freedom to Choose.
Let’s also not forget that laws have been passed that require Hospitals to treat people regardless of their ability to pay. In effect, we already have universal free healthcare. Anyone can walk into an ER and demand treatment without an insurance card already.
Subtracting non-citizens and those who can afford their own insurance but choose not to purchase it, about 20 million people are left – less than 7 percent of the population.
So what is the true extent of the uninsured “crisis?” The Kaiser Family Foundation, a liberal non-profit organization frequently quoted by the media, puts the number of uninsured Americans who do not qualify for current government programs and make less than $50,000 a year between 8.2 million and 13.9 million. That is a much smaller figure than the number most often reported in the media. Lastly, Kaiser’s 8.2 million figure for the chronically uninsured only includes those uninsured for two years or more. Lastly, even Obama has revised his own estimates…”The Census report indicates that of the 46 million uninsured individuals, 34 million were native born and 2.8 million naturalized citizens. The report thus shows that there were 36.8 million uninsured U.S. citizens (native born and naturalized) in 2008.” But the census does not tell us how long these were uninsured or why.
The true number of uninsured in American is far below 36.1 million. The bottom line is why don’t we create medical savings account for each of these 36.8 million with access up to $ 2500 each from which to deduct payments for insurance and treatment for any pre existing condition. So why force all 300+ million Americans into a system the overwhelming majority of Americans don’t need or want to pay to help between 5 and 10 % of the population? Why spend $850 Billion. This has little to do with solving a small healthcare gap in coverage. The answer appears to be Votes and Power to socialize the country!
Other things you should know
The Government itself is a major cause of rising healthcare costs
1. In 1960 the healthcare bill in the US was only $5 Billion and 5.1% of the GDP and cost only $141 per person. Our parents paid nearly 60% of the healthcare bills out of pocket as many routine things were not covered only major expensive things were.
2. In 2007, the U.S. spent a projected $2.26 trillion on health care, or $7,439 per person. The government now pays 47% of the healthcare bills [4]. And together with Third party insurance companies Americans now only pay 17% of the bill out of pocket.
3. The health share of GDP is expected to continue its historical upward trend, reaching 19.5 percent of GDP by 2017. [2]
As the role of government in healthcare increased the costs went up astronomically. Health care costs have risen 454 times higher since 1965! When Medicare started in 1965, its budget was $1 Billion. In 2008, the Medicare costs were $454 billion accounted for 14 percent of the federal budget, and federal spending on Medicare is expected to grow to $524 billion by 2011. Medicaid was started in 1965 with a budget of $1 Billion the same as Medicare. Federal Medicaid expenditures were $180.6 billion in 2006, as compared to $181.7 billion in 2007. So, Medicaid has risen 181 times higher since 1965 while Medicare has risen an ASTOUNDING 454 TIMES. By comparison, Gas Prices have only risen about 8 times since 1965. Housing, food, recreation, etc are all less than ten times higher. The notion that the government can add millions to the rolls of the insured and somehow decrease costs is not mathematically possible. The only way any Universal Healthcare plan could expand access to millions of people and simultaneously REDUCE healthcare costs would be to deny care to millions of people. Or cutback on many of the non medically necessary services which were mandated as requirements for insurance companies and reintroduce some co payment and deductibles to replace first dollar coverage insurance plans thereby creating some sense of price competition between providers of care which is virtually nonexistent in healthcare outside managed care capitated contracts which were despised by many.
4. 15% of the people use 85% of the healthcare benefits. A portion of this group includes people with chronic conditions that demand a lot of medical care over a long time period. They also contain some elderly people who consume a large amount of healthcare benefits in the last 6 months of their lives. Also well represented in this high utilization group, are self inflicted maladies by people who do not practice healthy living habits. They are often people who consume alcohol, drugs and food to excess. They also have poor health habits and lifestyles which lead to repeated injury and care. And also immigrants who practice poor prenatal care can result in complicated premature births. Several women already bankrupted one re- insurance company in California with claims that exceeded $1 Million dollars each. Another similar case stayed in the hospital in Florida for over two years resulting in a multimillion dollar uncovered treatment bill. Americans have for years been paying extra for all these kinds of cases. People have not been dying in the streets or denied care for lack of money to pay.
4. Many, many things are now covered under insurance contracts that are not medically necessary and are not insurable events. Politicians lobbied and passed laws to cover virtually everything. Dental disease (everyone has it), sex change operations (really cosmetic and not medically necessary), etc. Insurance was meant to cover things that were catastrophic, happened infrequently and were very expensive. Car accidents, brain tumors, heart attacks. Today we cover everything as insurance. And with the UAW leading the way in the 50”s many have demanded first dollar coverage. In effect, many Americans already have a policy which covers all but a $15 co pay. 15% of patients seeing GPs have nothing wrong with them physically. They are worried well. Yet their visits are paid for. Many others are using drugs, drink a fifth of alcohol per day, have gained 100 pounds, or drive motorcycles recklessly without helmets and have multiple self inflicted healthcare expenses.
5. Another reason costs are rising is medical doctors insist on tests and doing procedures as a form of protection against lawsuits. And doctors and hospitals have a small army of people hired to deal with regulations, compliance and paperwork. Your healthcare bill contains about 25% extra for administrative and medical legal recordkeeping. That’s 25% of $2.26 TRILLION! Much of this expense is due to regulations or in record keeping along with defensive medicine required for medical liability issues. Note that no Health Reform bill has yet addressed this monstrous contributor to your healthcare bill. That is because the trial lawyers like John Edwards make billions off of hospitals and doctors suing them every year and contribute heavily to the Democratic party.
6. Your healthcare is often paid for by a third party. Neither the Dr nor you spend much time asking about costs because it’s “covered”. You are still paying this bill indirectly in the form of lost wages. Your employer could be giving you the money to buy your own plan perhaps with a high deductible like it used to be in the 60’s. 85% of Americans would save a lot of money by moving to this kind of system.
7. Healthcare costs are expensive because there is no free market competition between doctors and hospitals competing for your dollars. Healthcare costs have risen astronomically and quality has improved marginally in comparison. By comparison, you can buy a computer today for $500 that is twenty or more times more powerful and a tiny fraction of the cost of a computer in 1970? And the quality of that computer capability increased ASTRONOMICALLY at the same time the COST WENT DOWN. Airplane tickets generally the same thing. The quality of the planes went up and the costs remained relatively stable. The price of a transcontinental flight in 07 was similar to one in 1970. Airline tickets and computers were not paid for by the government or your employer. So, it should be vividly clear that once the government gets further involved in healthcare costs will go up ASTRONOMICALLY AND YOU WILL BE FORCED TO PAY THE BILL.
8. Under a Universal healthcare system, you can count on one other thing. Your life will be in danger. See the short film below—Brain Surgery Canada style. For decades, Canadians have had to cross the border into the US and pay cash to get care they needed and could not wait in line without risking deadly consequences. Also an estimated 25,000 people died in France several years ago in August when most doctors like everyone else were on Holiday. Don’t forget also that some of the best doctors left the practice of medicine in all countries where national healthcare went into effect. They came in large numbers to the US. In London, for example, some of the train bombers were doctors in the daytime. The same out migration of the most talented will likely happen in the US. People will be put in waiting lines like DMV. Some will die or be forced to pay separately to save their lives without the government program. You will be forced to pay for the public universal plan like you are forced to pay for public schools. If you want good care you will be forced to pay extra for the private plan. In Britain, private insurance was a big seller after the introduction of socialized medicine. The bottom line is many will be forced to pay for the public program and pay extra to be “covered” by some private option if they can afford it.
9. Insurance companies for decades have employed medical doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals to help deal with the complex decision making on claims submitted for payment. With the exception of the government push for HMOs this process has worked pretty well because of the decades of statistical utilization date and peer review guidelines developed by clinicians familiar with the complexities and subtleties of patient care. Literally decades of experience in managing millions of claims and billions of dollars of clinical decisions. How will such decisions be made under a Universal Healthcare System? Will it mimic the bureaucratic denials of needed care like the HMO movement? Paul Ellwood MD created the original Health Maintenance Organization which focused on getting help to those most in need and early. The purpose was to maintain and contain a serious health risk early in the disease progression. It was the government’s push later that morphed it into a Health Management Organization which focused more on cost containment. Bureaucratic bodies with little appreciation of the complexities of health treatment deciding who gets what kind of care or who waits in line is a decidedly Un- American approach.
10. Under Universal healthcare who will pay for research on new medical devices and lifesaving drugs? It costs about $800 Million and 13 years of research to get a drug through FDA and into your prescription. And only 1 in 500 compounds will make it to the market. People suggest we can buy drugs from Canada. These same people apparently don’t recognize that American private capital investors funded the development of over 50% of the drugs sold on Earth. Canada didn’t spend much of anything. And the Canadians get their drugs from the US. They can only sell them cheaper because they don’t have all of the costs and regulations to pay for when they fill a prescription on a drug whose patent has expired. Further, The National Institutes of Health have $30 Billion per year to research cancer, heart disease and others diseases. It was created by Roosevelt in the 1930’s. Nixon funded the National Cancer Institute in 1973. What have they accomplished so far with the many billions in taxes we paid? Heart Disease and Cancer are still the leading killers despite the many billions spent on research. Where will the money come from to conduct research on new lifesaving drugs and medical devices under a Universal Health Plan? Private Capital invested in companies with new technologies helped make America the greatest repository of lifesaving treatments in the world. Now what?
11. We have already tried to demonstrate the efficacy of Health Reform in two States Hawaii and Massachusetts. In both States the programs have Failed. In Hawaii, the program was terminated by the Governor in 7 months. Too many employees quit their health plan to go with the “free” plan and it sank the State Budget. In Massachusetts, the State is now $5 B in the hole.
Every member of Congress should be asked one simple question before voting on this bill. If we cannot make it work in a simple test in two small States how will it work in all 50 without more careful deliberation and testing before implementation?
Summary
There are not 48 Million people in the US without access to needed health care. We still have the best treatment system in the world. We have let politicians dictate what things must be covered by insurance that are by definition not insurable events and not medically necessary. Government involvement in healthcare since 1965 has led to GEOMETRICALLY ESCALATING COSTS like no other item in the average American family budget. It has increased 454 times compared to gas prices that has increased only 8 times. How will the same government that controls our education system, that manages DMV, AmTrak, the Post Office, Freddie and Fannie, that handled the Katrina hurricane, that has supervised our energy development, that manages our immigration system, that declared war on drugs, that launched a war on poverty in 1965 (the same exact 13% of Americans still live in poverty as in 1965), that created Head Start, etc. give you universal care THAT COVERS 30+ MILLION NEW PEOPLE WHILE SIMULATANEOUSLY DECREASES HEALTHCARE COSTS? Government programs have failed 85% of the time. And Based on 43 years of experience it is highly unlikely they can manage anything as complex as healthcare.
Is it not the case that most all of the socialist nations on the planet have one thing in common besides “free” healthcare? Don’t they all have humongous taxation and regulatory environments? France has had an out-migration of wealthy citizens for decades. Most French citizens cannot afford a home due to the taxes. And an estimated 25,000 people died in the heat several years ago during August when most of the doctors were on Holiday. The fastest selling product in Britain after its conversion to a Universal System was Private Insurance for those who did not trust the government with their very lives. And the Canadians virtually survived by driving or flying to the US for needed services for decades. See Brain Surgery: Canadian Style:
This film should be watched by all Americans. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLJxmJZXgNI>
Ed,
great points. Would you think that the current cost is high and currently healthcare is private sector!
The regulations, as we know, has been much impacted by interest groups. So we can say that we have elected bunch of indiots, but at the same time, we can not say that private industry was not involved.
The basic of reform is very simple. What if we start lobbying for what is right for others. Kind of represent others interests more than your own.
You see, our society is built upon the system of confrontation. Even in the courts, the lawyers job is not to find truth, but to punish or defend the person – the result is lot more innocents get punished and lots of guilty go free.
Not good for society!
Same way, the businesses are narrowly focussing on themselves and I might add that only from short term perspectives.
It is not unconceivable to have an ideal healthcare system which is much cheaper. But that requires sacrfices from all.
We need a competitive collaboration than confrontatinal competition.
So the question is: Who is willing to lead that change!!!!
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