There's no substantive debate that health insurance specifically, and the health care industry in general need reform. The debate going on in the U.S. is over how to do that. I have a few points:
1) Don't accept the argument that "republicans" are blocking President Obama's health care proposal. Republicans are heavily outnumbered in the senate and the house. If there is a "block", it is the President's fellow democrats that are doing the blocking.
2) The President argues that his health care reform bill will be paid for by savings achieved by cutting waste. There is no logical reason why this waste could not be cut in a separate bill that would pass overwhelmingly at the next congressional meeting. It's as if the Democratic Party were saying, "Yes there's waste, but we're not cutting it unless you give us what we want in medicare changes."
3) The argument that health care could pay for itself, and that the government's involvement would reduce costs is counter-intutitive, and empirically denied. The government created the very waste that the President would like to cut to pay for more government involvement. The simple reason why the government will not reduce costs and increase efficiency, is that they don't have to. Unlike a private enterprise, they can simply run at a loss and increase taxes. Which brings me to...
4) It is disingenuous to argue that with a government option in place, people who get their insurance through their employers would be able to stick with their current plan. While they may not be "required" to choose the government option, the government could (and would, according to their proposal) run at a loss and force private insurers out of the marketplace by unfairly competing. No company C.F.O. would last long if they ignored the cost savings of moving many of their employees to the government plan.
5) The President argued on 60 minutes Sunday night that checks on malpractice awards don't work, and while I have never seen this evidence, let's assume for a moment that's true. I've seen far to little detail shared about other Tort Reform options, and I suspect that the massive trial lawyer's lobby is responsible for the lack of conversation among Democrats as to these options.
6) The argument is always made that the U.S. spends more than any other country in the world. I accept that because we have the best health care in the world. Our life expectancy rank is somewhere in the 30s (depending on which source you like), but if you factor out our crime and massive amount of car accidents (among a few other things that are not related to health care), you find that our life expectancy is the highest in the world. See http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/08/us-vs-europe-life-expectancy-and-cancer.html. To take one snippet from that information, a United States male has an 81.2% chance of surviving prostate cancer, while a citizen of England with the same type of cancer has a 44.3% survival rate. Why? Because the best drugs are made by companies that can make a lot of money in a freer market, because the best doctors are the ones that can make the most money in a freer market, and because treatment can happen faster without bureaucracy.
7) The President would like to make it so that private insurers can not turn you down for health insurance due to a pre-existing condition. Perhaps I'm missing something, but doesn't forcing companies to take on insurers that they can't financially carry mean that either rates go up or the health insurance companies close? It's a policy idea that sounds and feels good, but it doesn't make any rational sense.
8) So, what should we do? Even if we could find hundreds of millions of dollars lying around by cutting waste, putting more people on medicare is not the best answer. Instead, we should spend that money opening up more free clinics around the country, lowering the burden on the truly-crushed emergency room system. We should also lower the costs of malpractice insurance and unnecessary tests by modestly limiting the amount that could be gained in a malpractice suit. For example, if you will never earn more than two million dollars in your life, it doesn't make sense to get twenty-five million dollars as payment for never being able to work again.
Sorry for the length. Deep breath. Done.
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/agreed with 1-3, and 5-8, but on 4 not so much. The sad fact is that before too long we are gonna proly see some form of health care legislation coming out of this government, whether it the current bill or not.
ReplyDeleteBut under that scary circumstance, im pretty sure the private health care industry will be okay. I think you forgot to factor in two things to your argument there, and although i dont think they are points a supporter of the sitting president would make, i think they play out as supporting the point all the same.
Those factors are trust and convinience/options.
The fact is that alot of people dont trust the government (and with good reason) and dont want to put their medical care in the hands of what they see as a pack of retards driving themselves in the short bus.
Theres also a second group that would choose private over public for the convinience offered to those on the plan, whether it be a family or company policy. things like choosing your own doc, better coverage, better service, elitism etc.
I think those two groups are large enoguht to sustain the industry, esp. in light of other very obvious gov. failings, and anything gov. getting linked together and tagged with those failings