So like the rest of the US i have been drowned with the healthcare(hc from here on out) debate.
it is a bit silly though really. our economy is in the shite hole, we're still involved in 2 wars is this really what we should be going after right now?
well given that medicare part d(the prescription plan that w put through) alone will bankrupt the country in 20 years i guess now is as good as time as any?
A few things first. Medicare/Medicaid IS socialized medicine. The US already has government run healthcare, but we only provide it to those over 65. Every single other 1st world nation on planet earth has socialized healthcare, the US is the only country that can afford it but does not provide it. Also, while capitalism is the big driver of the US we still have lots and lots and lots of programs run for the public good through our taxes, like the police and the firemen and transportation dept and schools and social security, don't give me this "we'll become a socialist nation!", we already are.
So we have these hospitals, and they have to, by law i believe, service anyone who walks into their facilities no matter their ability to pay. but someone has to and thats partly why a bottle of aspirin costs 30 dollars. At these hospitals we, Americans, want the best care we can get. We ask for it. And if we don't get it and find out that the doctor could have done something more and didn't we sue them, the doctors, for ridiculous amounts of money. Essentially putting this thought in the doctors head, "We'll i think this is just a tummy ache, but lets order a cat scan just in case" doing so for every stomach ache.
So basically we don't trust our doctor's opinions, we want proof that its just a hang nail, that its just acid reflex. But to get proof, like Dr. House level proof, it costs money, a great deal of money. This is partly our fault folks.
And what does all of that get you? You go into the hospital because your appendix was about to burst, walk out with a 10,000 hospital bill that your insurance company denies, you failed to tell them about that doctors visit when you talked to him about an stomach ache you had 3 years ago. and what are you to do? well you may try to pay it. you fall behind, file for medical bankruptcy and get all that wiped away. You could swap out appendix with cancer or whatever really. We all know someone this has happened to. I know a few that it has happened to.
Except that all those bills don't just get wiped away and all is good. it doesn't just disappear. The hospital still has to pay for all the people who attended you, and for all the services you used. This cost is then passed onto everyone else who uses the hospital, everyone who goes to that doctor.
Everyone who doesn't pay for health care services, that the hospitals cant refuse to do, causes everyone else who uses their services to pay more, to cover those who can't.
What's a solution to this? Well this is a capitalist nation right? what happens when businesses start failing because they cant afford to service some customers? stop servicing those customers right?
Simple right? Let the hospitals refuse treatment to anyone they believe can't pay.
Could you imagine the backlash from americans if a hospital could turn people away, refuse them service? You know it would be the homeless first right? And then maybe people who come in with certain kinds of insurance, maybe refuse all patients who have Blue Cross or maybe Aetna. I mean would you service customers if their creditors had open accounts and disputes with you?
Well go to another hospital right? its not like you could be unconscious from a car accident, bleeding into your lungs.
No that wouldn't stand for long would it?
Well what to do then?
We could let the current system stay in place.
Right now there are some 46million under/un insured in the US(the number i see for this is from 2006). Out of 310(ish)million, its only like one out of every nine americans. in 2000 that number was around 39-40 million. thats only a rise of 6million in just as many years.
Now with costs rising, i've seen reports as 10% a year recently, I doubt that rate of increase will stay steady if nothing is done. if anything that rate will rise if all things stay the same. more and more people who don't have insurance means more and more people who have to go to ER's after they have avoided preventative care and need extreme measures for what would have been an easy thing to treat at the beginning.
so this means the doctors have to pass on the cost of the care onto you and your insurers which means the insurer's charge higher rates to cover their bottom line, they are for profit companies after all, which means less people can afford their rates which means more uninsured trying to get healthcare and not really paying for it, which means the doctors have to pass on the cost of care onto you and your insurer, and your insurer has to raise his rates which means less people can pay it which leads to less people who have insurance ... ad nausium.
the insurer's basically have a smaller and smaller pool of people to spread the cost around to and squeezes out the people who are just barely hanging on at the bottom of the economic rungs. it is a self feeding system. it is a self amplifying feedback loop.
We could mandate that everyone has to buy health insurance!, not unlike the states that require car insurance if you have a car!
We could, yeah we could! except i can opt out of the whole car insurance thing. i can buy a bike or take the bus or walk. i can not opt out of being alive, we i could but its technically illegal, go figure.
you would basically mandating that we have to buy a product from a for profit company. oh yeah i can see this going well. it'd be like making the water utilities private companies. i see that ending well.
well it would give a larger pool of people and cause rates to fall. well except the did it in Mass and their rates haven't fallen at all, they've increased!
At least the government would give me a prorated subsidy to lower the financial burden on me.
Well this sounds familiar. What else do I have to pay that is prorated based on my income, to lower the financial burden on me.
TAXES!
thats right, death and taxes the two things i can not avoid. soon i guess it would be death, taxes and health insurance.
but if we're essentially going to make health insurance a tax why are we going to give not just my money but tax money (where do you think that government subsidy comes from?) to private for profit companies? this simply does not make sense.
if we are going to mandate that every man woman and child in the US have health insurance just make it a tax and let me walk into any doctor's office and get the care that the doctor thinks i need.
I may have more to say but i think that covers most of it
~Z