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It's making me sick.

Big0ne

Shared on Mon, 10/05/2009 - 13:44

I have purposely remained mostly quite on the topic of Health Care Reform for the last several months because quite frankly it's all very confusing to me.  Dealing with insurance companies is confusing.  Dealing with the government is confusing.  Sorting through the noise of both health care workers and lobbyist and political hacks and pundits is doubly confusing.   I still have a lot of questions but I am slowly starting to formulate my own opinion on the matter.

First off, can we stop calling this a "moral" issue?  This, oddly enough is the cry coming from the left (usually).  Aren't these the same people who'd like to keep morals and politics seperate?  This is a argument ripe with "slippery slope" trappings.  Do I have a moral obligation to provide someone else with medicine?  Do people have a moral obligation to work for and towards their own well being?  What moral standard is the whole thing based on anyway.  This has become a fairly secular country and I dare say we don't want to get in the business of defining that moral standard in this environment.  Health care would become the least vitriolic of our arguments.

The biggest problem I have right now with the proposals coming out of Washington is that they don't really seem to address the problems they claim exist and that most people wish would change.  On the one hand they tell us that the current health care system (specifically the insurance industry) is broken yet on the other "you can keep your existing plan if you want."  Nice mixed message there.

Here's another one I don't get.  "We will make it illegal for insurance companies to deny coverage based on a preexisting condition."  Sounds good.  Except.  No one is talking about how much that coverage is going to cost.  If I'm a 50 year old man with cancer, I'm guessing that while Blue Cross can't deny me, they can also make it so unaffordable I might as well not get it anyway.

Not only that but the scuttlebut is is that insurance is going to be required for all citizens.  Setting aside personal freedom issues here for a bit, if I have to get insurance yet I have an expensive preexisting condition, is the Government mandating that I go broke?  The only way to stop this scenario is with price controls.  I haven't heard word one about price controls.  If the government is mandating coverage and the only way to ensure that coverage is with price controls, isn't that already a Government run Health Care Plan?  At this point you'd just be using private companies to push the paperwork.

Polititions keep talking about the unnecassary bureaucracy of the insurance companies that drive up costs.  "They don't actually provide anything" is the chorus.  Well, if they decide to go with a single payer plan, aren't we just trading one bureaucray that doesn't provide anything for another? 

There's another pet peeve of mine that been really preeminent lately.  "We are the only industrialized nation in the world not to offer Government run health care."  So what!  That's the equivolent of going to your mommy and saying, "Everyone else is jumping off a bridge."  That has to be the weakest argument of all.  In the end if we want Government health care, that's our decision to make.  We have to do what's best for us as we see fit.  I don't give a frog's fart what the people in France do.

I guess while I tend place less faith in the ability of the Government to manage health care than I do in the ability of the private sector, I'm not willing to say that a Government run plan is the end of the world as we know it either.  In the end, we all pay.  If the government takes it over, we pay in the form of taxes and if the employers keep providing the benefit, then we all pay in the form of higher prices on the things you buy.  It seems like the only real way to eliminate bloated bureaucracy and control your own health care is to pay for it yourself.

One last thought.  I wonder if the whole root of this problem isn't technology.  It seems like in the last 20 - 30 years we've made such huge advances in technology at large and medical treatment systems in particular that maybe we've out paced our ability to pay for it.  I wonder if we were to wait a few years (not saying that we should) if this would become a non issue.

Comments

Rau's picture
Submitted by Rau on Mon, 10/05/2009 - 14:33
The government + private system=out of business private system IF the reinbursement rates are lower than what a doctor wants to charge. In my experience, the government often times pays more for services that they should. I'm talking double, but according to them they are reigning in the prices. That's what causes prices to increase. How can private business compete with the government who doesn't have to make a profit and undercuts costs? They can't do it for long. The other problem is that government programs like medicaid and medicare are horrible to deal with. Doctor's don't want to deal with those company's because it requires a shitload of training by certified entities to provide/document/to be certified and then they audit you . Well you better hope the person who trained you knew what they were talking about, or were talking about losing hundreds of thousands of dollars being taken back because you didn't document services "their" way. It doesn't matter that you already provided some of the best services around, but you didn't initial mistakes, or you didn't use the correct language while writing it up. 200k gone depending on how many infractions. And to barely touch the tip of the iceberg... "if I have to get insurance yet I have an expensive preexisting condition, is the Government mandating that I go broke?" I have had the displeasure of having two grandparents lose practically everything they own in order to qualify for medicaid for a nursing home. If medicaid and medicare have billions of dollars of fraud, and you're going to finance your new program by recapturing those dollars, fix the fucking programs first. All of this makes zero sense because we have medicaid and medicare. Hell change the eligibility for these programs. RIGHT? Why start something new? If we get a new system can we scrap medicaid and medicare? NO? Why? Because we get taxed already on these programs. Why cut off 2 streams of revenue for 1? Lets have 3 instead plus raise the taxes on everyone. Fuck these guys in DC that vote for this healthcare bill.
TheDastard's picture
Submitted by TheDastard on Mon, 10/05/2009 - 14:48
Guess why the Nobel prize for medicine when to American researchers this year? Because we have a system that supports innovation and experimentation while covering the basic needs of the vast majority of the population and making a nice profit to boot. It's no Google, but 4-6% profit margins are respectable. Other countries can afford to have socialized medicine because 1) the US does much of the innovation for them and 2) we extend our defense umbrella nearly worldwide so they don't have the military spending we have. Right or wrong, that is the way it is. So people are not comparing apples to apples. And even then, the socialized countries restrict medical care as much as if not more than the US does. Yeah, the poor SOB might get treated, but grandpa gets to die in his late 50's waiting for prostate surgery. It's just a different definition of "uninsured".
BrainHematoma's picture
Submitted by BrainHematoma on Mon, 10/05/2009 - 18:34
Working in health care, I deal with the frustrations on a daily basis. For example since the both the building and company I work for are "for profit" the patients who receive the best care are those with the best insurance; not those who are in need of it most. It is a difficult situation because without revenue you can't afford to keep your business going and pay your staff. We can only control what we can control and what I mean by that is the individual has to take a more proactive role in their health. I understand that things happen illnesses, accidents and the like, but we all need to take better care of ourselves. There are people out there that say it's my body, I can do whatever I want, but it the end that is part of the problem of high health care costs. So, if you think your poor health does not affect other people, you wrong; we all pay for it! Sorry to be so blunt!

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