Re: The PPACA Thread Part III - Let's have a healthy debate!
That is an awesome soundbyte...problem is it means nothing. People had the same issues under the old system (google the stats on bankruptcies due to health issues) so in reality it is just an empty platitude. That is all the Right has about this...a bunch of rhetoric but zero solutions. That is why their repeals go nowhere...
Again I dislike ObamaCare as much the next guy but I will still rip the GOP for their ridiculousness on this subject until they prove it is more than just hollow words said to make a few bucks. Problem is, almost every day that party gives people reason to believe they dont give two craps about them so why should anyone trust them on this issue? Add in that they have no idea what they want to do to make sure people have access to good rates and coverage (and dont you dare say Market Forces because that is what got us here in the first place...bad health care at high prices cause of Market Forces) and they look like fools.
This is not a Republican/Democrat issue. Obamacare is, because that's political. But fixing of healthcare issues is an issue between the public (which is disorganized and underfunded) and large, wealthy corporations in either the medical field or health insurance field. There have been opportunities for the Dems to fix this, most notably during the first two years of Bill Clinton's administration, and they failed miserably.
Here is the conundrum as I see it.
First, we got off on the wrong foot. The insurance model really only works if you are insuring unexpected, reasonably rare events, like car accidents or tornadoes or fires. It doesn't work well for something you might use tens or hundreds of days a year. That would be like buying insurance to cover you in case you need to buy food.
But, until someone invents the time machine, it's a very bad system in which we find ourselves. The problem of Obamacare is that it simply pours gasoline on a dumpster fire that already exists. Putting more money into the insurance model is not the way we should be going. Instead, we should be trying to wean ourselves from the insurance model.
The slow, painful way is to change it so the only insurance you buy covers things like major, unexpected medical events. Basically something like an extremely high deductible plan. People will pull back from some care they might otherwise have sought (every single sniffle), and the medical providers will have to start doing some serious pricing analysis. The problem is, that creates pain for insurers, health care providers and the public, and it would take a long time to correct things.
The better solution is to simply rip the band aid off and go to a single payer plan. However, doing so is impeded by at least three large roadblocks. First, there is the general public mistrust of a single payer plan, even though most find Medicare generally acceptable. To push the single payer plan past the public, we basically would just have to say, "ok, medicare starts when you are born (or at conception to gain even more political support) not when you hit your mid-60's." That might help us get past roadblock number 1.
More difficult is the medical community. We've built a medical industrial complex that is, in some instances at least, a for profit model. Going to the single payer plan is essentially nationalizing our healthcare providers. People who you willingly allow to stick a camera up your anus are extremely effective lobbyists, and I don't think they want to be government employees.
The final hurdle is probably the most difficult. To go to a single payer plan is to effectively kill a huge industry. I have no idea how many people are employed in the health insurance industry, and related businesses, but to tell them that they're just going to have to go out and start trying to sell universal life policies or something instead isn't going to happen without an extremely bloody fight. I don't think the country wins that fight. We saw that in '92.