My opinion on the government having any more involvement in any part of health care can basically be summed up by this: Why would you trust the government to have any say in something as important at your health care? There's so much that they can't get right, I don't want them messing with something as important and personal as my health care and medical decisions.
I know the big reason that people want government intervention in the health care industry is so that they can "afford" it. The problem with this logic is that you won't be getting anything for free, and government-run health care will not make it any more affordable.
President Obama's proposed plan would still allow for a "public" option (for employees/employers to purchase their own health insurance of their choice) instead of using the "single payer system" (like Medicare, where the government directly pays the doctors), but it would require employers to pay for their employees coverage or pay a fee to the government instead. This will increase the cost of employment, and in a recession, will ultimately result in fewer jobs. If a company can't afford to hire 10 people AND provide health insurance for them, what are they going to do? This will result in fewer jobs, and an eventual rise in the price of goods and services.
If a company's operating costs rise like this, how do they recover their lost income? By raising prices. Simple economics: $$ going out cannot be < $$ coming in. Who pays for the increase in prices? Consumers (aka the American taxpayer). Whether you're paying for an increase in taxes (which you will) or an increase in consumables/services (which you will), the cost of government mandated or provided health care will increase your expenses. Obama's plan would also eventually strangle the private insurance industry. Author
Michael Tanner explains: "The Congressional Budget Office [concluded that the proposed plan] would result in roughly 23 million people losing the insurance they currently have. Regardless of how it was structured or administered, such a government-run plan would have an inherent advantage in the marketplace because it would ultimately be subsidized by American taxpayers. The government plan could, for instance, keep its premiums artificially low or offer extra benefits since it could turn to the U.S. Treasury to cover any shortfalls. Consumers would naturally be attracted to the lower-cost, higher-benefit government program, undercutting the private market. A government program would also have an advantage since its enormous market presence would allow it to impose much lower reimbursement rates on doctors and hospitals. Such cost-shifting would force insurers to raise their premiums, making them even less competitive with the taxpayer-subsidized public plan. The result would be a death spiral for private insurance... [A]s many as 118.5 million would shift from private to public coverage. That would mean a nearly 60 percent reduction in the number of Americans with private insurance."
A local doctor told me recently that when she had her private practice, she had to make a decision about which patients should could afford to accept. She couldn't afford to accept both
TRICARE (health coverage for the military and their families) and Medicare/Medicaid patients. She could only afford to take one type, so she chose TRICARE. Why? Medicare/Medicaid/TRICARE (government-provided healthcare) dictates what they will pay for every medical service offered. There is no negotiation. For example, your doctor might bill $100 for a certain test, but Medicare will only pay them $35. To make up the difference, doctors often have to raise the rates on other patients - those with private health insurance or that pay out of pocket.
Imagine if everyone was covered by a single-payer system. No one would want to become a doctor because they couldn't afford to run their practice. The country is already experiencing a
shortage of primary-care physicians, but it would become more like the shortages in Canada and the U.K. if things keep heading this way. Mandating how much to pay for medical procedures and prescription drugs is potentially disastrous. In addition to discouraging people to go into the medical profession, it passes the cost to other parties (aka taxpayers) and cuts profits that are used for medical research and new drug development.
Think that the U.S. doesn't do it's fair share in paying for people's health insurance? "Although nearly 46 million Americans are uninsured, the United States spends more on health care than other industrialized nations, and those countries provide health insurance to all their citizens." (
NCHC) We've already increased funding for SCHIP by raising taxes, and
as I've said before, the money doesn't always get spent the way they tell you it will.
One line that has been used a lot over the last several years is that there are 40-50 million "uninsured" Americans. This number has been proven to be
completely misleading. One report digs into this widely-spread myth: "[According to the Census Bureau, this figure includes] 9.487 million people who are 'not a citizen.' [Another] 8.3 million uninsured people... make between $50,000 and $74,999 per year and 8.74 million... 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... 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."
For more misleading figures and health care myths,
read this article on FoxNews.
How do you decrease health care costs? Some ways might include: raising competition (not lowering it), lowering the costs incurred by doctors (medical malpractice insurance and the resulting need for lots of expensive tests, for example), getting people out of the emergency rooms that aren't emergency cases, stop paying for non-citizens' coverage through state and federally funded plans, encouraging more people to get their own health insurance coverage through tax breaks and higher competition between insurance companies, and increasing the use of nurse practitioners and nurse midwives for run of the mill illnesses and normal birth (HT: Mrs. A).
With the nationalization of GM, the banking industry, and who knows what next, I say that we should keep the government out of our health care system, which makes up about 1/6 of the US economy, as much as possible.
