Reforming Healthcare Reform
I’m not a proponent of the current “Healthcare Reform” bill. I don’t really see this proposed solution as healthcare reform. To me, it seems like a very easy way for the government to tell me how to live my life. 
I strongly agree that we need to reform healthcare in this country, but I oppose this bill.
Granted, I haven’t read all of the current bill. I doubt anyone has because it’s almost 2000 pages, weighs 20 lbs., and is written is legalese. It calls for the creation of 50 new agencies, mandates, commissions, etc. How can any American claim to be educated on something that most lawmakers (who have a vote to cast) can’t even get through.
As a diabetic, I’ve had to make some difficult choices when it comes to healthcare. I’ve had to stay at bad jobs or accept sub par offers from companies simply because I couldn’t afford NOT to have health coverage. I freelanced for a while and found that without my husband’s employer-provided health insurance, I’d have been completely and utterly screwed.
In my opinion (as a diabetic and a fiscal conservative), the type of “reform” that we really need is this:
- Health insurance should be 100% portable. It shouldn’t be tied to a specific employer, and it shouldn’t terminate if you lose your job.
- Pre-existing conditions clauses should be illegal. We might not like to admit it, but insurance, by its very nature, is a pyramid scheme. Some people will pay for coverage they never use, which benefits those with chronic conditions like diabetes. When insurance companies only cover healthy people, they’re always at the top of the pyramid.
- All pharma-to-consumer advertising should be abolished. If advertising wasn’t an option, pharma companies could charge significantly less for thier products, and still make plenty of cash for R&D. Why do these companies *need* to spend billions of dollars advertising to *us* and not doctors, anyway?
- There should be a cap on health insurance premiums. It should be affordable to everyone regardless of a person’s income. I don’t think it should be free, but I don’t think it should cost $1,000 per month to insure a family.
- There should be a dollar-to-dollar tax deduction for out-of-pocket medical expenses. Having to wait until your expenses exceed 7.5% of your income is just ridiculous.
- If you don’t want to pay for health insurance, you shouldn’t have to. However, if you get hurt or sick, and need medical assistance, don’t expect the rest of us to pay for your care.
- If you truly can’t afford health insurance, then the existing entitlement programs will have to sustain you. The fact is that when you work hard, and make more money, you get better stuff. Whether that stuff is a nice car, or home, or big TV, or better health insurance, the payoff for hard work is the greatest incentive there is.
- Healthcare is NOT a right. It’s a benefit.
- Taxing things like soda and juice drinks to (allegedly) help with the “obesity epidemic” is really just another way to take in more revenue and fund this proposed healthcare system. If the real goal is reduce obesity, then instead of punishing (i.e., taxing) people for eating poorly, why not incentivize them to eat healthier. Provide a tax break for purchasing fruits and vegetables, and people might be more inclined to ditch the cookies and cupcakes.
Our government wastes millions of dollars everyday. We bleed money. Wasteful spending is a reality in all aspects of government, and it’s naïve to think that the proposed healthcare reform bill would be any different. This is not change; it’s more of the same.
Themocracy
“Entitlement” means “right”. If healthcare is NOT a right (in which I agree), then government entitlement programs should be abolished.
In addition to making people believe that the provision of healthcare at little or no personal expense is a “right”, government-run and -regulated entitlement programs result in significant amounts of waste, raise costs, and prevent appropriate medical care from getting to the people who really need it.
Less regulation and less government intervention will lower costs to the point where basic healthcare is (more) affordable, and local private charities often do more to get care to the people who need it than huge government agencies.
The FDA also needs a huge overhaul, or better, privatization. Right now the approval of new drugs is dependent on how much a company can bribe the FDA, and the process is spotty at best. Under today’s regulations, aspirin would never be approved, and the long approval times make drug development so expensive that anything new has to be marketed at huge markups (and advertisement is needed to make people believe they need the new expensive drugs rather than the older cheap drugs). In novel categories, the long lead times mean that more people are actually DYING waiting for the drugs than would have died from adverse reactions to, and side effects of, those drugs. (Read Mary Ruwart, Healing Our World.)
There’s a difference between health insurance (meant to cover catastrophic and unforseeable medical expenses — what we used to call “Major Medical”) and health maintenance (meant to use collective bargaining and economies of scale to lower the cost of routine and ongoing medical expenses, including the costs of managing chronic diseases such as diabetes). What our employers are purchasing for us is an omnibus that covers both insurance and maintenance. Requiring a “clean bill of health” for certain levels of medical insurance makes sense, as does a sliding scale for health maintenance, based on expected needs and costs. (It is not “fair” for someone with no chronic medical conditions to pay for your insulin, pump supplies, test strips, and/or CGM sensors; however, if 1000 PWD get together and can bargain Sanofi-Aventis, J&J, and/or Dexcom into giving you better rates, that is fair.)
It may be that the sooner we re-decouple major-medical insurance from health-maintenance, and the sooner we decouple both from employment and government regulation, the better we will all be.
Thanks so much for your thought-provoking comment. Clearly, you’re far more informed about this topic than I.
One question I have is what incentive would there be for any companies to give better rates to a bunch of PWD? I mean, obviously, we’re going to use their products – a lot of us rely on them just to survive – so, what would stop them from raising prices on us? Some measure of government intervention would be necessary, wouldn’t it?
I couldn’t agree with you more on the current entitlement programs. In fact, I strongly believe that Americans would be more inclined to make charitable donations if we weren’t being robbed of a significant portion of our paychecks to fund the existing entitlement programs.
I also agree with what you wrote about the FDA. I have a sister who is battling Stage IV breast cancer. There are drugs in R&D that could (possibly) help her, but the process of FDA approval is just ridiculous. I’ve added Healing our World to my purchase list.
Thanks again for contributing – I love reading others’ views, and you’ve given me lots to think about.
Well, I have to say, I’m all for a tax on soda and juice drinks for several reasons.
a) Children in this country are FAT. Fatter than ever, and this leads to a lifetime of medical problems.
b) If small taxes on things like soda, juice drinks, cigarettes, and other non-essentials, maybe the prices of healthy foods could be lowered. It’s ridiculous that if I want a healthy sandwich on whole grain bread, that loaf of bread costs almost $4.00 versus white bread at $.79. And let me also say that I LOVE diet soda. I’m willing to pay a tax on it…definitely.
Just my $.02…
I meant to say, If there were small taxes on things like soda…