The nutty thing about the health care debate that will play a prominent role in the next election is that most Americans want pretty much the same outcome: to control costs without sacrificing quality. And that's not what either major-party candidate is offering. Few think that Obamacare, a Romneycare descendant that contains the same kind of individual mandate the then-governor of Massachusetts signed into law, will get us to that desired goal. Nor would Mitt Romney, who has been reborn as a celebrant of the old, pre-Obama system with a few nips and tucks.
As the nation awaits a Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of the Obama health care approach, a new Associated Press-GfK poll suggests that the vast majority of Americans want Congress to come up with a better plan. They know that the current system is unsustainable. Only a third of those polled favored the law President Barack Obama signed, but according to the AP, "whatever people think of the law, they don't want a Supreme Court ruling against it to be the last word on health care reform."
The article continued,
More than three-fourths of Americans want their political leaders to undertake a new effort, rather than leave the health care system alone if the court rules against the law, according to the poll.
That sentiment underscores the opportunity missed by Obama, who limited his ambition to what Big Pharma and the insurance giants would accept as "reform" in a system that they had so successfully exploited. Obamacare is a faux reform born of opportunism, as was Romney's original version: Play ball with those who have profited most from the run-up of medical costs and expect them to make it more affordable.
Two dynamics doomed the experiment. First, the new Democratic president wanted to launch a bold progressive program, but rather than channel the spirit of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to address the economic crisis that he inherited, he continued the bailouts begun under George W. Bush and fixed on health care reform instead of the financial pain being suffered by average Americans.
The second dynamic that undercut the health care bill was an overeagerness on the part of the new White House operatives to collaborate with the profiteers in the very industry targeted by reform.
The email trail of cave-ins to the medical industry heavyweights is startlingly clear, and it is difficult to quarrel with the headline on a Wall Street Journal story: "Emails Reveal How the White House Bought Big Pharma." Except, as a related editorial in the WSJ makes clear, it was the pharmaceutical industry that did the buying, with "a $150 million advertising campaign coordinated with the White House political shop."
What the industry bought was an end to the notion of a health care "public option," and a guarantee of no serious restrictions on drug prices, arranged by then White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who was in close communication with the lobbyists involved. The Journal article pointed to the cynical language of the emails exchanged, quoting one incriminating note from a lobbyist: "Rahm asked for Harry and Louise ads thru third party. We've already contacted the agent."
The American Medical Association and others also were in on the fix, yet with all of that power being exercised the public wasn't conned. As the WSJ editorialized (it galls me to agree with that newspaper's editorialists), "The miracle is that despite this collusion of big government and big business, Obamacare has received the public scorn that it deserves."
But scorn for an individual mandate that compels consumers to purchase something they don't want does not translate into a rational alternative to the current mess. Californian Gary Hess, a retired school administrator and a Republican, is quoted in the AP story about the new poll as saying that he wants the Supreme Court to reject the entire Obama plan but that he still wants the government to retain the requirement that insurance companies cover people regardless of their prior medical conditions. "There needs to be compromise on both sides," he said. Clearly, any good compromise must include both control on costs and the availability of health care to the needy in places other than the very expensive emergency room.
Let me humbly suggest that as an alternative to a mandatory system rejected by the majority, we return to the idea of covering most people by attracting them to quality public and private programs through consumer choice, and that one of those choices be a version of the public option we now offer seniors. It's called Medicare and it works splendidly.
Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks: In Tough Times, Seek the Spirit
NEWSFLASH: You're a day late and a dollar short. You won't get a mulligan on healthcare.
Know that the more dependent on the government you become, the more of your liberties they take away. Oh, they may give you a few narrow choices, but those choices all fit within narrow government mandated rules. Would you so readily sell your Liberty for a hollow promise of security? If you think I am exagerating, then do your own, independent, research on the results of President Johnson's so-called "War on Poverty". After Billions spent, "poverty" is worse, not better.
Wake up, people! When you are dependent, then those who you depend on can cut you off. When you are as independent as possible, you are not subject to the whims of government, and you enjoy much more Liberty.
Sell your liberty if you like, that is your choice. But as a very wise man once said:
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." - Samual Adams
Since the United States enacted Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960's and forced the HMO industry on Americans in the 1980's health care costs have soared.
We need to give control of health costs by to the individual and release them from the control of HMO's and the government.
There are numerous solutions that big government advocates like Mr. Scheer totally ignore. Whole Foods corporation has some of the lowest health care costs and some of the best coverage of any corporation in the country because they offer a combination of individual health savings accounts and PPO catastrophic coverage instead of HMO's.
The government is not the answer it is the problem. A bureaucrat applying a one-size-fits-all cookie cutter approach cannnot run your life better than you can.
Everyone in the country paying into one pot can easily, easily, pay for the health of all. (Price controls on doctors treatment and medicine, is of course also required, just like they do in all other advanced nations, and don't tell me they are all going broke. They are not going broke because of their health insurance. They are going broke because their bankers invested in suburban Americna houses like the dchbgs bankers are. That's why they are going broke. Healthcare is a boon, a bonus, a plus to a nation's solvency. But trose deliberately ignore this fact.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/06/22/health-care-is-a-right-not-a-mandate/
So that means the genius trose think you should just di if you can't afford health insurance.
They may be geniuses. But they are scmbg peaces of dawgscheidt.
I hope they di. I schplat on their grayvs.
Without the insurance mandate, what should we do when uninsured people get sick? Treat them and stick the bill to the rest of us, like we do now? Not fair... or do we let them die in the street?
I work a as an in independent consultant, I am very healthy and still I pay for my own private insurance, but not everybody does it, some people prefer to buy a BMW and go to the ER when they are sick.
I think the solution is simple, keep the individual mandate, allow more competition between insurance companies and regulate the industry and the prices. I don't agree with extending medicare though, it is pretty inefficient the way it is right now. I know about this I live in Miami, the Meca of medicare fraud, almost every week there is headline in the local newspaper about this. So, no, that part I don't agree, no more government bureaucracies.
But something really serious?
Not so much.