The bill's purpose is to create a government-funded health insurance option that will be competing against private insurance groups (it will not be mandatory that everyone switch to this group, however it will become mandatory that all citizens have health care).
The idea that all citizens need health care is an important notion due to the high cost of treatment that those without health care impose on hospitals. Even when patients lack health care, it is a hospitals duty to treat them, and many times this cost is eaten by that hospital. With a national health care bill, the cost of treatment should reduce.
For cnn's coverage of the senate health reform debate click here
My Ma always used that say that if it aint broke then dont fix it. Well we got the best darn healthcare system in the world here, and there aint nothing broke about that. What the democrats want is socialism, and corrupt government spending. I hear a lot of talk on the television these days about how the democrats say calling their plan socialism is ignorant. Well, I say its too bad the democrats are stuck so high up in their ivery tower that they dont even know what real americans want anyhmore. If we wanted socialism wed have voted for it.
ReplyDeleteLook, hobophbic, it's not socialism. The free market simply doesn't arrive at efficient or equitable equilibrium points when conditions are unfavorable. Having access to decent healthcare should be valued at a premium because, as the old adage goes (and I note your penchant of adages), you don't have anything if you don't have your health. In plain terms, this means that the societal benefit of expanding healthcare coverage to as many people as possible at the lowest rates feasible should be high on our list of priorities. BUT that is exactly not the case when you leave the distribution of healthcare in the hands of private HMO's whose primary concern and motivation is monetary profit. Furthermore the complexity of the situation detracts from individual consumers abilities to percieve all the costs and benefits of all the possible options available to them, which means they are unable to choose efficiently and often arrive at subpar results. In other words, my friend, this is one place where we need more government, not less.
ReplyDeleteBloo you raised some excellent points. just to clarify one thing on top of creating the public option of healthcare, the proposed bill for health care reform will also be creating a "insurance exchange" and for complete transperincy on how the money you put into benefits is being spent (what precent goes to actual patient care vs what is used to cover the massive overhead and administrative costs). So where in the past people would not be able to perceive all the cost and benefits of the possible options, now with the Exchange all the potential plans will be condensed in one place with benefits vs cost being laid out in the open for all to see. Furthermore, the addition of a public option and one-stop shopping for insurance will increase competition between private insurers and thereby drive down costs for all Americans. So good things will happen all around.
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