Common Sense Health Care Reform
It is currently generally accepted in our country that the Republicans in Congress have not at all attempted to contribute to the massive health care reform legislation. In fact, the Democrats and the compliant liberal media have called Republicans the party of NO! This label has been put on the minority party for a simple reason: To demonize them in the eyes of the public as having nothing to offer and therefore not caring about the people of America when it comes to health care. Nothing could be further from the truth! The Republicans in both chambers have been submitting in various committees comprehensive amendments to proposed legislation and it has been Democrats who have voted NO on all such Republican amendments.
This has been a constant pattern among the Democrats from the President on down ever since January of this year. It was President Obama who said during one of the early bi-partisan meetings at the White House when he responded to Republican suggestions: Remember, I won! So much for bi-partisanship in our country’s capital. The truly ironic thing in all this is the fact that President Obama himself does not have a health care reform bill, at least not one that can be read on paper or could be scored by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. He has for all these many months, including the 2008 campaign, only stated certain provisions that he wants to see before he signs a bill. It will remain to be seen how many of his promises will be exactly that, nothing but promises.
As promised in our previous article, Common Sense University will attempt here to present a realistic, common sense based health care reform package that would achieve the goals of true reform. As a starting point we asked the question: What is driving the costs of health care in America and what are the major elements contributing to these cost increases? We are of the opinion that there are three major factors:
1. Lack of true competition among the nation’s health insurance firms: As it currently stands, the approx. 1300 health insurance companies in the USA cannot sell and service their policies nationwide, instead they are by law limited to only do business in a few States. For instance, unlike with car insurance, if you live in California, you cannot buy health insurance from a company in Texas or even Arizona!
2. The immensely expanding and expensive industry of malpractice lawsuits: The immense business of malpractice lawsuits, both the legitimate as well as the frivolous ones are driving malpractice insurance costs for physicians and health professionals sky high. It is not at all unusual for an obstetrician/ gynocologist or an orthopedic surgeon having to pay up to $200,000 to $250,000 malpractice insurance premiums annually. They have to pass these costs on to the consumer. These high premiums are primarily driven by the many lawsuits filed against them many times frivolously for malpractice. Another cost factor is the reaction by doctors to conduct or call for multiple tests for patients in order to protect themselves against malpractice accusations. These multiple, and yet many times unnecessary tests drive the costs up to and effect the health insurance premiums;
3. Lack of portability of health insurance for individuals and insurance company clauses against ‘previous conditions’ by individuals: This is a genuine problem and is not easily fixed. The insurance companies will not take on patients with prior major health problems (heart conditions etc) and will simply deny coverage for them. This means also that many people will lose their health insurance coverage after major surgery or treatments when insurance companies simply discontinue further coverage of such individuals. Both sides have rational explanations why they do not like this situation, the companies believe that they have to protect themselves against unforeseen and non-calculable risks and expenses while the insured person suffers greatly when hit with such a calamity of insurmountable health care expenses.
With all this though, it appears that a vast majority of Americans are satisfied with the health care in America and consider it to be the best in the world. But the ever rising health care associated costs are a mounting concern for the citizenry in our country. Now then, back to the reality of what the President and Congress are doing while trying to deal with this major issue: A multi-trillion dollar business every year. President Obama and the Democrats are totally ignoring the first two of our above identified cost-driving elements and instead focus fully on totally unimportant issues. They whine about the uninsured in America and continue to present false numbers by including nearly ten million illegal aliens and also others, among them the younger folks who could afford to buy health insurance but have decided not to do so.
Instead of concentrating on the real cost drivers in the health care industry, Democrats have to demonize insurance companies, the doctors and health care providers including hospital chains as well as the pharmaceutical industry while trying to fix the problem. Democrats have refused to even listen to reason and rationale when presented by others who do not agree with them. That is why the Republicans are not even given time for proposal presentations and debate on this issue. We here think that this major overhaul of the health care reform as currently pursued by the President and the Democrats is nothing more than a government takeover of one fifth or one sixth of our economy and attainment of more control over our lives by reducing our freedoms! Let us ask one simple question: When you have two bad tires on your car, do you buy a new car when two new tires will do the job? Of course not!
We here at Common Sense University strongly believe that our three elements as identified above should be the foundation of any major health care reform, it would bring costs down substantially for everybody. Remember, competition has always been good in America and benefited all of us. Reducing malpractice litigation to reasonable limits of damages would be a major cost reducer in health care and again, beneficial for all. Providing clauses for insurance portability and greater coverage for those with ‘previous’ health conditions should not be too big to tackle and solutions could be found by having reasonable people work them out.
The only remaining question is for us: Can we expect this from the President and the Democrats in Congress? Unfortunately, we think not. They want more power over our individual lives and want to dictate to us what we can do, eat, drink and so on. What is happening in Washington right now is all about controlling us! They firmly believe, so it appears that – since we sent them there, they must be the smartest people in the country and they are forgetting the role they are constitutionally to play, namely, to represent us!
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