Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
There shouldn't be a choice to have health insurance or not. There should be a payroll tax for it and everybody gets covered. End of story. Getting sick and getting old isn't an option. It's a fact of life. Everybody needs healthcare whether they like it or not.
They could divert some of the billions were are spending on unnecessary military expenditures to the government option that Obama caved on.
Let me tell you what makes and made our healthcare system inefficient and costly.
In 1986, Ronald Reagan signed into law the Emergency medical treatment and active labor act. This law mandated that any hospital that takes federal money at all, must take care of anyone who walks through their doors, regardless of their ability to pay.
Now what happened is this, people went into the hospital, the hospital cared for them, but then no one paid them any money for it. Yeah, they can write off the loss as a business expense, but that hardly makes up for the rest of the care that was provided. The federal government set up no way for the hospitals to get paid.
So what happens next? Well, hospitals charge someone with insurance more money for their care to make up for the loss. Now they don't blatantly do this, they do extra procedures that you don't need, prescribe medicine you don't need, and charge crazy prices for hospital room stays.
So then what happens? Well, all those extra charges cause insurance companies to raise their premiums. That means that more and more people can't afford insurance. That means that hospitals have to care for more, and more, and more people for free, charging more, and more, and more for the care of the insured.
Thats what happened to our healthcare system.
We should either.
A. Mandate that healthcare is paid for by the government and everyone is going to get a minimal amount of care, and it would be paid for by the government.
or
B. Let the free market work as its supposed to, by lowering prices because people demand them to be lower.
Choice A would likely mean more taxes and a bigger government. Option B would mean that people would likely die on the street.
You decide what you want.
It would mean more govt., but actually cheaper per person than what we have now. I choose A.
Rather than doing something to address the abuses of the health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical corporations, Obamacare actually gives them more power.
I'm sorry but since neither you nor your link provide any substantiating arguments and I am just way to lazy to weed through 40+ links which don't appear to address the issue, would you mind terribly posting a supporting argument?
I'm sorry but since neither you nor your link provide any substantiating arguments and I am just way to lazy to weed through 40+ links which don't appear to address the issue, would you mind terribly posting a supporting argument?
Thank you in advance.
How about the fact that everyone at this moment in time hates insurance companies and thinks they are pure evil, yet Obama signed a law into effect giving them 30-40 MILLION more customers. How the hell does that make any sense? We hate insurance companies, let's force people to buy their insurance.
The U.S. health care system has become one gigantic money making scam
the United States spends more on health care per person than any other country in the world by far.
The health insurance companies and the big pharmaceutical corporations are raking in gigantic mountains of cash and yet the quality of the health care that we receive in return is rather quite poor.
People living in Puerto Rico have a greater life expectancy than we do.
Residents of Cuba have a lower infant mortality rate than we do.
We are the most medicated population on the planet and yet we are also one of the sickest.
As you read this, there are hordes of health bureaucrats and greedy corporate fatcats that are becoming incredibly wealthy while the rest of us go broke trying to pay for our health care.
In the United States today, health care bills cause more bankruptcies than anything else does.
Obamacare was one of the worst pieces of legislation that anyone has ever come up with in the history of the United States.
Rather than doing something to address the abuses of the health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical corporations, Obamacare actually gives them more power.
In fact, huge portions of Obamacare are virtually identical to a bill that was written by the health insurance trade association in 2009.
Under Obamacare our health care costs will go up even faster and the quality of our health care will continue to go down.
So please don’t try to tell me that Obamacare is the solution to anything.
Solutions (which would fix our system overnight, yet NO ONE will ever institute)
1. Put all us physicians on salary- take away the financial incentive to do procedures and surgery.
Won't work unless you set up a low cost government network, and give the incentive of tuition assistance and free malpractice insurance.
2. Eliminate physician ownership in surgery centers, lab, and imaging
That's just plain anti-capitalistic.
3. Eliminate malpractice- fear of litigation drives up the costs (particularly of imaging) enormously.
The gov should provide low cost malpractice to physicians.
4. Eliminate social security disability- in most cases it is a scam
Just set up better screening and checking, and enforce criminal action.
5. Use the VA "ladder" system that mandates use of generics unless there is an absolute reason not do so.
Should be in effect for a government, not private, network.
There you go- healthcare solved. It will be a cold day in hell before any politician would actually support this .
A government option would solve a lot of problems with forcing people to get insurance. There can be a sliding scale. It might hurt the private healthcare companies though, too bad.
The free market is incapable of containing health care costs. Plus, "free market solutions" are a moot point in health insurance....the free market doesn't exist in health insurance.
Progressive demolibs don't believe the free market exists and is why they fight it tooth and nail.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
