WHY THERE WILL BE NO HEALTH REFORM

The chances of any effectual health care “reform” are slim to none, and “slim” just took the last train out of town. Despite all the talk nobody has come close to “solving” our current health care situation. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to discern the facts of our current system and, frankly, there doesn’t seem to be a lot (if any) factual material out there. I did find a relevant article on the “Slate” website (of all places) that addresses the situation in an offhand manner. It does “confirm”, in a sense, the real situation:

“Take health care. Before this recession started in late 2007, there were 45 million people without health insurance, of whom 21 million worked full time, according to this exhaustive Census report. In 2007, the percentage of people covered by employment-based health insurance fell to 59.3 percent, or 177.4 million people, down from 64.2 percent in 2000, while the number of people covered by government health insurance rose from 80.3 million to 83 million. (But the Census definition of "government health insurance" applies only to those covered by Medicare, Medicaid, the military or S-CHIP programs. If you add in the millions of people who work for the government and in public-sector jobs (i.e., teachers), the private sector probably covered about 160 million people in 2007.) Since December 2007, however, the number of Americans receiving insurance from private sector companies has dropped sharply, since the private sector has shed 6 million jobs during that period.”

I tend to accept the above since it is based in fact and has a very logical extension. 83,000,000 people directly have government funded health care. Health care paid by your taxes. Add to that all the government employees and you certainly can conclude that some 160,000,000 people have health care total funded by taxpayer dollars. Since the population in the US is around 306,000,000 it’s a pretty safe bet to say that half the country receives health care funded by your tax dollars. Add to that the 45,000,000 with no insurance and you can easily determine that 2/3 of the American public either receive health care 100% funded by tax dollars or have no coverage at all. That means that only 1/3 of the country actually pays for (or contributes to) the cost of their own medical care. And, since nobody I know actually has 100% medical coverage through their employer, it’s a pretty safe bet to say that just about everyone with medical coverage is paying for it whether they use it or not. Now for the facts:

1) Half the population is already covered by government sponsored (that’s your tax dollars) health care. What part of that is hard to understand? Half the citizens in this country already receive health care sponsored by your tax dollars and, here’s the kicker, the ones with the very best health care your money can buy (that’s Congress…just in case you can’t figure that out for yourself) are making the decision as to whether or not the rest of us should get some kind of minimum care.
2) Consequently 1/3 of the country is paying for their own insurance to some degree and supporting the other 2/3 with their taxes. What part of that is hard to understand?
3) Oh yeah, just to clarify….the “uninsured” in this country (the 45,000,000 with no insurance) will get health care in one form or another if it’s necessary. County and/or state run hospitals generally function under the principle that they can’t turn patients away and are funded by taxpayers’ dollars. So while nobody is truly denied health care in emergency circumstances all those uninsured people do have access to the health care system. And if they can’t/don’t pay, guess who foots the bill?
4) Insurance companies exist for one reason and one reason only. They make money. Lots of it. Some part of your premium pays for all the overhead and executive salaries and bonuses. They pay out less money then they take in because that is the whole point of them existing. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be business. I pay $18.69 a week for some very decent insurance coverage. My employer pays the rest (I have no idea how much that is). Point is, there’s lots of money already being paid out to insurance companies for the health care services that are providing profits to the companies providing the coverage.
5) At some point me (or some other poor soul) may face the prospect of needing a medical procedure not (fully) covered by the insurance. The decision will be made solely by an individual concerned with the bottom-line profits of the provider. So, who would you rather have making the decision? Some guy in Washington who has no concept of money or some guy on the board of directors of a profit-making organization that’s only concerned with the bottom line? There’s tons of anecdotal evidence out there but this site is committed to reason and logic so I’m not going there.
6) The cost of health care will never, ever go down. That’s a simple and obvious fact. It never has and it never will. It will only increase. The reason it will increase is because more and more people will need care as the population ages and, that’s the way insurance companies work.

There is no current proposal that addresses the concept of initiating a national health care policy. Ultimately 1/3 of the population will continue to pay for their own care while supporting the care of the other 2/3 while insurance companies will continue to rake in massive profits at your expense. The only “solution” is to put everyone under the exact same coverage administered by a central agency. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, the government can’t manage anything. Go ahead, use that argument and then tell me what a great job they do waging war. Want to privatize that?

Of course relying on the government to run health care is a bad idea since the government running anything is a bad idea. That’s because you keep voting for the exact same people to run things. Both Republicans and Democrats have demonstrated beyond any doubt that they are totally inept at running the country yet you keep pulling the same lever every time you step in to a voting booth. But that’s another topic. In the meantime, by not allowing the government to institute a policy to provide health care to the population you are clearly, unquestionably, supporting policies that are proven failures. There’s always the possibility that at some future point a competent person will assume office and actually do something constructive. Supporting the status quo will only discourage real reformers from seeking to correct anything. It’s clear and simple: anybody standing in the way of any type of health care reform is directly responsible for the incredible burden that will be placed on all members of society in the future. Like it or not, it is directly your responsibility to encourage reform in any manner. Otherwise it will be business as usual and, as I have clearly pointed out, that won’t be a good thing.