Posted by
FeargalX on Wednesday, March 11, 2009 9:30:48 PM
Achieving universal health care coverage is simple. All Americans should be eligible for medicaid -- not just the poor. We live in a country where responsible people can be ruined by an unanticipated medical situation (if they are in between coverage), while someone who has been in prison and on welfare receives coverage. Medicaid is not a glamorous program -- most (not all) private insurance programs are better. We should not provide a benefit to people who are irresponsible while ignore those who paid taxes and obeyed the law.
Secondly, we should open up VA coverage to more people (children of eligible parties, etc). Those newly eligible people should have to pay some amount (like $100 per month) that is not small, but not out of reach of almost all Americans. Like medicaid, VA health is not the "greatest" ever -- but it is far better than nothing.
The consequences of such a program is that bad insurance companies (who no longer could compete) would go out of business. Unfortunately, this is precisely why such a program would likely never be passed (both parties get lobbied by these groups).
Ironically, the price of healthcare would go down since a private health plan would have to offer something clearly better than medicaid in order to compete.
Germany currently has such a system (in a way). All have access to free care, but most aspire to have a private plan (about half do). Health care costs per person are about half in Germany of America.
Unlike most products, health care is so heavily regulated (I cannot just perform surgery or sell and make medicine) and has forces at play having nothing to do with the market (if I had a broken leg, being in severe pain I would pay every dollar in my savings for treatment even though that might be "overpriced").
Those who think this is "socialistic" -- I have this question: Don't you get that we heavily regulate this industry already -- and provide healthcare in one form or another to more than half of all Americans? I might like it if we had fewer drug laws and restrictions for medical care -- but "conservatives" are not advocating that position (if anything, they want tougher "drug" laws). While "conservatives" have pushed tough drug laws, they think it was just fine that Vioxx was given out like candy for pain issues (despite its properties of giving strokes and heart attacks). On the other hand, somebody who obtained a drug for moderate pain like hydrocodone without proper authorization will generally go to jail (unless you are like Rush Limbaugh who obtained much stronger meds like Oxycodone and Oxycontin).