Fixing the Health Care System-My 10 Step Program
Personally, I feel that during this time of high unemployment, people becoming homeless and hungry, that Congress is practicing ‘wag-the-dog’ politics by addressing the healthcare problem now rather than fixing the economy and restoring American jobs.
However, problem solving requires breaking down key components into smaller blocks and here is my outline for repairing our health care system.
1. First, start with tort reform. Medical malpractice suits abound and help cripple our system.
2. Take the Medicare system and simply incorporate it into a national healthcare program; eliminating age brackets.
3. Allow states to negotiate prescription drug costs.
4. Explore what the Commonwealth of PA does and incorporate insurance premiums into auto insurance premiums; creating a larger member pool while reducing costs.
5. Stop allowing medical treatment of illegal aliens; it’s bankrupted 100s of hospitals in this country.
6. Initiating a national system should eliminate the need for employers to pay into a Workers Compensation program; saving small business a lot of money annually.
7. Include preventative care, eye and dental into health policies
8. Save money on the national budget by cutting back on defense spending and foreign aid (We don’t need troops stationed in 130 countries).
9. Encourage co-op medical programs
10. Encourage enrollment into medical schools by not taxing graduating doctors for the first five years of practice and/or offer free tuition to medical school.
The above steps represent a far easier solution than all of the political wrangling currently going on in Congress (and it would eliminate the special favors many Congressional members are receiving). In any event, Congress has a reputation for screwing up everything it touches and then passes more laws to ‘fix’ the problems they created.
As stated in a previous commentary, this is all a scheme to achieve their goal of creating a national biometric ID; something which is on their agenda to do before 2017.
Despite repeated emails to various democratic representatives (Carl Levin, Boxer and others) not one bothered to reply to my queries in regard to Tort Reform and other questions regarding the proposed health care bill. Regardless, we all know Congress has a long history or mistakes and poor financial forecasts regarding the cost of bills. The drug coverage plan was, for instance, estimated at $400 billion and it's now estimated to rise to one trillion dollars!
If you like Amtrak and the Postal Service, then you surely will love government run healthcare. When Ludwig von Mises wrote Bureaucracy in 1944, he understood then what we see with government run agencies, and what we'll probably see with government healthcare programs. Mises understood that the bureaucratic model could not effectively be applied to business. Furthermore, he also stated that if businesses become bureaucratic, they do so precisely because of the presence of government pressure on their day-to-day activities.
Health care reform will not prove equal to all states. Because Medicaid programs vary by state, each would be affected differently because of a requirement to cover everyone earning 133% of poverty or less. Most (states) will see higher Medicaid tabs and new regulatory burdens, driving state budgets further into the hole.
"The federal health care reform legislation being debated would cost
California's General Fund an additional $3-$4 billion annually."
--Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
Incidentally, the only politician I contacted for answers on the healthcare plan which responded to me was Candice Miller – although she didn’t answer the questions I posed, she at least, unlike Michigan senators Stabenow and Levin, answered back! Her commentary is below...
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Dear Mr. David:
Thank you for contacting my office about health care reform and H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act. I appreciate hearing from you, and I am pleased for the opportunity to respond to your concerns.
As Washington has debated health care reform for the last several months, I have been meeting with and listening to the views of my constituents, whom I am proud to represent. It is undeniable that the health care system in the United States faces serious challenges. Millions of Americans have no insurance, which limits their access to care and their ability to pay for the care they receive. Costs are rising for everyone, stressing budgets of families and small businesses.
H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, was introduced by Representative John Dingell on October 29, 2009. Most notably, this bill would create a government run health care plan that would compete with private insurance plans. One of the key aspects of H.R. 3962 would be the establishment of an Advisory Council tasked with determining what health care plans would be legally required to cover or exclude. This reform plan would be paid for through a combination of cuts to Medicare totaling $426 billion and additional taxes on individuals and small businesses.
In order to expand health care coverage, H.R. 3692 would introduce individual and employer mandates. Every individual who chooses not to obtain "qualified" coverage would be forced to pay a penalty of 2.5 percent of their modified adjusted gross income. Employer mandates would require businesses to pay for their employee's health care, or pay a penalty of 8% of their payroll. When many businesses are paying in excess of 15% of their employees' payroll in health care premiums right now, a perverse incentive may be created under the proposed health care plan to force their workers onto the government run plan. This will cause a tax increase for hardworking Americans as they are left to pick up the tab.
The long term costs of implementing this plan are extraordinary. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that this bill will cost over $1.2 trillion dollars for the next ten years. Additionally, the Director of the CBO testified before the Senate on July 16th that the health care overhauls proposed in this legislation would increase, not reduce, the growing long-term health care costs facing the government.
The House considered this legislation on November 7, 2009. During floor proceedings, one significant improvement was made to the bill when the House adopted an amendment that prohibited taxpayer dollars from being used to pay for abortion. I was proud to join my colleagues in approving this language.
This improvement notwithstanding, H.R 3962 remains a very poor piece of legislation that will raise taxes on individuals and businesses, expand the national debt that our children and grandchildren will have to pay, and force millions of Americans onto a government run health care plan. With national unemployment at 10 percent and Michigan's unemployment rate at 15 percent, Congress should be focusing on creating jobs. This bill is the wrong prescription to reform health care and to create jobs. Despite my vote in opposition, the House narrowly approved this measure by a vote of 220-215, and it will now head to the Senate for consideration in that body.
Again, thank you for your correspondence on this very important issue. If you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact my office. If you would like to stay up to date on issues in Congress and how they affect you, please sign up to receive Congresswoman Miller's monthly e-newsletter, The Washington Connection, at candicemiller.house.gov. It was all of the information you need about current events in our nation's capitol and their impact on Michigan's 10th Congressional District.
What are your thoughts? Feel free to send me a personal email and share your opinion.
bedavid@yahoo.com
