AKA, the public option: What is it good for?
In case my last post didn't convey enough reasons for being depressed, I've got more. Read on...........
I've always hated this time of the year, with it's shorter days and colder temperatures, but this year seems to be worse. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan rage on [with no end in sight], and the debate on health care reform seems to be going nowhere.
Instead of trying to come up with effective solutions to our health care problems, our representatives have resorted to debating whether we should maintain the same flawed US health care system, one that has left so many people in this country without adequate access to health care, and which places so much of the burden of ensuring the health of Americans on the backs of US business, or maintaining that same flawed health care system, but modifying it slightly by adding one more health insurance company, this time run by the government, that will supposedly bring competition to the health insurance industry, and bring down health care costs.
How stupid is that? Reducing health insurance costs, will no more reduce health care costs, than reducing car insurance rates will reduce the price of cars. Health insurance and health care [like car insurance and cars] are not the same. They are totally different, despite being related.
Sure we can reduce or eliminate the profits of health insurers, and bring down the cost of health insurance slightly, but those benefits will be short lived, since it does nothing to address the real problems of an increased demand for health care, due to an aging population, a lack of trained doctors and health care professionals, and a fee-for-service health care system, that encourages fraud, and the performance of unnecessary procedures, tests and treatments.
We can also try and squeeze more savings from health care providers by cutting reimbursement rates, but that will only exacerbate the problems of fraud and the performance of unnecessary procedures, tests and treatments.
Regardless of whether any of the health care proposals before congress right now include a public option, be it an opt out, opt in, negotiated rates or even a trigger, it won't be reform.
We'll still be left with all the same problems. Plus a significant portion of society will still be left without adequate access to health care, and even worse, nothing, not even the measures that are of benefit, e.g. no exclusion for pre-existing conditions, take effect until 2013.
So what's to happen to those who can't afford health insurance now, or can't buy it at all because of a pre-existing condition for the next 3 years? Are they just to be told, as the Republicans have so subtly put it, "die quickly"?
This is just smoke and mirrors by our elected representatives, to make us think they're doing something, when in reality, all they're doing is putting off the inevitable for another time. And in the mean time millions of Americans will die, and suffer needlessly while our elected representatives sit on their hands, collecting millions of dollars from all the special interests, and accomplishing absolutely nothing to benefit the people who elected them.
Then there's the debate over the war in Afghanistan and whether we should put more troops in harms way, and risk the deaths of thousands more of our youngest and bravest to fight an unwinnable war.
I find it ironic there seems to be no problem finding the $100 billion per year needed to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but when it comes to ensuring everyone in the US has adequate access to health care, we can't seem to find that same $100 billion per year.
I wonder how long it will take before our representatives come to the conclusion there isn't enough money to pay for the health care of our military veterans?
Of course maybe there's a hidden agenda here. If we can kill off more US soldiers, we'll reduce the demand for health care, and bring down health care costs that way.