I'm not usually a burn-the-village-to-save-it type, but with health care reform, Democrats are in mortal danger of concocting a plan that forever ruins the name of government-run health care. The Op-Ed below comes from a hospital administrator who sees more bureaucracy in the new plans, not less, more costs that go to things that are tangentially and marginally related to actual health care:
http://www.buffalonews.com/...
Since Medicare works, why are we putting this important health care reform in the hands of 50 different states and then facing the consequences of trying to regulate the actions of each state? The provisions of this bill are loaded with complexity for consumers, physicians and hospitals.
We need a system that does not require navigators to work. We need health care reform that is efficient to administer and has a basic benefit package that will support all U. S. citizens and their families. We need health care reform that supports the clinical work of our health care system. If we are to have a government option, then let’s have a federally designed system and one that we can easily understand.
The editorialist makes great points, as one of the huge inefficiencies in the system is the amount of paper-pushing that goes on. We're actually adding to it. Worse, we're mandating that people buy into this frustratingly complex system.
I spent the last 6 months working through the Medicare regulations and options for my parents, and just when I thought I was done, their plan collapsed. Now I'm starting over again. It will take me a week or two to figure things out. And the editorialist seems to think that Medicare is a simple plan comparatively? Lord help us.
The complexity of the current plan will be a problem. And we have to fear that the current reform bill stands a good chance of failing once enacted.
We need to answer some questions:
--Should we have a weak public option (opt-outs and new bureaucracies)?
--Does a weak public option sully the concept of gov't health care?
--Might it be better not to have a public option at all if we can't have a strong one?
As I see it (and I admit I'm not Nostradamus) it might be better politically AND for health care to simply create the new efficiencies in the system that are under discussion, to regulate the health care industry more, to ban pre-existing condition and recission clauses, (and thus, end the mandate to buy insurance). Costs will go up, people will die, I know this. I'm worried about a collapse of public faith in the government, however, and more people dying after that collapse, should the public option as it now stands become the train wreck this administrator seems to predict it will be.
Do our Senators and Harry Reid realize that this needs to be done right, and the enemy of the good--in this case--is not perfection but compromise.