Obamacare needs reform
President Obama proposes what he calls “a public insurance option,” which would appeal in the fashion of saying no to the man with the gun. “If private companies have to compete with a public option,” the president explained, “it will keep them honest and help keep prices down.”
Government has the right responsibility of establishing rules to ensure fairness in competition and then, until recently at least, standing back and permitting free markets to do the remaining work. If the overseer steps in as participant, the rules inevitably will be altered to favor it. And then among options, there will stand one, which, we suspect, is precisely as Mr. Obama wants it.
But should the country, and does it, desire the same?
Providing coverage to uninsured Americans — almost a fifth of them illegal immigrants — would cost as much as $1.2 trillion over 10 years, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
Mr. Obama says he can save $313 billion, but inevitably costs will be passed on to consumers. Administration officials respond with blank stares or the rhetorical equivalent to questions over how much money would be saved in the federal budget.
Among wrinkles Mr. Obama favors is tort reform, a prospect over which De-mocrats and their constituent posse of trial lawyers long have chafed. The American Medical Association says “liability pressure,” driven by exorbitant jury awards, increase annual health care costs by $84 billion to $151 billion annually. Mr. Obama sees these concerns, which Republicans frequently cite, as a potential lever. The president does not support a cap on jury awards, as George W. Bush did, but he has expressed interest in reducing the payouts and pushed for the same as a senator.
That, Mr. Obama hopes, will whittle resistance from the American Medical Association. It also would help as government wades deeper into the health-care insurance business. Mr. Obama’s willingness to consider what so many in his party have fought is encouraging, but not to the point of buying a plan that will spawn more diseases than it cures.
Reform in which we can believe starts with the states, giving them greater flexibility to set programs that match the unique needs of their people while ensuring and enhancing private competition and providing for portability, which allows people to remain in an employer’s group plan after they’ve left their jobs.
Tax credits should be provided to people who purchase their own insurance rather than through an employer. Steps should be taken to ensure that con-sumers have information in advance about costs of treatment and competing insurance plans so they can take greater charge of their health care decisions and force providers to produce better prices and value.
Government’s record in improving efficiency and lowering costs — the ostensible aim of reform — is similar to that of underlings competing with bosses. Give Mr. Obama what he seeks on health care and America will be the one taking it on the chin.
Adapted from the Waynesboro News Virginian
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Reader Reactions
Citizens of the United State need to wake up an realize that this metering out of health benefits via the labor market is one of the primary causes of our economic downturn. At some point we need to ask the nay-sayers in congress why a a public national health care system is doomed to failure when it is being successful in ALL of the countries with whom we compete economically. The US needs to consider healthcare a right not a privilege. The statement that national healthcare is bad for the people is incorrect and not corroborated in ANY case by people I’ve spoken to in other countries. The politicians constantly lie in their assertion that most people in other countries detest their health care systems. I have NEVER heard a single citizen of these countries tell me this in over 20 years of international business travel and discussion on this topic. Please read the relevant letter to the editor printed 6/19/09 in the Daily Progress.
I am writing today in support of a single-carrier-health care-plan for our country and all of its citizens.
My family is one of the fortunate, in that we have a health-care benefit provided by my former employer, but I also believe that our country is sorely lagging behind other countries in not providing national health care for all of our citizens.
During my career I traveled extensively in many other countries for a Fortune 50 company. While traveling I often spoke on various issues with my colleagues, and it became clear that the U.S. model for health care would not only take a toll on citizens’ medical well-being, but eventually would force the business sector in the U.S. into a disadvantage through the loading of costs onto the price of our products and services. The inevitable is now upon us.
Although, if I stretch my brain, I might be able to understand the mindless banter of those who believe that a national single-payer health-care system is some form
of frightening post-Hitler/Maoian social state, these same people also want our county to have a robust economy. Unfortunately for them, these two issues have merged into one.
We must break from the model whereby we link health-care benefits to employment. This model may have been viable in earlier times, but — through no fault of our own — once all of the other countries with whom we compete started having na-tional health-care plans, our businesses could no longer compete; thus, we must also nationalize our health care and remove its ties to employment.
The economic disadvantage caused by excessive health benefits on each unit of our domestically made vehicles was a major contributor to the industry demise. Through national health care other countries are subsidizing their domestically made products, thus artificially lowering their prices relative to ours.
The focus of the problem is now not only in the waiting room, but in the marketplace. The immediate implementation of a single-payer health-care system is not simply a social program but rather has emerged into one of economic importance. Our future economic competitiveness relies on Congress passing a single-payer health-care system at once.
Patrick Toomey
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