Health Care Reform

Problem #1,

"We have to pass this bill to find out whats in it"

Problem #2,

Health care is a product.

 

you dont have a right to health care. health care is not like liberty and the pursuit of happiness. those are basically ways of saying you have the right to be left alone. health care is not free like freedom, you have to make someone else provide it for you, and they might not want to, they, like you, have the right to be free to not provide you with anything.

 

I keep telling my wife that drinking on Saturdays is a constitutionally protected right since it's guaranteed in the pursuit of happiness clause.

She doesn't believe me.

 

The sad state of healthcare in America doesn't begin and end with private insurance companies. We are seeing costs rise from every aspect of the system.



Here is a good article to begin with:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/598271-beware-of-the-u-s-healthcare-bubble?source=marketwatch

 

I agree with Steve that the problem with Obamacare is that it is hard for people to understand exactly how it will affect their lives. At least this is true for me. I am a big proponent of reforming our health care system but I want to understand how it will work and what the consequences will be. Maybe if I understood exactly what Obamacare was all about I would like it but no one has bothered to educate the American people. Instead we get the talking points (insurance comapnies cannot drop sick people or deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, etc.) which all sounds good but there is more to the story and everyone knows it.

I am anxious to see how the Supreme Court will rule. Either way, to go back to doing nothing would be unacceptable. Republicans have pushed so hard to get Obamacare repealed but I've yet to hear their plan for how they would deal with rising health care costs.

 

Mc Tiger and Tiger in NC have me pegged right. I don't have enough knowledge of how to begin to solve the problem. I don't think all the pork I hear is attached to that bill does anything to help people. Maybe the answer is to expand the role of the United States Public Health service to provide basic access to health care by treating the most common diseases that the public has...like some cancers, hypertension, diabetes and heart disease. Those are diseases that private enterprise loses their ass on because they're so pandemic. Let private insurance companies insure the rarer diseases.

Whether the government provides it's own clinics and hospitals or it becomes a mandatory insurance company....it should not be free. Maybe payment could be made by the poor in the form of public works programs. I don't know.

Health care is not just a commodity or a product. A healthy citizenry is as much a national interest as defense is...so is education. If it were a product only and no one is entitled to it, it would quickly be stricken from veterans benefits when the right congress comes in...and we all know that wouldn't be right.

 

Years ago, health insurance was an easy thing to deal with, no pre-existing conditions, no bs, no politics. Next thing you know you have all these lawsuits left and right, people suing the insurance companies, people trying to get paid, completely screwing up the entire system, driving up the costs of care and that of coverage itself.

None of the doctors I speak with...NONE of them like this bill. I see numerous doctors every single day, and they all agree that obamacare will drive up costs even more, not only for the patients, but for the institutions as well.

With that being said, the insurance companies and the government have the final say in a patient's care, not the doctor, which to me is fucked up.

 

I would add the pharmaceutical companies to that list also. I deplore the tv ads promoting this drug or that because it circumvents the most medically educated person in the equation: the doctor.