The Welcome Wagon
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- June
- 23
I love drawing angry men yelling out of windows. Conjures fond childhood memories.
Another thing that conjures fond childhood memories is not being handed an ER bill for 10,000 Pounds the time I broke my big toe in a spectacular cycling accident near London. (That’s approximately the amount I was charged when I broke my collarbone in December – as astute loyal readers of this blog will remember.) I have spent many hours in various ERs and the single difference between British and US versions is one won’t discharge you without handing you a breathtaking invoice. The care itself is pretty much the same.
The big question is of course, how do we pay for the “public option” as it has been dubbed? Here’s my take:
1) The Insurance Companies are making massive profits as toll collectors between us and our doctors. Those profits are real money – so there’s masses of room for vast cost-cutting, which the public option would enable – And is the main reason insurance companies are freaking out.
2) Due to the high quarterly profit requirements of the middlemen insurance companies, decent health plans are monumentally expensive. I (a lucky member of “the insured”) pay a small fortune (aka “tax”) for family coverage, and I still have to pay huge out of pocket charges that seem to be plucked at random from a hat sitting in front of whichever “associate” I happen to be complaining to. Every dollar they force me to pay is a dollar in their pocket.
I don’t think I am alone in saying that I would gleefully redirect my high premiums/copays into a national system in order to starve the Insurance Co.s of profit – especially if it also meant my unemployed neighbor is covered when her little boy breaks his toe in a spectacular cycling accident.
3) The Iraq war still costs us $12 billion a month. How come anti-health-care-for-all deficit hawks weren’t up in arms about that huge piece of unsustainable Government spending? Anyway there’s $12 billion a month right there without touching the current tax rate.
There! All figured out. A National Health plan will not be perfect, I admit…But the current system of delivery is worse, and frankly unsustainable. I’m sure none of my dear regular blog readers/commenters have anything to say about my personal take on this particular issue…
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 11:42 am by Matt Davies.
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i have to agree. i receieved a 600 dollar bill for my MRI. thats after the insurance allegedly paid for 700.
over 1300 for an MRI what?
i am lucky if i am in the doctors every 2 years. but when i go oh boy. and i really didnt want to spend over 600 this way. I had plans for that money.
Ther has to be a beter way. my issue with social medicine is .. u need to stand in line and wait your turn. That could be dangerous. also. what type of docotor will you get?
The new tv show Royal Pains.. i think we will have consierge(sic?) doctors…
ER bill? Not if you’re an illegal alien. They crowd the ER
everyday and NEVER walk out with a bill. Now if Obama can
provide that same service for the hard working tax paying
citizen i’m all for it. It seems to me he and every other
politician put American’s second. 12 billion a month for
Iraq? Now if Obama kept his promise of pulling us out we just
might have extra funds for health insurance. Hope you’re right Matt because i’m tired of paying the high cost of insurance and more. I just think this whole thing will turn
out to be welfare and not health care. We shall see.
I don’t think anybody on here, left or right, wants anybody to be without health care. Wait for it…..BUT, I feel like the answer is more market-based reforms, not more government. Medicare and Medicaid are already near bankruptcy, so what happens when we add more people to what is essentially a Medicare -for-all plan? Doctors will get squeezed, wait times will increase, and faceless bureaucrats decide your fate. Is this better than faceless insurance company administrators deciding your fate? Probably not. But this idea that a public plan is merely “competiton” for private insurers is false. The cost of capital for a public plan is essentially zero, and over time, they will provide cheaper coverage to the point where private insurers can no longer compete. Then, we can all wait for the gigantic tax bill to come. Even then it won’t be enough to prevent rationing.
Well, I could go on all day. But, on a final note, Romney Care in Massachsuetts is beginning to buckle under the tremendous cost pressures. That is a microcosm of what we can expect with a national plan. And in a nod to my liberal friends on here, yes, Romney is a Republican! Bad, Romney! Bad Republican for instituting a mandatory,state-wide health plan!
Right turn over the world great health care (not insurance but health care) over to the man who hasn’t run anything. Barry Care will cost 1 Trillion dollars over five years they tell us. (AND THEY ARE NEVER RIGHT ALWAYS THE COST TURNS OUT TO BE MUCH HIGHER) only 1/3 of the “ uninsured” will be covered. When they tried the system in Hawaii the state had to shut it down after only 6 months because the state was going broke and the people were (SURPRISE) dropping their paid insurance for ‘FREE” insurance.
Massassaue has seen the same thing happen where 90% of the people on state run insurance have not tried to get their own insurance policies, as the system was set up for, but rather have stayed with the state free system. The result is that the state is going broke.
When you have to wait for a board to determine if you need care or not, and your loved one dies it will be too late.
yes, yes, yes, YES! You so nailed it!
I have only this to add: I want my country to care for all its Citizens. I am willing to get less so that others can have some. What does it say about us (as a Nation)that we remain so selfish about something so basic. We must do it. YES WE CAN!
Maureen,
yes the citizens should come first. But unfortunately that isnt the case. Illegals get it better than anyone born here.
oh yeah the philanthropists’ love sending their money to other countries instead of hear at home.
amazing huh..if the billionaires gave the money to the US they give to Africa and other countries. we would be out of debt.
“When you have to wait for a board to determine if you need care or not, and your loved one dies it will be too late.”
It happens now already. Does it really make a difference if your insurance company is that board, or the government? (Another question: are insurance companies “not for profit?”)
Anyway, we have “some say” in tax increases, but when your private insurer (and everyone else’s) says “we’re raising rates 6 percent next year” what can you do?