There's a good reason why Americans on both the left and the right are against the healthcare bill currently in Congress. The problem with the current bill is that it doesn’t solve our health care crisis, it simply increases the pool of people on which insurance companies can thrive, and redirects and hides the ongoing and increased costs.
Want to see some real health care reform?
We should let this so-called health care reform bill currently in Congress fail, then resubmit a more progressive version, as follows:
- Make our currently existing single payer health care, Medicaid, available to all public employees across the nation. We already know exactly what it costs us to insure the nation’s teachers, police officers, federal, state, county and other public employees. Charge about 90% of what public agencies currently pay to insurance companies (which suck away much more than 10% of the current cost). With the extra funds coming into Medicaid, increase the quality and scope of healthcare by covering things that currently aren’t paid for by Medicaid.
- Offer the same program to all businesses with employees: Charge companies whatever their local public agencies are paying per employee.
- Add elected officials to Medicaid, including members of Congress.
- Use some of the huge influx of funds into the Medicaid system to cover more of the nation’s poor, with additional funds added over time to achieve the goal of universal health care.
- Rename this new extension of Medicaid to The American Health Care System (TAHCS), or give it some other catchy, positive title.
With this plan, our nation’s companies and public agencies would see enormous savings, and the additional funds available for production would stimulate the economy. Insurance companies could still cover business that choose not to utilize TAHCS. They could compete by lowering their profits, or not. The beauty of this strategy is that Congress would have strong incentive to make this system work, since elected members would have the exact same insurance as the rest of us. The current bill creates disincentive because members of Congress want/need to ensure the insurance industry continues to reap huge profits so senators and representatives can keep their high level of health care and payoffs from lobbyists. This new strategy undermines disincentive in Congress. Best of all, conservatives will recognize that TAHCS actually saves us money, so they won’t resist implementation. Since there’s nothing new being created, we can always scale back if it doesn’t work (compared to a new government program that will take decades to assess and will turn into one of those complicated federal programs that never works). Fiscal conservatives are against huge government initiatives that will cost all of us more money. TAHCS is a plan that both the left and right wing will support.
There’s no point trying to force a public option on top of a poorly designed government boondoggle that simply props up the insurance industry at the expense of the rest of us. Instead, let’s create some real change that all of us can believe in!