As Democratic senators debate the expansion of the Medicaid loan program to cover a larger number of those pushed below the poverty line with their unpaid hospital bills, (after their families bankruptcies) bankruptcy experts are questioning the wisdom of covering theose without insurance by expanding the Medicaid loan program. Medicaid, a loan that carries a 9% interest rate, is for the poorest hospitalized or disabled people. They historically have been completely disabled, but expanding the program wont help as much as one would think, because the poor, who will face huge bills, probably wont make enough to be able to EVER repay many loans. It will be a similar situation as it is for students graduating with huge student loans, with the important difference that the borrowers indebted from Medicaid will be sick and uneducated.
The goal for many Dems is to NOT make Obama's public option "too attractive." Healthcare companies are huge donors to politicians, and the poor rarely make political donations. People facing large medical bills almost NEVER make donations to political campaigns. So, why help THEM?
Its cruel, but logical.
Supporters of Obama's compromise with the health insurance industry say that should the Democrats adopt an affordable universal healthcare program that was more attractive to America's 300,000,000 people, something that hasn't been even proposed yet in Obama's fast track, buy or die healthcare "reform" effort, such as a
true national healthcare plan, modeled on national healthcare plans in civilized nations, the
300,000 employees of the insurance firms would have to start looking for other jobs, increasing the already millions of unemployed.
Senator Max Baucus
has long been a fan of the
Medicaid loan program, which aggressively seeks
repayment of medical loans from a patient's family. But, many people who have been forced to seek Medicaid when they could no longer pay their hospital bills, complain that they were not told clearly that the repayment program was a loan, only that it would allow them to stay in the hospital when facing discharge before they had gotten better. (Medicaid focuses on paying for in-patient medical needs, it traditionally has not covered outpatient services extensively at all)
There is another issue, the issue of extreme life threatening stress, and its long term effects on the brain. We all have met veterans who have returned from wars unable to function as a result of "shell shock" or extreme arousal because of fear for one's life or limb, for extended periods of time.
Granted, nothing is ever free in America, unless you are a bank, but one would have to question the wisdom of burdening a nation of working people who desperately need to pursue job training for the future workplace, with a burden of stress that will initiate medical disabilities that make it very difficult for them to learn. It has the smell of sadism to it.
Well, there is an alternative.
Physicians for a National Health Program are offering a healthcare alternative that not only would make healthcare free for all, it also would eliminate the need for the Democrats expanded Medicaid loans by making healthcare free for all Americans, like it is in our neighbor Canada.