Health-Care

Well my friends its been way too long and I’ve just ranted the last few times on here anyways, but I’ve taken my meds and ready to get back into the political sphere.

Healthcare, is it a right? Of course not.  Basic Libertarian principle is that you have the right to yourself and anything your own body helps you to create (IE your property).  Healthcare falls under neither.

Healthcare is of course important, maintaining good health means you can produce more and become more successful, but it’s noone elses obligation to provide it for you.  In fact if government forces them to then it is infringing on their rights, and their “property”.

That being said, I’m not the most rabid libertarian on the planet.  I also recognize political realities and people want something done.  Our hybrid system IS broken.  That does not mean that the solution Obama and the Democrats are pushing is the correct one.

This is actually something that is frustrating me quite highly about this debate.  Yes the people at townhall meetings are saying stupid things and getting very worked up and being rude.   But they are frustrated, I can at least sympathize.  How the Democrats are framing this issue infuriates me though. Basically they are saying either you think the system is broken and you have to support their plan, or you support the status quo.

This is obviously patently false.  Polls show that.  Majority of Americans want healthcare reform, they want the system fixed.  Yes we all know its a mess when healthcare costs rise and rise and rise, premiums rise, insurers deny claims that are covered under your plan that you pay for.  Of course its broken.  But a majority of Americans are also against this plan and the public option.

So no Mr. Obama we do want reform, we don’t want your plan, that doesn’t mean we want the status quo.  Thanks for lying and trying to guilt/force us into supporting you as usual.

So what DO we want?  Well let me tell you what I want.

COST REDUCTION.  One major issue in the Obama plan is that it does nothing to reduce costs, in fact the CBO (the governments own economists) have predicted that it would skyrocket costs above and beyond what even the current system is doing.  Why aren’t the democrats including cost reduction items as promised?  Because it’s a farce and a lie that they want to reduce costs, all they care is taking a step towards Universal Healthcare, results be damned.

How would I reduce costs?

1. Tort Reform

This means no frivalous lawsuits against docters.  This also means even in cases in which the doctor makes a mistake, no outrageous awards.  If I miss a credit when I’m auditing, I don’t get sued for multi-millions of dollars, when you forget someones fries in a happy meal you don’t have to go to court.  Can you imagine if we all had to face this in our day to day jobs?  I am not saying doctors/their insurance providers shouldn’t have to make someone whole after harming them.  But we all make mistakes we are all human, and an honest mistake should not be a multi-million dollar law suit.  Negligence is the only thing that should cause such sums.  This would lower their premiums for insurance, it would also allow them not to order superfluous tests that they now do (which drive up costs).

2. True Healthcare Competition

Right now most of us only have a couple of options of providers for healthcare.  Sure we have many different plans; PPO’s, HMO’s, high-deductible, low-deductible, etc…  But they are all from few providers.  Basically most of us in America live under healthcare monopolies or oligarchies.  What we need is true competition to allow Joe Blow from Portland, ME to purchase healthcare in California, Texas, Alaska, Italy, Russia, Japan.  True worldwide healthcare markets.  This would allow much more competition while also keeping the insurance pools large to reduce risk.  With this true competition it would drive down premiums as well as reduce the tendancy of insurance companies to disallow legit claims because, “Who else are you gonna go to?”  As an aside we need to create strong laws and enforce laws regarding insurance companies that deny legitimate claims.

3. Illegal Immigration

This is a hot topic issue that has roots in many other areas, but as far as healthcare goes illegal immigrants are a major cost on the system as most don’t have insurance and use emergency rooms for most medical care, as well as don’t pay.

I believe as long as they are here we need to give immigrants a legal status.  This does not mean we should or shouldn’t shut down the border, but as long as they have a legal status, we can tax them, they can demand fair wages (which means they can’t compete as well against our wage earners), they can get their own healthcare.  Most of the ills of illegal immigration are due to the fact that they are under the radar and users of services and do not pay taxes to support them.

4. Prevention

While this starts at the home and can not be mandated, we need to focus on prevention of diseases and teaching our kids and families to stop being over eating, over indulging slobs.  I admit i’m not perfect either, but I’m trying to be healthier, less drinking, less eating, more exercise.  These simple things will drive down costs, as its cheaper to practice preventative medicine than cure someone already very sick.

These are just a few ways that we can reduce costs in healthcare, there are many more.  Is most or any of this in the bill? Well who really knows with 4 different bills running around that no one in congress has actually read, but from what I am gathering no it’s not.  The democrats are more worried about covering those without insurance than fixing the actual problems with our insurance market.

Did it ever occur to them that if we fixed the actual problems, the cost would be reduce and a lot of those people who can’t afford insurance now could?  If they would just do that, reduce the number of people who can’t afford, by reducing costs, then I would actually support a plan to cover those who are left over.

But as usual a Democrats plan is to leave the problems in a system and just spend money to cover it up.

Why don’t we actually solve the problem for once.

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