Most of you have drunk the kool aid which is that we can't contain cost without somehow reducing the quality of care and access to that care. This is wrong but it is the assumption that politicians want you to buy in to as it will justify them doing stupid things like increasing taxes or rationing rather than addressing the special interests that leech money from the health care pot.
Bottom line is that there is more than enough money being spent every year to give everyone in the US high quality care without any new taxes or premiums. If the lawyers, and more importantly the effects that they have on how medicine is practiced, were taken out of the equation, that would result in hundreds of billions in savings (would also significantly impact drug prices and greatly expand the number of drugs for diseases that have too small a population of sufferer's to overcome the legal costs of drug development). Next, if it were possible for physicians to practice without having to join a massive for profit HMO, because the bureaucratic overhead is such that small entrepreneurial health care is no longer viable, then we would see costs fall massively as individual docs would be able to work for X$, patients would only pay that rather than X$ plus huge corporate salaries for all the HMO's administrative staff and profits for the shareholders whos interests are the opposite of the patients. If billing was simplified and standardized so that 10-20% of a providers time wasn't wasted doing billing paperwork and a significant % of billing charges didn't have to go to the medical coding companies (much like if the tax system was simplified we wouldn't have to pay accounts so much) that would again allow providers to hang their shingle and again be responsive to their patients so rather have patients be forced to see certain providers by some health plan they would again have a real choice and customer service would again matter.
When around 40% of health care expenditures do not go toward providing health care, and health care that is excessively expensive to begin with due to the practice of defensive medicine, it is ridiculous to talk about rationing, reducing access, and new taxes.
Notice that nowhere in Obama's plan is there any substantive mention of tort reform that would address the huge cost that practicing defensive medicine adds. That is your 1st clue that he is not serious about tackling real reform and cost containment. Follow the money to see what his real motive is. So far it looks like it is to pump huge amounts of money in to creating new government jobs that are related to health care technology. Why? So that they can then use the stats that come out of that effort to start to control medical decision making which will require a whole other wave of government employees jumping on the health care bandwagon (because econometric analysis has been so successful in all the other areas it has been applied to, NOT).
Campaign finance reform is needed before we will see any effective healthcare legislation, until then we will just get more taxes, more wasted spending, and rising costs.
As all of you know premiums are rising, is it because providers pay is rising? No, physician and nurses compensation has been relatively flat the last several years, premiums are rising because the portfolio's of the insurance companies have gone down and they need to replenish their actuarial base not to mention their earnings, that is why premiums have increased particularly this past year. So, does it strike you as rational that you have to pay more for your premium and yet can expect no increased benefit in terms of improvement in care or access to it?
