- So the GOP has released their replacement template for Obamacare. The timing for the release is suspect: the CBO hasn’t even scored it yet. So all the “in” fighting and “out” fighting can only be done without any real cost information — possible savings or new expense. But one thing is certain: when the Democrats unanimously in Congress 7 years ago voted in the ACA, America was immediately in shackles to another massive spending program, joining Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
Why was Obamacare so important to Dems? It put the federal government in control of 20% of the country’s economy they did not control before. And that 20% is growing.
I’ll save any analysis of this GOP plan until the CBO gives us numbers. But whether this plan, any other plan, or even Obamacare are “in” as permanent as U.S. Healthcare, they are senseless and unnecessary for the American people. The monster that Obamacare is was totally unnecessary and the initial nail in the coffin of the greatest healthcare on Earth, all to gain control of the power of Healthcare. Unnecessary? Yep. Go to the homepage of this site, click on the “Healthcare” category for posts, and look at my January 24th post titled “How to fix Healthcare in Just 3 easy Steps.” (take a few minutes to read it before continuing here) Healthcare was fine. We needed to “edit” healthcare financing…and still do.
The State of the Current Healthcare System: How Did we Get Here?
- The argument in America was “is Healthcare for everyone a right or a privilege?” Liberal Socialists of course feel it is a right and that Americans owe not just healthcare, but “free” healthcare to everyone. Of course this is a myth — nothing is free and someone has to pay for everything. For Socialists the answer is simple: the government pays. But who pays the government? Americans do….with higher taxes. No doubt there have and will always be poor who cannot pay for their own healthcare and additional things. But we’ve had Medicaid for years for most of theirs. (Believe me, upper middle class and wealthy in almost every other country in the world would be tickled to have Medicaid) For those who do not qualify for Medicaid — which is a very small number — there are multiple social programs that have been for decades filling that gap. For Socialists though, that’s not good enough. “We ‘owe’ healthcare — the best there is — to everybody.” And they want it to be at the expense of who — the Wealthy: individuals and corporations.
- Obamacare is actually “Socialized Medicine Part 1.” The Left cried “foul” when that warning was trumpeted by conservatives in the run-up to its passage. The appeal to the masses for free healthcare is obvious. But free healthcare is impossible. Liberals didn’t couch their presentation as it being “free for all,” because they knew that would never sell. So what they did was call it (and actually name it) the “Affordable Care Act.” As the last few years have shown it is anything but affordable.
- Obamacare is close to death. It cannot sustain its promises from when it was passed. Many believe this was the plan of its architects. They purportedly wanted and tried continually to turn American Healthcare into a single payer system: true socialized medicine with the U.S. Government being the payer. They knew that the current version of Healthcare was unsustainable and that with Hillary Clinton in the White House, single payer healthcare would surely happen. To their dismay a conservative free market president took up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue who hates the thought of single payer. They are aghast as they watched their big step toward government healthcare control slipping away.
Is Healthcare Beyond Saving or is it Just Broken?
It’s broken and definitely needs repair. BUT THAT’S THE EXACT STATE IT WAS IN IN 2010 WHEN THE OBAMACRATS RAMMED THE ACA DOWN OUR THROATS! As that post from January 24th showed, we should have fixed healthcare then and done so the right way rather than face an even “more” broken system that we face now. And single-payer is NOT the answer.
We can do now what we could have done then to fix the problem: keep healthcare in the private sector, induce insurance companies to pay all providers based on a fee schedule for every medical procedure (which will immediately lower premiums and promise providers insurance payments in no more than 45 days from billing date), allow insurance companies to sell across state lines which will through competition reduce premiums, require pre-existing conditions to be covered as well as dependent children on parents’ policy up to age 25 or 26, and make health savings accounts fully tax deductible and increase the maximum deposit amounts allowed into those accounts. These would STILL work to right the Healthcare ship instead of spending $Billions more on any temporary fix.
“If” — and that’s a BIG “If” — we can get through this without simply revising this or creating another behemoth, but opting instead to go back to the basics of the greatest Healthcare system in human history and refine it, we will be all right in the long run. But unless and until we wrestle Healthcare out of the strangle hold of the Feds, we are doomed to forever feed the Healthcare monster with diminishing and more and more limited and less effective medical care for everyone.
How do those in the Liberal Left and Establishment GOP feel about this? Honestly, they do not care. Oh, maybe that’s a little too
tough on them. Maybe I should state it differently: They probably DO care, but not enough to lay aside all of the power pangs and hunger for control of the government and the American people. For once they should DO something that is in abandonment of their personal and party objectives and is JUST for the betterment of Americans….you know “Americans” — the people that elected them to do what they promised to do to GET elected: fix Healthcare. What are the odds of that happening? Not very good, honestly.
So what can we do to fix the Healthcare System? The System is fine. There are some edits that need to be done, but that is it. What needs to be fixed is the Healthcare Financial System. I told you in the January 24th post what can and will work if done.
Folks, I am afraid that if we continue down this road the Establishment has us on we are facing sure death of the greatest Nation on Earth, at least in its present greatness. I’m not so worried about my adult children now. I’m worried for my grandchildren and their generation of Americans. How can we in good conscience hand the reins of fiscal responsibility over to them with it in this shape?
I’m ashamed of what the men and women in Congress and the former POTUS have done to our Healthcare system. If we do not awaken our leaders quickly and get this fixed, Death Panels under Obamacare will be the least of our worries. “I’m sorry sir. Our Administration says you are too old/too sick/too ugly to get that MRI/CT Scan/Chemo Treatment/Colonoscopy/Kidney Transplant, etc. I’d like to introduce you to our Final Life Phase Department.” Lots of folks made fun of Sara Palin when she talked about this. But at least on this she had it right. We’re pretty close to it now.
Dan Newman is the CEO of ACS, Inc. — a 25 years old Medical Reimbursement Management comp
any that works with healthcare providers of all kinds to coordinate with insurance companies proper and timely payments for those clients’ services. Newman’s company specializes in multiple medical fields and reimbursement management with commercial, private, and government insurers as well as private pay cases. He is known as a medical reimbursement management specialist and often conducts analyses of billing operations for large medical groups and institutions throughout the U.S.
