Health Care Reform Part 1
I apologize in advance to my readers. This is going to be a long post. It will easily exceed 2000 words so I will try to break it into separate parts to make it more digestible. I’ll try to keep each part organized and relevant although there is a lot of ground to be covered and I do enjoy a good ramble.
Wednesday June 24th, 2009 Barack Obama hosted ABC and a group of health care professionals at the White House. When the meeting was first announced many professional journalists cried foul. Claiming that ABC had become the puppet of the administration and was now taking the same position that Fox News allegedly held for President Bush. Essentially being nothing more than a tool to disseminate the propaganda spewing out of the Obamachine.
I will not rehash the entire conference but I will focus on a few key weak points and also offer arguments, explanations, and a solution of my own. If you did not see the broadcast I suggest you do so, the entire conference can be viewed HERE.
The main focus of the conference is to address the 46 million US citizens who have no health care coverage either due to inability to afford it or due to being denied health coverage as a result of preexisting conditions.
I’ll not argue with Obama on this one, as a US citizen with no health care coverage I absolutely agree something must be done and it is going to take government involvement to get it done. There is absolutely no incentive for insurance companies to improve the health care industry as long as they are making a profit. With the current system being run by private health care insurance companies that are traded publicly on the stock market ensures only that their number one concern is profit. The only way for them to make a profit is by raking in billions of dollars from premiums paid on policies they hold and then not paying out if and when a claim is made. Any time an insurance company pays out on a claim it reduces their profit margin and cuts into shareholder value. Not a good thing for any business.
So the first item on the agenda is to remove insurance companies from the stock market. Yes the stock was originally issued to raise capital and expand their market share but based on the gross wages paid to insurance company executives operating capital is no longer an issue. Now that we have removed these companies from being publicly traded the only profits needed are those to cover salaries. Is this an absolute solution that will reduce the cost of health care ? Absolutely NOT ! All it will do is make it more probably that any medical procedure you require will be covered by your insurer rather than being negotiated endlessly whilst you slowly die only to have the final solution being you are sent to a foreign country for a lower cost of treatment. Perform a search for health care outsourcing and you will see this is already being done to further lower the costs of insurers all the while increasing the ever important bottom line.
Now to discuss some points Obama made and then poke holes in them. DISCLAIMER: Before you get your panties in a bunch these are not exact quotes of what Obama said. I am merely paraphrasing to include specifics that he neglected to mention and to maintain the context of which he spoke. As I stated earlier I agree something must be done and it will take the government to do it.
Obama said: Now some of those 46 million Americans will not be able to afford the policy even at the rates the government would charge and these policies would have to be subsidized
The Hole: Our questions is how many of these 46 million wouldn’t be able to afford it ? Our guess is approximately 45,998,956 can not afford insurance at any price. So your tax burden will rise to compensate for those who can not afford the program. Oh yes, one other detail that was revealed. These 46 million uninsured currently consume 33% of hospital visits.
Obama said: With government involvement we can work with health care professional to improve efficiencies and lower the cost of providing health care. This will also benefit private insurers as their costs will be brought down as well.
The Hole: This is a big one. Obama is obviously viewing things through beautifully rose colored spectacles. Since when has the government EVER done ANYTHING efficiently. Also, the health care industry can just as easily refuse to accept or treat anyone carrying the government insurance card. They can simply refuse to acknowledge the whole program and continue operating as is. The end result is that costs will rise because insurance companies knowing that the government program will not be accepted will realize they truly do have a stranglehold on the industry and will be more likely to raise premiums. Meanwhile it will be tax dollars being used to cover all the uninsured in the way of federal grant money for hospitals who treat uninsured individuals.
Obama said: Any company that does not currently provide insurance to it’s employees would be charged a certain amount to compensate for their not doing so and the employees would be then eligible to enroll in the government health insurance program.
The Hole: If the program truly is cheaper as Obama claims it will be, then what company in their right mind would not go this route, eliminate their current policies and pay a token fee to the government and let employees find their own way through the “governsurance” program ? If it costs less, that increases profitability and improves the bottom line it’s a win-win for any company NOT in the insurance industry. CEO’s just may be able to add a few more million onto their salary packages.
Obama said: Any American who wishes to remain with their current insurance provider is free to do so.
The Hole: See above, if your company chooses to end its contracts with your current provider do you think anyone as an individual could afford the new premiums they would be required to pay ? Simple answer. NO ! You know this to be true if you ever had the pleasure of paying COBRA premiums. No insurance company has ever been more appropriately named. Venomous to say the very least.
Obama said: That the whole cost of the program would be absorbed by taxes only on those earning more than $250,000.00 per year
The Hole: Sunday June 28th it was revealed that Obama is “open” to taxing some employee benefits of those earning less than $250,000.00. Based on the fountain of lies spewing form the Obamachine you can pretty much expect that this will mean the bulk of the cost will be absorbed by people earning between $20,000.00 and $30,000.00. This will guarantee that those tax payers will not be able to afford the independent/corporate insurance plans and will be forced to use the government policies. Imagine that ! Democrats trying to control the health care of independent US citizens. Democrats do not like independent free thinking intellectual individuals.
One of the key hurdles to the program will be establishing the entire infrastructure of a company to handle the newly created policies. It normally takes many years for any insurer to be in a position to handle the traffic of 45-50 million customers let alone to create an entity that could handle that much business on opening day. Interestingly enough, it was reported HERE that AIG (unquestionably one of the worst scofflaws that benefited from government bailouts) announced just 12 hours after the Obama health care summit that they would “spin off” their profitable insurance subsidiaries into Special Purpose Vehicles by turning controlling interest over to the Federal Reserve whilst reducing their debt to the government (ie- the taxpayers, ie YOU) by $25 Billion dollars. This conveniently puts the necessary infrastructure into the hands of the Obama administration while conveniently saving said administration from having to raise capital (read – taxes) to do so because taxes have already gone up to compensate for the original bailout. In an nutshell honest hardworking taxpaying US citizens are already being screwed by the Obamachine Free Healthcare program to the tune of $25 Billion and it hasn’t even been approved yet. But you can bet that if it goes forward in the manner Obama intends things will only get worse and much more expensive. Don’t believe me ? Just check out the VA health system and you will quickly see that government administered health care is not a good thing. But you know what ? It could be. Read how in Part 2.
