Anyone that thinks the health insurance reform laws being bandied about are going to fix our health care problems in anyway, is not only wrong but does not understand the problems. The biggest problem right now in health care is not the health insurance industry . Health care costs are the main problem. If health insurance were cheaper or more affordable we would have more people covered. The first thing that needs to be fixed is the health care costs and what is driving them. Part of the problem, which is actually a substantial percent of the problem is Medicare which is underfunded and totally insolvent.
We don’t have the money to pay for Medicare and the plan will be broke within the next decade. How are we going to add another program here? What we need is a single payer plan which will effectively control costs although it will make a lot of people like me unhappy when we have to find new jobs. But at what cost is the medical community enjoying such high profits?
More often than not, we have to wonder what kind of smokes are being shared by those who make the sausage in Washington and those who report the sausage’s supposed content. Take, for instance, the just-passed Senate Finance Committee measure to “remake” health care.
The $829 billion bill was touted as “a critical milestone” by President Obama. Among its supposed “high points” – providing health insurance to millions of uninsured Americans.
But there are a few salient facts that seem to elude The Great American Sound Bite and stenographers posing as “journalists.”
First, this bill has about as much chance of actually receiving serious consideration by the full Senate as Jon & Kate (of Plus 8 fame) have of reconciling. Second, and far worse, the measure is nothing more than a legislative lie.
As the Pacific Research Institute’s Jeffrey H. Anderson reminds, budgetary gimmicks make the measure appear palatable in the first decade but costs explode in the second to $2.8 trillion. Cuts to already existing federal health programs, Medicare included, would be $1.9 trillion.
“In the first two decades combined, the bill would cost $3.6 trillion and would raise taxes by $2.3 trillion,” writes Mr. Anderson, citing Congressional Budget Office numbers.
And this is what “progressives” bill as progress? One giant leap for health care “reform”?
Consider it dead on arrival.
