Mtn Dew wrote:
Most everyone can agree we need reform. However, our problem is not that we're suffering from too much economic freedom in healthcare, it's precisely the opposite. Healthcare is incredibly regulated and not surprisingly it's raising prices.
Obama or anyone can't defy the laws of supply and demand. Once healthcare is "free" demand will go up. As it is now people pay far too little out of pocket with insurance.
That's precisely correct. No one would argue that we DON'T need healtch care reform of some kind. No one would argue that the kind of access those without insurance (the 10-15 million chronically uninsured) have now (emergency room, subsidized university hospital) is inefficient. However, medicare, Hillary-care implemented under a conservative governor in Mass, and the heavily subsidized VA, which enables patients to "double-dip" in the private sector are the failing proxies for a single-payor model. And the bigest point being missed in all of this is that Americans are gluttinous, unhealthy fat-asses relative to the world. This isn't cute little, oil-rich Norway, where 25% of the citizens aren't at work on any given day, and they are generally thin and eat a lot of arctic fish to begin with.
We have a HEALTH CRISIS in this country, first and foremost. I can compromise and pay my extra 2% in marginal taxes to subsidize the despondent IF you meet my other demands of more competition, less regulation, more PERSONAL accountability, more price transparency, AND tort litigation reform (so that we can bring down physician liability insurance costs and reduce cover-your-ass testing).
You increase demand on the liabilities side, you'd sure as hell better increase some assets on the asset side to balance. Look at medicare. Actuarial assumptions for 1990 were some $9 billion (I'm going from memory), but they ended up being $60 billion. THINK about that gap. And it's now 20 years later and we are bankrupt. There's your single-payor model folks.
Frankly, with the Fed teetering on a tight-rope between deflation and inflation and a very unhealthy bank balance sheet situation EVEN STILL, we have bigger fish to fry than Obama getting pulled by the centrifugal force of the far left (Pelosi) and exhausting all of his political bullets on this "Holy Grail." Government overspending, protectionism, and overzealous regulation prolonged the Great Depression. Let's not make the same mistake again. Remember, Obama has lower approval ratings and less Congressional support for his byzantine plan than even Bush did going into Iraq.