It seems to me the more President Obama talks about health care reform, the more questions there are about health care reform. No doubt it is a complicated issue; but there is a definite disconnect between what Obama says (promises) and what would actually take place in a real world. Is he lying? . . or is he naive? . . or is he right? I lean toward thinking he is just naive and that he really doesn't understand real world economics. Here are a few reasons why I think this:
Insurance Companies. When Obama says that he will demand that private insurance companies cover pre-existing conditions, and that
"They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses.... And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care",
he seems to believe that insurance companies can just absorb all of this without any affect on them or on policy holders. Or he is after one or both of the following: 1) he wants to force the private insurance companies to go out of business, and/or 2) he believes that insurance companies should not be profit making enterprises in the first place. This should scare any business owner. Imagine the government deciding that it is ridiculous how much barbershops charge for haircuts. Why should a person earning $30,000 pay the same amount for a haircut as someone earning $130,000? We will require barbers to charge less to people earning under $50,000. We will also require barbershops to cover, with no extra charge, routine shaves. To keep barbers honest, the federal government will set up public barbershops, offering discounted and subsidized haircuts. Yeah, this would have no affect on barbers.
Illegal Alien Coverage. This is a hot topic. Most Americans seem to believe that illegal aliens should not be covered under national health care. The president has made promises to that affect, even though he co-sponsored earlier in his career legislation that specifically included illegal aliens in health care coverage. On a practical level though, my question is this: Let's say that all Americans are covered, so people are supposedly not going to the emergency room for routine illnesses. Because everyone is covered, there is no longer a need to require emergency rooms to not turn people away. In fact emergency rooms would tell people to go see their government paid doctor using their government covered insurance to take care of their poison ivy rash. But on a practical level, what happens when an illegal alien shows up to the emergency room. Will the government or civil right organizations tolerate hospitals not providing health care to someone in need, even if they are here illegally? I doubt it. Will illegal aliens be covered? It might be through the back door, but yeah, they will be covered.
Fraud and Waste. The president says we will pay for health care reform largely through savings experienced by identifying and eliminating fraud and waste, particularly in Medicare. It would be really, really, really great if we could eliminate fraud and waste. So why have we not done it so far? On day one Obama could have tackled this without one piece of legislation. Has he tried yet? It doesn't appear so. Instead he wants to grow the very beast that seems to encourage fraud and waste. If my house was built with a lot of wood that easily rots, and I later build onto my house using that same kind of wood, how stupid is that? Wouldn't I have even more rotted wood five years from now? Compounding the issue is the notion that any monies saved by eliminating fraud and waste should go right back into additional spending, rather than paying off debt or perhaps even saving it, or giving it back to its rightful owner (the American public). This promise is a scam. Anyone who believes that Obama is serious about tackling corruption will believe anything.
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