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I'm not sure whether AB (AB-G)'s post of 7/19 1:27pm and this response
belong on the main page or the Politics page. They probably belong
together, wherever the webmaster decides to put them.
First, I want to congratulate AB (AB-G) on your good fortune in making
more than $250,000/year so that you may be subject to a surtax to help
pay for health insurance for other Americans who can't afford any
health insurance now.
American health care is a mess and it is hard to fix:Just about everybody agrees that the way health care is provided in America today is a mess - it is too expensive, wasteful, and excludes a sixth of our population. It is a mess that was a long time in the making - through both Democratic and Republican administrations. By now, it is a difficult problem and will take a while to solve. (If there were an obvious, easy fix it would already have been fixed.)
The government can't do anything right argument:People live up to expectations - both other people's expectations of them and their expectations of themselves. For example, when teachers are told that certain bright students did poorly on IQ tests, the teachers expected those students to do poorly in class - and the bright students met that expectation and did poorly in class. Conversely when teachers were told that certain average students did very well on IQ tests, the teachers expected those students to do very well in class - and the average students met that expectation and did very well in class. So it isn't at all surprising that if you put a bunch of people who think "that government can't do anything right and that the government is the problem" in charge of running the government, they demonstrate that they can't do anything right and that they are the problem.
Employer-paid health care puts American businesses at a disadvantage:American businesses are put at a disadvantage in relation to European and Japanese businesses by our healthcare system. In other countries, the businesses don't have to bear the cost of healthcare for their workers because there is a national healthcare system. "It is a well- known fact that the U.S. automobile industry spends more per car on health care than on steel," according to Lee Iacocca, the retired chairman of Chrysler who in the early 1990s advocated a national health care program as a solution.
Private healthcare insurance takes a lot of money away from patient
care:It is pretty clear that an efficient healthcare system would put most of the money into patient care and try to minimize the amount spent on overhead. Private insurance companies spend money on marketing, sales commissions, fighting paying their insured's legitimate claims, corporate profits, and unreasonably high executive salaries (the web page at [page link] lists the "the 25 highest paid HMO executives in 1996 and their annual compensation, exclusive of unexercised stock options". The highest was $29,061,599/year. When unexercised stock option packages are included, the highest was $82,799,000/year.). That overhead eats up 25 - 30% of the healthcare dollars. In contrast, the government-run Medicare system has only 2 - 3% overhead. (Some people dispute these numbers and argue that the Medicare overhead is more than 3% and the private insurance overhead is less than 25%, but just about everybody has to agree that Medicare overhead is less than the private insurance overhead.)
Single payer would be most efficient:Many doctors and nurses associations would like to move to the most efficient system - single payer, as is used in most developed countries. But, I'm afraid the way we finance our political campaigns in this country, the health insurance companies have "bought" too many legislators (both Democratic and Republican) to make that possible. (See [change-congress.org/who] for information about the non-partisan "Change Congress" effort that is working to end the undue influence that special interest groups are able to buy with their huge donations to congressional campaigns.)
A public option is probably the best we can hope for now:I think that the best we can realistically hope for is a "public option" where the private insurance companies will have to compete with a Medicare-like system. People will be able to join whichever system they want. This is a kind of "put your money where your mouth is" thing. If the the government really can't do anything right, the public option will be unattractive and people won't choose it. If the private insurance companies are really sucking too much money out of the system, people will abandon them and choose the public option. My only fear is that the private insurance companies are afraid to try to compete with a low overhead operation and will use their influence to prevent congress from giving us the chance to choose whether we want a public or private insurer.
With a public option, you get to choose your own insurance and your
own doctor:Incidentally, my understanding is that a public option, like Medicare, would allow you to use any doctor or medical facility that you want. (Almost all doctors and medical facilities accept Medicare patients.)
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