Are you sure you want government run health care?
Friday, July 31, 2009
President Obama and the big Democratic majority in Congress seem hell bent on shoving government run health care down our throats. They have been forced to make a "tactical retreat" and they won't get their health care bills through by Obama's end of month deadline, but make no mistake about it, they will be back with a vengeance in September in an attempt to wrap up what they've started.
And if they succeed in passing government run health care for all, what can we expect? Well, we need to look no further than Medicare, the government run health care for senior citizens that we already have to see where we are going with this. The fact is that Medicare is a multibillion dollar boondoggle that is running out of money and may soon crash and burn without an infusion of billions if not trillions of dollars that the government doesn't have. And yet the Democrats want to force such a dysfunctional system on all of the rest of us.
Medicare is a disaster. A lot of physicians will not accept patients with Medicare because Medicare does pay high enough reimbursements. How can doctors accept Medicare when they lose money on each Medicare patient? The answer is that either they refuse to treat patients on Medicare or they pass their losses from Medicare patients on to everyone else, and that greatly contributes to the high cost of medical care.
As I said on this blog before, government involvement in health care is one of the main causes of the high cost of medical care in America. So it stands to reason that if government gets even more involved with what is tantamount to a total government takeover of health care, it will only make things worse.
Do you want medical decisions to be between you and your doctor, or do you want a government bureaucrat making those decisions? Again, let's take Medicare for an example. One common complaint of Medicare Part D participants is that if their doctor prescribes them a drug, Medicare won't necessarily cover the drug if some bureaucrat doesn't want to pay for it. There we have it. It's a clear case of how the government comes between patient and doctor, and it's happening now with Medicare. And yet that nightmare scenario is what the Democrats want to bring to all of us.
There can be only one solution to the high coast of medical care. Government needs to get out of the way and let the markets take over. Free market reforms can bring down the cost of medical care, and controlling costs is the only long term solution to our health care crisis. Getting the government more involved and placing taxpayers and future generations even more on the hook is the exact opposite of what we really need to solve this crisis.
I don't know if a Democrat lead takeover of health care can be stopped or not. If it is not stopped, there will be no turning back later. Again take Medicare for an example. Even though Medicare costs continue to spiral out of control, it's too late to do anything about it now because the Medicare system has reached it's tentacles everywhere and there is no way to excise it now. If a total government takeover of medical care happens, sometime down the road when we finally realize that it was a mistake, by then it will be too late to do anything about it just like in the case of Medicare. So the time to stop a government takeover is now.
And if they succeed in passing government run health care for all, what can we expect? Well, we need to look no further than Medicare, the government run health care for senior citizens that we already have to see where we are going with this. The fact is that Medicare is a multibillion dollar boondoggle that is running out of money and may soon crash and burn without an infusion of billions if not trillions of dollars that the government doesn't have. And yet the Democrats want to force such a dysfunctional system on all of the rest of us.
Medicare is a disaster. A lot of physicians will not accept patients with Medicare because Medicare does pay high enough reimbursements. How can doctors accept Medicare when they lose money on each Medicare patient? The answer is that either they refuse to treat patients on Medicare or they pass their losses from Medicare patients on to everyone else, and that greatly contributes to the high cost of medical care.
As I said on this blog before, government involvement in health care is one of the main causes of the high cost of medical care in America. So it stands to reason that if government gets even more involved with what is tantamount to a total government takeover of health care, it will only make things worse.
Do you want medical decisions to be between you and your doctor, or do you want a government bureaucrat making those decisions? Again, let's take Medicare for an example. One common complaint of Medicare Part D participants is that if their doctor prescribes them a drug, Medicare won't necessarily cover the drug if some bureaucrat doesn't want to pay for it. There we have it. It's a clear case of how the government comes between patient and doctor, and it's happening now with Medicare. And yet that nightmare scenario is what the Democrats want to bring to all of us.
There can be only one solution to the high coast of medical care. Government needs to get out of the way and let the markets take over. Free market reforms can bring down the cost of medical care, and controlling costs is the only long term solution to our health care crisis. Getting the government more involved and placing taxpayers and future generations even more on the hook is the exact opposite of what we really need to solve this crisis.
I don't know if a Democrat lead takeover of health care can be stopped or not. If it is not stopped, there will be no turning back later. Again take Medicare for an example. Even though Medicare costs continue to spiral out of control, it's too late to do anything about it now because the Medicare system has reached it's tentacles everywhere and there is no way to excise it now. If a total government takeover of medical care happens, sometime down the road when we finally realize that it was a mistake, by then it will be too late to do anything about it just like in the case of Medicare. So the time to stop a government takeover is now.
