HEALTHCARE
When politics triumphs over common sense, chaos reigns.
American politics is defined as the exchange of money for the power to influence the use of government force.
As usual the Congress let their extended recesses interfere with getting anything done. It appears more and more that all the public does is fund Congressional recesses.
The House passed their version of the American Health Care Act on May 4th and promptly went on recess presumably to meet with constituents. But they just came back from meeting with them. Leftists are showing up at Republican town hall meetings fully intending to complain and protest. Why bother with more meetings? If Congress worked the traditional 2000 hours a year—not the 1500 Obamacare hours per year –like the rest of American full time workers, they would not have time for all those recesses.
Who was the dumb Senator who said that now the Senate could start from scratch on healthcare? For months the House has tried to tailor healthcare to stay within reconciliation due to the Senate’s stupid rules and then that Senator opened his or her mouth. What do senators who make statements like that use for brains? Now there is speculation that because the Senate will take so much time on healthcare there will not be a tax reduction bill this year. Now you know why my blog has been calling for an Accountability Amendment. Stupid politicians think that they are more important than the American public. If the Congress does not pass healthcare and tax reduction by October, the public needs to hit the streets and ask for the resignation of every senator immediately. There are good members of Congress but I am concerned when I count them using my fingers and toes, I still do not use all my toes.
The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is an abomination because it was passed to provide federal government control over American healthcare. At the time it was passed, it was advertised that 20 million people could not get healthcare insurance. So what did the control obsessed Democrats do, they passed a law that affected all 320 million Americans supposedly to help 20 million people get healthcare. Why didn’t the government limit any healthcare bill to those 20 million who needed insurance to help with their healthcare bills? With all the taxes that are in Obamacare, they could have easily paid to help those 20 million. The reason was politics. Ugh, we can all get sick now.
Since a Democrat federal government inserted itself into healthcare and messed it up, now it is the Republican’s turn to try to fix this failing monstrosity. If they mess it up like the Democrats, the public needs to tar and feather every member of congress and run all of them out of town. Won’t happen, but it sure sounds good.
According to Fox News, 5% of the population generates 50% of the healthcare cost. By the way, no place in our Constitution does it mention healthcare and the federal government will as usual mess it up if they try to regulate it. If the federal government has decided to help the 5% who are causing the problem, then try to fix it and let the other 95% of the people use freedom of choice and the free market to find reasonable healthcare insurance. Remember that until World War II, the decision whether or not to have health insurance was a personal decision and we had many religious supported hospitals to support the poor. It appears that most of those hospitals are gone. When wages were frozen during WW II, companies started offering health insurance in lieu of wage increases. Today most companies that can afford it offer health insurance. Federal and state intervention into healthcare seems to only make this insurance more expensive.
With potentially unlawful Obama Administration surveillance, it has been reported on TV that Obama spied on Chief Justice Roberts. Was it before or after the Obamacare Supreme Court decisions? Don’t expect the propaganda press to investigate.
Before Obamacare, the states were in charge of healthcare insurance. The problem here is that insurance commissions are run by bureaucrats who apparently have nothing better to do than issue insurance mandates that always increase cost. Common sense is totally absent along with consumer freedom of choice. Bureaucrats and politicians have an extremely strong bad habit of treating the public as if we were all 8 years old and cannot be trusted to make intelligent decisions. Wrong!! Wrong!! More and more it is becoming apparent that the bureaucrats and politicians are the 8 year olds and they need to find a new job.
Obamacare introduced elimination of pre-existing conditions and the public agrees. It must stay.
Young people staying on their parent’s insurance until 26 years old is also popular and will stay.
It has been suggested that those persons with existing conditions generating 50% of the healthcare cost go into a special high-risk pool. The smart thing for the government to do is to subsidize the higher pre-existing conditions insurance premiums if policy issue is guaranteed instead of paying for the cost of the healthcare. Don’t count on that happening.
Let the consumer decide what mandates should be included in his or her policy. If, based on the applicant’s health history, the insurance company concludes that certain mandates should be included but are not, then the consumer signs a release of liability to decline those mandates and assumes liability should that condition need to be treated. Consumer freedom of choice on mandates is a win-win option. Sometimes you cannot afford to buy all the insurance you need. With an option to decline mandates, the consumer who really wants the mandates but cannot afford them can add them to the policy later when their financial situation makes mandates affordable. This strategy also protects the insurance companies from adverse selection.
How is the CBO going to estimate the cost of a new plan? They cannot develop a cost without knowing how many people will have insurance and what kind of insurance. It will become a guessing game. To make any cost estimate, the CBO must make many assumptions. Since the number and type of insured are unknown, a number of cost scenarios must be developed using their assumptions. Any cost estimate with many assumptions may be accurate to only plus or minus 40%. The Congress and the public must understand the problems, so in the interest of transparency, the CBO should publish their assumptions for each cost estimate scenario. This gives the user of the estimates an opportunity to study where they perceive the greatest cost impacts are. Good cost estimates are a wonderful tool and cost is cost whether in a business or government.
The healthcare cost objective should be to reduce it by improving it. Common sense and reality tells us that the medical profession should be the best source of new and better ways to deliver healthcare. They know it best. Innovation is needed. Government can assist by providing money for research where needed. Politics must be kept to a minimum and if and when political interference becomes a problem, the medical profession must shut everything down because they have the most to lose from failure.
Your professional politician Member of Congress is counting on you forgetting what you dislike about him or her before the next election so that member can get re-elected. If you truly want to have input into how we are governed, the country needs the Revised Accountability Amendment (March 19, 2017 post) enabling the public to remove federal officials and overturn laws and court decisions. The Federal Judiciary Amendment (March 31, 2016 post) removes federal judge lifetime appointments and replaces them with a single elected 10 year term. All politicians will vigorously oppose both amendments because it makes all government immediately accountable to the public with serious consequences for lying and actions that damage our citizens and country.
