This post originally appeared in Business Insider. The American health care system sucks. We pay more for health care than any country in the world and we only get average results. And tens of millions of Americans have no health insurance. Our latest attempt to address this situation, Obamacare, is a mind-numbing kluge of laws and policies that is off to a very rough start. And even if Obamacare ends up working, it will only fix part of the problem. The problem, as a ground-breaking article by Steve Brill made clear, is that Americas health care providers and insurers treat people differently. If youre lucky enough to be included in a big insurance plan provided by a huge entity with a lot of negotiating leverage (such as the federal government), you pay low rates and low prices. If youre unfortunate enough to be in a high-risk group or not to be included in any plan, you pay sky-high prices. Or you get all your health care from the emergency room and, thus, lay the costs off on everyone else that way. The answer, as Brills article also made clear, is a fully national health insurance system, in which all Americans are covered in the same massive group and for-profit insurers and health care providers cant pick and choose who to cover and how much to charge them. This system would effectively extend the current Medicare and Medicaid system to the whole population, and, in so doing, make it even more efficient. As in some other countries with national health insurance, Americans insured under this system would also be free to buy additional health care services, including additional private insurance. The system, in other words, wouldnt limit anyones ability to pay for premium health care services if they chose to. But a lot of Americans still hate that idea. They have been told since birth that national health care is a disgrace. They have been brainwashed so thoroughly by Americas vastly profitable medical industrial complex that their resistance to reality and change has become a religion. Anti-change advocates dont assess facts. They just claim, absurdly, that America currently has the finest health care system in the world and then cite horror stories about sick people dying in streets because they have to wait so long to get the (terrible) health care services available to them under socialist health care. (This horror story, naturally, is presented as the polar opposite of our current system, In fact, in many ways, its similar. Today, in America, many people without health insurance spend their lives waiting until they get so sick that they can go wait in emergency rooms. And then our often wildly profitable hospitals pay for their care by, effectively, sending their bills to everyone else.) Thoughts Randy Scott, Joe Scura, Zachary Gittrich, Victor El Chingon Brawner, Lindsey Liberty, Julius A. Cohill, Josiah Wooden, Tracey Woods Heater
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 23:21:16 +0000
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