No, I'm not one of the conservatives who is currently harping that ObamaCare should be repealed because it goes too far. The thing that galls me is that the Democrats are the ones that sold us out by creating ObamaCare; under the guise of taking care of ‘the people’ they gave a giant gift to the insurance corporations. It doesn’t seem any different to me than the Bush Administration’s Medicare Drug policy that really was a gift to Big Pharma. Sure, let’s pay for drugs for seniors, but without any cost containment built in—that’s what they did and requiring everybody to buy health insurance is the same.
It’s looking like the courts could very well overturn ObamaCare. Why? Because the consensus seems to be that there is no precedent for the Government to force a citizen to buy a product from a company. Some people claim that auto insurance is an example of that, but it isn’t. The difference is that no one is forced to drive and if they choose to exercise that privilege they have to be insured. You don’t want to buy car insurance? Great, then don’t drive. In health arena you can’t choose to skip the circumstances that might necessitate your need for healthcare and consequently you need coverage as no one, other than folks like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, are financially capable of self insuring.
But if everyone needs coverage, should the government be forcing people to buy it? NO!!! The government should be providing it.
“Oh no! Not that! Not government healthcare!!” Well, yes, that’s how it should be. The idea of forcing people to buy a product from a corporation that is dedicated to its own ends (growth and profit) leaves the consumer at their mercy. The insured can be preyed upon, and as we have seen, premiums can go up logarithmically (mine have doubled about every four years), consuming a larger and larger portion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In the last 30 years the cost of healthcare has gone up from 7% to 21% of the GDP; that’s a 300% increase!
“But what about the tax burden that would create?” Funny you should mention that. I finally figured out that every dollar ‘taken’ out of my pocket, whether a tax or an insurance payment, is another dollar I don’t have to spend on something I really want or desire. So you can take another $15,000 a year out of my pocket in taxes to pay for ‘Medicare for All’ and I would be at a break even point.
The employed that receive their insurance through work and don’t feel like they really pay for it are wrong. Employers have to look at the cost for an employee. The more they spend on insurance for the employee the less they can pay in other forms of compensation. Salaries could go up at no additional cost to employers if they weren’t burdened by paying for employee insurance.
Sure, I know we are in the midst of an economic crisis. We have to cut expenses, not add new ones. But the economic crisis has to be treated in a holistic fashion. The problem isn’t the cost of healthcare; it’s that we spend so much on being the military bully of the world. 44% of the federal budget goes to defense; it is the biggest entitlement program in not only our federal budget, but in the entire world.
Our military budget comprises 46% of the entire world’s military budget. The next ten nations after us only comprise 26% of the total, and most of those countries are our allies. The boogey man that the military has us believing in to the point that we need hundreds of military bases all over the world is just a scare tactic. The greater likelihood is that our being in every other nation’s face causes most of our problems. If we didn’t antagonize the world to the degree we do, we would likely not need nearly the same levels of defense.
While I’m on this rant, the Republican chant to eliminate Medicare and give seniors a voucher to buy private insurance amounts to the same thing—a gift to insurance companies. No matter how big the voucher is, the price of insurance will continue to skyrocket and become unaffordable to a large segment of the senior population.
Let's get our priorities straight and value our most precious natural resource: our citizens.
