Wondering why some top health care executives are pushing against a public option for health care? The answer to this very important question centers on how existing business -- no matter the industry -- hates competition. What real competition does is force business to watch their costs of doing business, get creative about how they do business and be responsible and respectful to their customers. What the public option being considered in Congress will do is put in place the now missing competitive factor into the health care industry.
For example, once a public option is in place, companies like Blue Cross Blue Shield (care LESS) will need to think twice before they make arbitrary decisions that can raise rates dramatically using little more than the "excuse" that one claim in 20 or 25 years is enough to justify their making dramatic increases in annual rates.
The reality is that without this public option, health care costs can be expected to skyrocket even more than they have in the past. A 2005 study published by the Federal Reserve Bank concluded that nearly 60% of American families cannot afford their health insurance. This was true for everyone -- older, younger, rural and urban. Since then costs have only gone up.
For more info, see the data at "The Sustainability of Health Spending Growth".
For rural families who are less likely to have employer paid health insurance and more likely to be forced to travel extreme distances to get medical care that is affordable and comes with easy access, the need for relief from the growing cost of health care is essential.
What's most amazing to us is how some rural seniors and others seem to have fallen for the "don't want the government involved" refrain when the reality is that the government is involved already and these same seniors and heads of households are happy about it -- happy with Medicare, happy with Medicaid and happy with State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP are "public options" for health care.
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The Federal Report was extremely interesting. The 60% who could not afford health care are in the lowest Quintile - translation 60% of the poorest people in America cannot afford healthcare. This is sad for President Johnson in 1960 had a war on poverty to eliminate the poor.
Alas, President Johnson's war on poverty apparently failed since we still have poor; however, USA poor are richest poor in the world, so all was not loss.
Like President Obama, President Johnson tried a surtax and plunged the country into an American historical hyper-inflated
recession. But Obama says he and can avoid a hyper inflated economy. With Czars costing Americans around $10 million a year, we better get some avoidance for our moneies.
Medicare and medicaid, and SCHIP are already in place, but no one is going out to register the poor for these government programs. Maybe we really need another super agency to help the 60% of the poorest sign up for government programs. This might be a job for Americore!
Ah yes Medicare, American rationing at it's best. Medicare does not pay the doctors for their value, time, or education. But doctors shouldn't worry about themselves or their family. Doctors should just worry about us.
Medicare does not pay the drug companies for the value of their life saving investments. Americans will pay a song writer and singer royalities for a 100 years for creating a song in only a few minutes. However, a drug company which spent a decade or more, and invested billions in research and testing is given only few years to recover their billions and still make enough profit to create the next wonder drug.
Ironically, Americans whine about the cost of taking drugs to save their lives, but then will run out and give Microsoft billions, and billions, and billions, and billions, and billions for their computer software which took only a few years to develop and is never fully tested.
Medicare is a government program, and like all government programs, the government is cutting benefits, while adding end of life alternatives. On one hand our government tells everyone that health care is a right while with the other hand the government is using computer models to determine when this right should be terminated. Are Americans too expensive and unproductive at age 50? age 60? or 65? or 70? Is 80 way to long to live? If so then health care will consist of pain pills - Shades of Michael Jackson.
If it is humane to shoot horses, then wouldn't it be humane to help the elderly depart when they become unproductive and a burden to society? Every government in the world with universal health care is practicing rationing and denial of halth care to the elderly. Why would the USA be different? Because the USA has a constitution? The constitution does not say we have a right to health care; therefore, why wouldn't our seniors fear government universal health care? The elderly are experiencing deteriorating health coverage now called Medicare!
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