You've heard about Universal Health Care. If you're clever, you want it but worry that it cannot be reasonable done. If you're not, you think one of two things:
A: The only reason we don't have it is because the evil capitalists that run the country prevent the government from doing its job and giving it to us.
B: Universal Health Care is just another word for socialism, and the evil liberals are trying to force the country to swallow something it doesn't want.
Them's the extremes.
The real issue is that the way health care runs right now, there are a lot (a LOT) of people that don't have much of a hope of affording it. And insurance companies have raped the system to the point that even people who are paying for coverage get nailed to the wall on a regular basis. We're in a bad way. Not as bad as most other countries, but we're America, and we're justifiably unhappy with the way things are. (If we're not, it's only because we're ignorant and sheltered.)
Democrats with good intentions (which is most of them) are obsessed with the idea of governmental control of the whole health care system. This is due to the mistaken notion that the government is there to solve everybody's problems, but that's another discussion.
So why not? Couldn't the government just take over and make sure sick people get taken care of? It's a nice thought. The permanent obstacle to that idealistic fix is that the government, bless its little heart, CAN NOT AFFORD IT. In a perfect world, we'd all take care of each other, which is what socialized medicine is. But even assuming we live in the kind of world where socialized health care is a viable solution (sadly, we really, really don't), we STILL can't afford it.
But not being able to afford things has long since stopped preventing people from buying things. When the government decides to spend, who pays for it? Taxpayers? Yeah, but we can only fork over so much before we stop being able to feed ourselves. Thankfully, the bureaucratic administration in charge of taxing us still recognizes this inconvenient detail. So then who else? Let's call it the national credit card. Debt pays for it. Sound counter intuitive? It is. It only works because someone, somewhere, sometime, will have to pay for it. And if we've learned anything about debt it's that it grows. It's immovable and all-powerful, and if it grows large enough, it starts destroying things close to it.
Anyway. Read this. It's written by someone who's clever, and it sheds some light on some very important obscurities. These are things we all should know.
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It's a very complex issue and it's hard to find unbiased opinions. I would like to pay comparable prescription drug prices that Europeans pay. That should be possible somehow. We are spending $613 billion on defense. If we cut that down to $50 billion, then I think we could afford a lot of things.
ReplyDeleteIf we cut that down to $50 billion, our soil would turn red with American blood.
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing. I want to reap the benefits of your educational blog, I really do...But when the first thing I read was "The Price of Health Care" My eyes glazed over and my brain stopped working.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm still leaving a comment, so that's something. Even though you basically said my blog is useless. Thanks. :p
Ben may be right in cutting some of the other department's budgets, but I wouldn't transfer that money to somewhere else. We need to start chipping away our debt. I wouldn't cut it so extremely either. Maybe just down to $600 billion or so.
ReplyDeleteI have trouble reconciling the Christian faith with all of this defense spending. The best solution in my mind is to spend heavily on lifting other countries out of poverty (soft power) so they don't have reasons to go to war. I don't really see a benefit to defense spending. The more we go to war, the higher are deficit gets. If we spend that money on education, then we actually get an observable return on investment.
ReplyDeleteI don't know that I'd post all the blame for the health care situation on insurance companies. I'd say that there are a number of people who've burdened the system with a "something-for-nothing" mentality. It may be frivolous lawsuits, which require health care professionals to carry incredibly expensive malpractice insurance and therefore charge higher fees. It may be other factors that I've never really thought about. I don't know.
ReplyDeleteBut the trouble will always come when we've got people who are just out to take from the system rather than to support themselves and their community. I think this could be a big problem with universal health care. There will likely be enough freeloaders that it will put too much burden on the rest of the taxpaying citizenship.
However, having been in a situation of need before (I was temporarily between insurance and had to have my appendix out), I think that something should be done. My hospital bill there was in the $15,000 range. In my case, I was extremely grateful for an Arizona program that was set up to help people in situations like mine. And I will proudly and happily pay my taxes for the rest of my life knowing that my contributions might similarly help out someone in need.
I don't think that universal health care will solve all our problems, but I do think that something ought to be done. It's a terrible thing to be without health insurance, and there are plenty of people out there who simply can't afford it.