It seems that the new Health Care bill being punted by Obama has a price tag of 1.042 trillion dollars. I guess if you say it fast enough, it doesn’t sound quite as much. And, frankly, that’s my impression of the health care bill – it doesn’t sound like much.
At the end of a decade, there will still be 15-20 million uninsured. That is better than the current 50 million, but still a national disgrace. And at a cost of about $33,000 per American, seems like a terribly expensive way of insuring 30 million people. Admittedly, some of that money is also going toward subsidies for some of the poorly insured as well as the completely uninsured.
Of course, there is much debate in the US as to exactly how many people are truly uninsured. The 50 million figure bandied about seems to include young people and wealthy people (who tend not to insure). It also seems to include illegal immigrants, hobos, the Amish and people with health savings plans. It is therefore likely that the number of uninsured is considerably lower than 50 million.
The actual health plan itself is, unsurprisingly, a typical socialist one. It comprises of:
- A state-run successor to Medicaid – already the most poorly run insurance scheme in the US. Exactly how an expansion of a poorly working scheme will benefit Americans is not clear to me.
- Legislation to make insurance compulsory, except, of course, for those too poor to afford it. Much money will be poured into subsidies to make the insurance affordable. Of course, the ones who will be exempt from this compulsory insurance will be the ones most in need of it. Oh, how socialists love their legislation!
- Forcing smaller businesses to purchase insurance for their workers or pay an extra tax. Businesses with less than 25 workers or payrolls of under $250,000 will be exempt , once again excluding the workers most in need of a basic insurance policy. Larger businesses will, of course, be forced either to charge higher prices (not very likely in a recession) or lay off workers to pay for this. A great idea for a country that has more than four times as many unemployed as New Zealand has people…
So. After a trillion dollars of taxpayer money, Obama will have created substantially more health bureaucracy and will still have a very large number of uninsured Americans. If only he had listened to the MacDoctor…
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- Single Payer Insurance | MacDoctor — [...] the comments section of my previous post, Charlie offers a link to an American GP’s article on a single-payer ...
Jul 16 09 10:52 am
An article in support of a single-payer health care system written by an East Tennessee family doctor.
http://www.timesnews.net/article.php?id=9015187
Thanks for the link. I think the author has an overly rosy view of single-payer systems.
Jul 16 09 11:16 am
Fifty million sounds a lot, till you work out that figure represents just 16% of Americans. And of the other 84% an astonishing 80%+ express themselves as satisfied with their health plans, according to a recent poll.
Now, in a non compulsory system, how many of the uninsured do so voluntarily? As you say the rich don’t need to worry, the young will say only sick people need insurance and the rest will point to the oft unmentioned public and not for profit hospitals etc that provide free services. This last isn’t as good as the private care systems but it creaks along like many another system, like NZ.
The bad thing about the US insurance system is cost.. largely driven by the vast trial lawyer scams (ambulance chasers), but not so costly that nations like NZ can feel smug.. particularly with our long waiting lists.
Certainly the US can do a lot better, but its still a better system than most others.. witness the fact that nearly 40% of NZers have private health insurance to guarantee they get service in our little health utopia.
Wait till the Yanks get to understand what “rationing” means with Obama’s service.. and what happens to the Democrat funding base when the trial lawyers get pissed off about it.
JC
It is amazing how easily we forget that NZ has a thriving private health care system where vital elective procedures are not rationed.
Jul 16 09 3:27 pm
Hey, we Americans love our gov’t and we won’t rest until we are all wearing chains around our ankles and our kids are indentured servants, and their kids, and their kids,….
vincent´s last blog ..Go Sarah!
As Obelix would say – “These Americans are crazy!”
Jul 16 09 4:32 pm
I don’t understand why the Americans aren’t choosing an ACC type system with private health insurance like we have. I read the Price Waterhouse Coopers report on ACC and based on their comparisons with partial ACC type schemes or no ACC, ACC was a world-beater in terms of value for money and getting people back to work as quickly as possible. Would you agree with that and why would americans go this dangerous route in spite of best available evidence?
I would have thought that ACC was a type of socialist intervention that has actually been proved to work for a change (maybe for that time period until recently where it was properly managed…).
Also, why go the route of compulsory insurance- that is insane on so many levels. Insurance companies only want the low risk people to sign up. When too many high risk people sign up, the premiums go too high, low risk people drop their insurance and insurance companies start making losses on the high-riskers. Except now the insurer and the low-riskers can’t drop out and wind up picking up the tab (or the government does)
Jul 17 09 10:37 am
“It is amazing how easily we forget that NZ has a thriving private health care system where vital elective procedures are not rationed.”
Its equally amazing to recall that prior to WW2 the basic health service, including hospitals, was largely supplied by the private sector, and I haven’t read that NZ was the hell hole of the Pacific as a result. In fact, those were the years when NZ lead the OECD in all the indicators that now see us at No 22, and from whence we get the term “Godzone”.
What we have now is a classic case of diverting national wealth into social services.. rather than allowing private wealth to build the services at its own pace. We have allowed depression (1930s), war (1940s) and a later recession (1970s)to determine the shape our overall and long term social services.
JC