HEALTH CARE IN AMERICA, A SNARLED MESS!

(The Waking Giant, Forbes, Mike Patton, Paul Hsieh)

(Associated Press, Green Bay Press Gazette, Washington Tribute)

(Carla K. Johnson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, David G. Savage, Frazer Chronicle)

First you see it (kinda,) and then you don’t…..what in hell is a citizen supposed to think about this issue that we call the Obama Care or the Affordable Care Act? You got your religious zealots talking about abortion costs, birth control issues, like potentially the millions of women who can benefit from free birth control. Nothing in the United States, I repeat, “nothing in the United States is free.

Even though the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land you’ve got these religious do gooders asking, and getting their day in the courts…..to be accurate, the U.S. Supreme Court. Whatever happened to the separation of church and state? I want to make one thing clear right now…..I don’t agree with abortion except in certain circumstances, but I will not force my opinion on others. If I gotta pay a smidgen for somebody else’s procedure, so be it, better to abort an unwanted conception then to bring it into the world to fend for itself from birth.

Now plastered all over the front pages of the newspapers that I daily read, more problems with the computer programs that have cost millions, and at best work…..once in a while. Who the hell put this software together, the Marx Brothers? Now the online portal for small business is off…..until November 2014. How can that be, does anybody know how simply horrible the continuous problems with web-sites, portals is?

No, you’ve got to cancel your insurance plan (even if you like it) and purchase a government issued plan, even if it costs more. No wait, you can keep your present plan…..if you like it, wait…. if you like your current plan you can keep it until after the 2014 mid-term elections. But wait…..(very few) like the rich and shameless have really ever had health insurance.

What most people consider health insurance is actually genuine insurance combined with inefficient pre-paid medical care. Hospitals, doctors and medical health clinics would go out of business if they dispensed an affordable preventatively health care service, they’d be out of business in six months. I’ve said it before…..and I’ll say it again, “hospitals, health clinics and doctors only see dollar signs whenever you walk, are carried in on a stretcher, limp in or are covered with blood on your arrival at your favorite health provider…..ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching!”

AN ARTIFACT FROM THE 1940’s

Actually the current system of employer-based health insurance is an artifact of federal tax rules from World War II. When the United States government imposed wartime wage and price controls, employers could no longer compete for workers during war time by offering higher salaries. Instead, they competed by offering more generous fringe benefits which included health care insurance. In 1943, the Internal Revenue Service ruled that employees did not have to pay taxes on health insurance paid for by employees, and in 1954 made this rule permanent.

This law permanently distorted the health insurance market in favor of employer-based plans. If an employer pays $100 for health insurance with pre-tax dollars, the employee enjoys the full benefit. However if the employer pays that $100 as salary, the worker will only be able to purchase between $50-70 of insurance after taxes. The law also created perverse incentives for insurers to shift as many services as possible into pre-tax plans.

Gradually insurance companies started covering not just major medical expenses but minor routine expenses such as immunizations and well baby checks. Over time, this tax disparity helped employer-based health insurance dominate the private insurance market. Hence most workers don’t own their own health insurance, like homeowners or automobile insurances.

Convoluted and extremely hard to understand, absolutely, it’s what health insurance has become in America today. Imagine being able to purchase only insurance that covered selected major illnesses and accident (and otherwise pay for routine health expenses with the money that you save from this type of insurance). For many people this would be an excellent combination…..yet you would be unable to purchase this plan because of legal mandates, insurance companies can’t sell this type of coverage.

ObamaCare did not create these problems, but doesn’t address any of these problems either. Eliminate the tax disparity between employer-provided health insurance and individual-purchased health insurance. Eliminate mandated benefits, allow insurers a free hand to offer willing consumers inexpensive policies covering only catastrophic accidents and illnesses, and allow insurers to sell their policies across state lines.

OBAMACARE-AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE ACT DOESN’T GO FAR ENOUGH

The Affordable Care Act can be a start…..almost anything is better then what we have now, however legislators need to act in concert to create insurance coverage that benefits the entire nation. What we have now is a hodge-podge conglomeration of laws, rules and regulations that benefits only the insurance companies.

According to ObamaCare, in the future, Americans will acquire their health insurance through one of three venues, (1) Government provided, (Medicaid, Medicare,) (2)  employer provided, and (3) health exchanges, and there is talk of several other ways that will become available for consumers.

The entire issue of affordable health care that can be assessed by every American needs to be dismantled, evaluated on a piece by piece basis…..with absolutely no politics involved in this process. For the president and his administration to continue to push back certain areas of his program only serves to confuse everybody.

And let’s all get one thing clear…..health insurance companies have little interest in offering consumers cheap plans…..they only make money from the premiums that they are paid, for the insurance plans offered. If I buy an insurance plan for say $200 a month with a $5000 deductable, and have a medical procedure for $100,000 dollars, my premium won’t come close to allowing the insurance company to break even…..unless I’ve paid my $200 premium for say…..ten years.

The Affordable Care Act has been nothing more than a bungled mess for everybody involved, citizens, government, and the insurance companies who are getting bombarded with all sorts of new issues that they’ll have to learn how to deal with.

In the end…..you and me will be the ones to suffer, a grand experiment might be so screwed up that it won’t work…..and we’d be left holding the bag. Almost everybody agrees that something needs to happen with how are health care system works…..or doesn’t work. Possible we should have appointed some sort of committee to sift through the maze of the system we now have in place. ObamaCare just might be one of the biggest jokes in recent memory.

HAVE A GOOD DAY!