Friday, August 14, 2009

Obamacare is a fraud but not for the reasons you may think...

The democrats are unveiling their so called plans for Obamacare and everyone has it wrong. The liberal socialist ruling the Democrat party are not reforming anything, they are not cutting costs or helping solve the healthcare crisis.

There are problems in the healthcare industry but Obamacare does not address any of the causes. Costs are high because of government regulation primarily. This industry is heavily controlled in everything they do, from the way they administer care to the documents they must keep to protect themselves from litigation and the government. From the moment you set foot on a hospital's property to the moment you leave, every single thing that happens to a patient is regulated by the government. Some regulation is necessary but the bottom line is every single regulation and tax the government imposes, is a cost and this cost is passed on too the patient.

The next problem is the patient not being involved in the payment of the care. As long as insurance continues to be viewed as a "magic money tree" for paying for a patient, then costs will be high. If each person had to pay for care directly, you can be assured that the costs would not be so high because patients would begin to look at things like 5 dollars for a bandage as insane and would refuse to pay. As long as the patient is not part of the decision making process for what is paid for, the costs will remain high.

The third problem is Insurance companies barred from competing across state lines. Insurance only works if there are far more payers paying into the insurance than those who draw benefits. The larger the pool of potential payers the better. Insurance companies are barred from directly competing for business across state lines, meaning it is difficult to increase the base of payers and pool the funds to create a better product for all.

The fourth problem is this parasitic relationship between employer and insurance company. This makes sense for an employer because the employer can offer this as part of a package to obtain the best employees and save some on salary by offering a benefit. The problem is because of regulation and the fact that insurance can't compete directly for everyone, the insurance companies are focused only on employee pools and almost ignore or even make it hard for individuals to obtain insurance with favorable costs and services. The biggest one is pre-existing conditions. This farce is a concoction the insurance industry used to basically remove the inconvenience of individuals from their roles. Otherwise insurance companies would deny pre-existing conditions for employer based plans as well.

The fifth problem is preventative care. The government regulation has basically caused this entire part of the healthcare experience to not exist. This is typical of any kind of preventative measure whether fixing a car or a human body. Everything is against this. Taking time off work, being unable to itemize these costs on a tax return, insurance companies basically refusing to pay for it and other factors all contribute to this problem. Additionally, care and preventative measure not of traditional means are also not covered.

The last major problem is medicare. The fact is the existing socialist medical program already heavily influences prices of medical care. Medicare already limits what they cover and insurance companies use this list for what they cover as well. Medicare also reduces the available money each employee and employer has that could be used for insurance benefits.

Obamacare addresses none of these problems. It only seeks to create yet another massive government bureaucracy that is going to merely going to do what insurance companies do now, only at the cost of taxpayers and with no control over what they do.
At first it will appear to work as all new insurance companies do. The first couple of years of massive influx of new money and few people drawing benefits creates the illusion that something is being solved. 3 or 4 years from now when the government has run out of money again and has the wished for 45 million patients they are paying for, the government will begin to do what is being said today. They will ration care, make decisions about who gets what procedure and why. At the same time, they will increase taxes in the name of paying for it all, just like they do today with medicare and social security. This will slowly increase with every congress declaring a need to reform this mess and making us pay for it. Eventually, they will tax and tax until they finally do nationalize the industry and do away with private insurance completely, all in the name of saving the people.

If the government addressed the actual problems, they would not need a new socialist welfare program. The fact is the democrats know from experience a program like this increases their personal wealth and their hold on power. History shows the democrats are very good at this shell game. They create non existent problems and solve them with socialist programs. They tax the hell out of everyone for it, never actually solve the non-existent problem and the people keep putting them in power to continue doing it.

This shell game is the real reason to prevent obamacare from occurring. There is no history of successfully implementing any socialist program and Democrat party history is to use so called calamaties and crises to enhance their own power.

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