Health Care Cost - How Slow Can You Go?

Finally, we must have reached the, or one of the, objectives for Health Care Reform that the Government will excel at delivering. Everyone who pays into an insurance plan/program, either directly or indirectly, would prefer to be able to obtain their current benefits without constant increases in what they have to pay. Do you know of anyone who wants to pay more than they are paying today?

Companies offering plans to their employees actually spend money trying to find ways to both eliminate cost increases and to reduce their current expenditures. Labor Unions would jump at the chance to not have to defend against the constant onslaught of medical expense containment in their contract negotiations. Unions have to fight to preserve not only their member’s wage levels, they also have to keep companies from eroding their members’ real income by requiring the members to “share” in the increasing costs of medical costs. And individuals who must find their own insurance programs, are surely the most aware of the ever increasing costs and decreasing value of the plans that they must select among.

So, if all these entities cannot effectively contain or constrain health care costs, the Government must be the one who can. Now, I can certainly understand how we would look to the same group that has managed to keep the Medicare and Medicaid programs at tightly budgeted and as limited growth operations as they have with these programs. The fact that neither program is financially sound or even sustainable in its own right, should not distract us or cause us to waiver in our confidence that the practice that the Government has gained in the mismanagement of funding these societal programs will be proof of their ability to get it right with yet another medical insurance policy.

Now that I ponder on their demonstrated abilities, I must pause and reconsider if the Government or its programs will be likely to slow health care costs increases.
Alright, maybe the Government won’t be any good at slowing the costs of health care in general. But if they extend those costs to the broader consumer base that their plan will bring into the system, well then the average cost to those of us paying today will be lower. And therefore, the cost increases will also be spread over a larger number of people and thus the average increase will be lower for each of us also. So the Government can actually do it. Wow, who would have thought?

Opps! I am trying to remember, who pays for all the care given to the uninsured today? Oh, yeah! All the existing health care plans and programs that the insured consumers have are paying for it. And where is the money going to come from that will cover the universal coverage plan(s). Still gotta come from the citizenry, because that is the only place it comes from. If you cannot avoid the monetary equivalent of the three laws of thermodynamics; then you are not going to get more out than you put in; and we are either going to be putting in the same amount (or more), and we will not get more out.

The rate of cost growth must be being limited from some other factor. Got to look around for it.