Look Mom No Hands! – The Democrats’ Solution for Revolutionizing US Health Care

Today the Democrats demonstrated their deftness in the political skill of compromise. Not with the Republicans, but with fellow Democrats. The Republicans are staunchly against any action that would contribute to the establishment of a broader health care program for US citizens, so they continued to point out incorrect and irrelevant consequences to the Democratic plan. From the compromise reached among the Democrats, I would think the Republicans would be falling over themselves working to join the effort; since if there is any way to help insure that the Democratic plan will fail is to put this one into place.

What’s wrong with the Democrats’ compromise? The Democrats have discovered that in order to revolutionize and reform the Health Care insurance and medical care systems in the United States that the existing Medicare program and new nationwide private plans will work. The Medicare plan will be extended to folks in the 55 to 64 age range; and new nationwide plans will be created in accord with some Government oversight from the folks who run the insurance plans for lawmakers and their families. So clearly it is obvious why these approaches will succeed, while nothing we have done in the past has been adequate to the task.

If we are going to update and revamp the insurance and medical systems that everyone agrees are out of control and rapidly approach catastrophic failure in terms of meeting the health care needs of the US citizenry, then these two existing programs will surely solve our problems. After all, both Medicare and the Government’s insurance plans have been demonstrably successful in containing the health care costs associated with people under their coverage. I haven’t seen such data or assessments; but given my great trust in politician and government bureaucracies I imagine that this information exists. I don’t know how to reconcile this obvious truth with the fact that the Medicare program has in the past and is projected to be again in the future bankrupt. Well we don’t like to say bankrupt, we prefer the term insolvent. And the Governmental insurance program for the lawmakers, this program must surely be more cost effective than that of the average Americans’, those that have an insurance program at least. And data illustrating the lower cost for their plan should be readily available for the politicians to present as clear and unequivocal evidence of the effectiveness of these programs.

Now if by some chance it’s not true that, or if you don’t believe that, the Medicare and/or the Government’s own medical insurance plan are affordable plans then you probably don’t think these will solve the problems with the current system. And if you have doubts, you should also remember to consider whether you think a sizeable percentage of the uninsured citizenry will be able to afford that costs of these plans. The lawmakers can afford them because there are the taxes that they have around to help pay for them. Can’t remember where those taxes come from, but perhaps we can all get some tax dollars to help us with our insurance. It’s not like taxes are going to cost any of us anything, right?

To further alleviate your concern about this solution, we can step back and examine the evidence of the reduced costs in medical care that has resulted from Medicare and the Governments plans over the last 44 years, since Medicare was established. And given their examples, the private insurance industry has been able to learn how to control costs along similar lines, thus averting the Health Care crisis. Uh! Wait a second, none of that happened. In actuality, didn’t the exact opposite happen? Things have gotten progressively worse over the years, and we are not facing the real dilemma of an unaffordable Health Care system.

Well, I am sure things will work out ok. We have always been able to rely upon our politicians to solve our problems.