The Universal Health Care Debate, Round 1000
While California’s efforts to achieve near-universal health care coverage are noble, this state-by-state approach is fast becoming ridiculously inefficient. The big problems are the insurance companies – companies which would all but cease to exist in their present form should the status quo evaporate, and a universal single-payer system be enacted.
Polling on the issue is beyond confusing, with Americans simultaneously desiring the status quo, asking for major changes, saying that health care is either “good” or “only fair” and saying that it is the responsibility of the Federal Government to provide health care for all.
Massachusetts’ “Commonwealth Care” near-Universal Health Care program just went into effect a few days ago, and it was a bundle of political compromises to satisfy every possible lobby involved. A similar fight will undoubtedly take place in California. However, these piecemeal systems involving subsidized private insurers, the nursing lobby, the hospital lobby, the state Blue Cross/Blue Shield and the hundreds of other disparate interest groups with a stake in health care are simply inefficient. Though this piecemeal system of private insurers, public health care for the old and the poor, and uncompensated care pools, America already spends a much greater percentage of their GDP to cover just the elderly and the poor than Canada spends covering everyone from birth to death. Our system is notoriously inefficient and it’s the insurance companies that are to blame.
A single-payer system would be ideal – with sliding co-pays based on income to discourage overuse and abuse of the system. Of course, this is all politically untenable. When the Clinton policy team, including Hillary, sat down to accomplish health care reform, the insurers stood in their way, producing misleading ads that torpedoed the whole project. A more modest goal? Extend Medicare to cover children and young adults under 25 – it would alleviate the burden of family coverage that insurers and employers now face. I believe John Edwards offered something along those lines, however.
Nevertheless, I still hope for some near-universal coverage legislation out of California – it is a worthy project to tackle.
Polling on the issue is beyond confusing, with Americans simultaneously desiring the status quo, asking for major changes, saying that health care is either “good” or “only fair” and saying that it is the responsibility of the Federal Government to provide health care for all.
Massachusetts’ “Commonwealth Care” near-Universal Health Care program just went into effect a few days ago, and it was a bundle of political compromises to satisfy every possible lobby involved. A similar fight will undoubtedly take place in California. However, these piecemeal systems involving subsidized private insurers, the nursing lobby, the hospital lobby, the state Blue Cross/Blue Shield and the hundreds of other disparate interest groups with a stake in health care are simply inefficient. Though this piecemeal system of private insurers, public health care for the old and the poor, and uncompensated care pools, America already spends a much greater percentage of their GDP to cover just the elderly and the poor than Canada spends covering everyone from birth to death. Our system is notoriously inefficient and it’s the insurance companies that are to blame.
A single-payer system would be ideal – with sliding co-pays based on income to discourage overuse and abuse of the system. Of course, this is all politically untenable. When the Clinton policy team, including Hillary, sat down to accomplish health care reform, the insurers stood in their way, producing misleading ads that torpedoed the whole project. A more modest goal? Extend Medicare to cover children and young adults under 25 – it would alleviate the burden of family coverage that insurers and employers now face. I believe John Edwards offered something along those lines, however.
Nevertheless, I still hope for some near-universal coverage legislation out of California – it is a worthy project to tackle.
