The numbers are startling, according to a recent CNN poll, 69% of Americans think we need Health Care Reform and that everyone should be insured. We may have the best Health Care in the world but it is 50% more expensive than any other industrialized nation. Several reasons for that, but just 5% of our populations are responsible for 50% of the Health Care expenditures. We’re the only country in the world that does not include the cost of Health Care in their budget.
Former Comptroller General of the United States,David Walker said we have several ways of paying for Health Care without bankrupting our nation, or adding to our enormous deficit. He said we already subsidize the sugar industry, an industry that promotes obesity. We are the most obese nation in the world. I cannot remember the website but when I was taking my diabetic classes, the instructor pointed to a chart they showed our sugar intake after WW II, and its correlation with heart attacks, obesity, and diabetes. Mr. Walker said that we pay for procedures, not necessarily positive results. Preventative care cannot be shown on today’s spreadsheet but it will lead to savings in the future.
As usual politics becomes a stumbling block because Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Montana) wants to unveil a proposal next week that would tax employer provided benefits above a certain threshold. Here we go again. On the other side the republicans are parroting the talking points Frank Lutz provided them “Do you want government bureaucracy to manage your Health Care.” As Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md) said “Harry and Louise are now 58 years so, Harry is a diabetic, needs prescription drugs and has no Health Insurance.” The time is right because baby boomers will go into Medicare anyway, new rules have already allowed more people into Medicaid, and so it is that remaining 47 million who will be affected by the Obama Administration’s hybrid plan. The taxpayer will be allowed to keep their insurance but it will be less expensive, penalties for not being enrolled will probably be part of the bill, and some individuals will be taxed on their fringe benefit. I don’t know the reason the Democrats are not trying to sell their proposals because a May survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 86% of Americans agreed that the “ government needs to do more to make Health Care affordable and accessible.’ A Washington Post-ABC News poll December ,found that 70% of the respondents had high expectations for Obama to improve the Health Care System. That was the December, recent polls show that Barack Obama has lost some of his economic luster because the people are fearful of all the spending and what it will do to the deficit. It is up to the president to go out and make the people aware that the Health Care costs are skyrocketing, so unless we take steps to stop that trend, our economy will never improve.
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Americans spend more on health care because they have more to spend - we are, or were the richest country on the planet with the best health care in the world. Now we/they are going to change all of that.
They are going to create a surge in health care demand while at the same time they are going to "cram down" the costs that they are going to pay doctors and hospitals. This is how you create a shortage, a severe one. But bless their hearts we will all have the same health care, each will be the same, each of us will have the same lousy health care - yes we can make his "change" trouble is no one is going to like it.
June 11, 2009 at 9:26 p.m.Alton
June 11, 2009 at 7:56 p.m.I am not that pretentious….I never said “health care cost created our current economical woes.” I do know the Big 3 automakers CEOs blamed the rising cost of health care as the number one reason for their downfall…I heard former CEO of GE Jack Welch ,Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and Warren Buffet say unless we get a handle on the rising cost of health care our economy will never recover…I never mentioned a National Health care system….The public option is not on the table (right now) but this blog was about HEALTH CARE REFORM and the proposals being discussed….Every month employers are putting more of the rising health care costs on their employees…Economists tell us that we cannot sustain 2.5 trillion(and rising) in health care cost every year.
Using your last sentence, we woulf be lead to believe health care cost created our current economical woes. Sure wish the solution to our current economical woes could be as easy as solving the put a cap on health care cost.
I agree that a national healthcare is coming.
June 11, 2009 at 7:13 p.m.Government run healthcare has been a failure everywhere it has been tried. What makes our leaders think they will be able to pull off something that other countries have not been able to. I fully expect the quality of care to decline, the satisfaction with healthcare to decline and the government to slide further and further into debt, probably allowing Social Security to go under due to the inability to fund it and the new healthcare system too. Given a choice, I believe most Americans would rather be guaranteed of having some form of income in their later years than having cheap, pathetic healthcare. I know several people who have lived in the UK and they realize national healthcare is a disaster.
June 11, 2009 at 5:47 p.m.