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Commentary: Obama is convinced that America’s health care system is in badly need of reform and he is determined to administer medicine to our ailing system even if it politically destroys him. As of this writing, Obama’s approval ratings are at all an time low, Rasmussen is currently showing a -14 spread between strongly approving and disapproving voters, bad news for Obama.
Primarily the problem can be described as the wrong diagnosis and the wrong medicine. As far as Obama and his administration view the problem, America is facing a serious crisis with 40-50 million uninsured and a lack of competition. First mistake, because the number of uninsured should not include those that can afford, but choose not to purchase and it should most certainly not cover illegal citizens. Federal government or any government for that matter is not obligated to provide health coverage to citizens, but in the age where the government feels compelled to bail out the car industry this kind of rhetoric falls on deaf ears, wonder if ear problems are covered under the new health care proposal?
Consequently Obama believes that in order to cure his already woeful misdiagnosis a cure in the form of a public option will solve all our problems. A public option he believes will inspire competition and provide coverage to the so-called “uninsured”. Second mistake, normally this kind of competition will be welcomed because any industry that can be run privately generally outperforms it’s public equivalent, but only if the competition is fair and plays by free market rules. In the case of a public option, these rules are skewed and threaten the existence of private insurers. On page 16 of the bill, one finds that all private insurers are obligated to join a public exchange and must pass newly introduced government regulations. Inevitably operating under newly created rules and regulations costs will rise, thus making the public option cheaper and more attractive. As soon as employers discover that they can save boat loads of cash by no longer providing insurance coverage, they will begin to dump their private health insurance coverage leaving most employees with a public option choice. Will this turn into a single payer system? Perhaps not immediately so, but our health care system will begin to rapidly transform and unfortunately for the worst.
If the idea of facing of a single payer system does not wet your noodle, then consider what impact our doctors will face when millions of additional patients enter the system? I get annoyed having to wait three weeks for a doctor now, with millions of new customers (half of whom do not even need to be there) begin scheduling visits; we will give an arm and a leg for a three week wait. On second thought, this cliché might very well become reality.
A more practically minded free market approach would suggest instead that the problem is actually a lack of competition due to already strict regulation. We should break down all barriers that prevent insurers from operating across state lines and allow citizens to choose from a vast pool of possible options. Secondly and much more importantly, Congress should pass laws forcing health insurance to work exactly like life insurance. That is, if an individual pays into a provider for an extended amount of time based on a premium derived from that individual’s health then the coverage should be permanent. We should no longer face situations where hard working people pay their entire life and then get dumped by their provider because they fall terminally ill and lose their job and subsequently their coverage. Avoiding these kinds of horror stories will eliminate the stigma associated with private health insurers and allow true competition to spring forward.
As it stands, Obama’s diagnosis and bad medicine is for a lack of a better term – sheer malpractice, hopefully Americans will catch on and put his practice out of business.
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