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I am suffering from brain block. My brain block started with the desire to write something super comprehensive and well-informed about health care. But that isn’t possible right now.
So instead, here is what I’ve figured out so far: a) I support a public plan (But it does matter what the details are. There are a lot of ways a public plan could go wrong and then it would be worse to have one than not to have one) for exactly the reason its enemies are against it. A public plan could get us closer to single payer.
Unfortunately, a public plan is probably off the table, politically speaking. Single Payer (my true ideal) is definitely off the table. (If single payer scares you, consider that–as others have pointed out–Medicare, for all its warts and it has them!, is a public plan where the government is the single payer. Consider where our elderly population was before Medicare. Do you want to rewind? I don’t.)
So–
Despite current political realities (single payer and public plan being on hold), I still believe we must do something about health care and soon. But if the number crunchers who studied the plan currently on the table in Congress are trustworthy, and there really is no cost savings (!) from the plan they’ve been considering, then we can’t go with that plan. No cost savings = disaster. We can’t move forward until we figure out how to pay for this. We need to cut health care costs and find additional sources of revenue to pay for it.
I’m not sure what we should do instead of what is currently on the table given that there is no public appetite for the best fixes. The health care coops might work–depending on the details, of course.
So, I am still reading and thinking about health care and probably will be for a long time.
Health Care Reading Recommendation: I found the material on health care at FreshThinking.org super helpful. I especially appreciated their links to the articles on Why Tie Health Insurance to a Job? in the Wall Street Journal and the article in the Washington Post on the 5 Myths about our Ailing Health Care System.
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2 Responses to “Sketchy Thoughts on Healthcare”
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I agree something must be done. I am frustrated with our health insurance situation right now, which is basically catastrophic–our deductible is something like five or six thousand dollars. Although we chose that plan because it was one of the cheapest Andrew’s employer offered, even the most expensive ones didn’t offer that much better coverage. We simply didn’t have the option to pay more for better coverage. On the other hand, many members of my family are teachers, and while their salary is not among the highest, they do have excellent health insurance. It is simply not acceptable with health costs being what they are that your coverage is determined by your career choice. I am not informed enough to know how they might change the system, but it seems like if you can get your own car or house insurance and pick and choose what you pay for, why can’t you do the same for health insurance? Why can’t health insurance companies compete against each other in the same way auto or home insurance companies do? I guess I fall in the category of someone complaining about the problem without offering a solution.
By the way, what are your feelings on the idea of mandatory health insurance for everyone?
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