health care reform

im not even going to try to delve into every issue about health care reform and the existing bills, just a few thoughts.

firstly, i do believe that some reform needs to happen as there are too many people either being denied coverage/care or being forced into bankruptcy due to their medical bills. i just dont understand why the entire system needs to be overhauled in order to accomplish some of these goals.

i am against a single payer government plan. there is no way to say that it would compete "fairly" against private industry when the government is not only adminstering the plan but is also writing the rules. private industry requires a company to prosper or the company fails and goes out of business. a government run plan will never fail, it will simply raise more taxes to make sure the program continues. also, why would a company choose to pay for medical coverage for their employees when it may be cheaper to pay the fine for not covering them and have them go onto the government plan, aka the taxpayers dime?

some sort of tort reform is necessary. i freely admit that if there was some sort of catastropic malpractice error that injured my family or myself that i would want someone to pay for that error. but you have physicians that can not afford malpractice insurance in some states because it is so high. and you have the current situation where law suits are taken up in those states without some sort of cap on penalties, ex: pennsylvania. in some cases this results in physicians deciding to move to another state or to stop practicing medicine altogether.

there need to be cost controls in place. MA has been held up as a great example of universal health care coverage. MA requires all its citizens to have health care coverage or you pay a penalty. because of this, 96%-98% of MA residents have some form of coverage. the first year this program went into effect, it cost the state approximately $100 million. within 2 years, the cost to the state was approximately $600 million. the estimated cost for 2009 is $1.3 BILLION!. now imagine that program being administered on the national level with 300 million people and trillions of dollars at stake. has the government ever reined in a bloated program? my gut feeling is no. it simply delves into the bottomless taxpayer trough.

one way that may help control some costs is to allow insurance to be sold between states. currently you can only buy a plan from within the state that you live. more competition means the price comes down.

the reform bill in its somewhat current state doesnt make sense to me. how will we add 30 million people getting coverage, make cuts to medicare and expect BETTER coverage at a LOWER cost? that just doesnt make sense. there are places such as the mayo clinic that have already stated that they will no longer accept medicare patients due to the low reimbursement rates.

couldnt simple laws be enacted by congress to forbid actions such as denial of coverage due to a pre-existing condition without overhauling the entire system. little incremental steps could work and they would be less scary to the general populace.

i know polls are just polls but if only 40% (if its even that high) of americans agree with the plan, does it make sense to make shady deals with fence sitting senators in order for them to agree to passing the bill?

as i stated previously, my hope is that without the democrats supermajority, there will need to be bipartisan action to get something accomplished. which also means that the republicans need to step up and offer ideas, not just be content with obstructing passage of anything.