When is a good economy not a good economy?
Why isn't President Bush getting credit for the booming economy?
The reason is simple: the average American isn't benefiting. In fact, in significant ways, we seem to be going backward even as the positive economic numbers pour it.
Wages aren't going up, and employers are cutting back on fringe benefits- including one of the basic necessities, health insurance. This is not a scenario which lends to a perception of prosperity. And for those of us without health insurance, it is also a scenario which attacks our quality of life in a direct, obvious, and deadly serious way: it often means going without needed medications and maybe even basic health care.
As resistant as I am to the notion of single-payer national healthcare such as Canada and Great Britain have (Canadians, for example, die waiting for routine diagnostic tests their system simply can't make widely available; every system rations health care in some way). something is going to have to be done to ensure that not just lower income people, but average working Americans, have access again to adequate health care. If the customary role of employers in providing adequate health insurance (or alternatively wages astronomically higher than otherwise so that people can buy it themselves, a far less likely scenario) is going to go by the boards, then some other solution isn going to have to be found. One thing is certain: it will soon be politically impossible to avoid a clamor for a solution in which government plays a prominent role not only for senior citizens, but for all of us.
Avoiding the Canadian/British single-payer model- the one most of the industrialized world has adopted- is going to mean coming up with a practical alternative.
Comments
I call your attention to these ideas regarding healthcare costs.
Do you really want to know?
Tax credits are great. But the cost of non-group health insurance is astronomical. Rep. Paul deserves credit for trying, but his suggestion doesn't even begin to be an answer to the problem.
Your point about "the cost of non-group health insurance" is key. The cost of insurance goes down as the pool of insured goes up, and then only if the pool includes more healthy people.
Unhealthy people, acting rationally, will try to sign up for insurance. Healthy people, acting rationally, will try to avoid this. There's the rub.
Insurance companies prefer healthy (low-cost) patients, and will compete for them. For the not-so-healthy, it's not-so-fun.
Some non-full-disclosure here: I am not a healthy person. I have a chronic condition that can be addressed with ongoing treatments. Even these treatments do not preclude the chance of developing related complications. So I pay more for medical expenses than most; and in the future, those costs are likely to increase.
It's a genetic thing, nary a thing I could do to prevent it.
Now, as I see it, that's the consumer's cost. The "price" of the care is the other factor. I have no idea how to even begin looking at controlling that.
- Scott H
Especially for those of us in that boat, the experience of being without health insurance when you need to be on several different medications is not a good one. The experience of having a mere doctor's visit be a major expense isn't particularly enjoyable, either.
Right now I'm on one of about seven or eight different medications I should be on, and some of the things that are going unaddressed are potentially life-threatening. There are hundreds of thousands of Americans in the same boat. Some sort of solution is going to have to be found.
Inefficiency aside, people are understandably reluctant to pay other people's medical bills through taxes. Gov. Romney has suggested requiring people to have health insurance, and billing or even garnishing the wages of people who "can afford" health insurance, don't have it, and use public facilities instead. I'm not sure who decides who can afford what, and the idea of billing or garnishing the wages of people who are trying to make ends meet for basic health care strikes me as rather heartless.
I really don't know what the answer is, but I do know that enough people are suffering the consequences of the current situation that it just isn't going to be politically possible for very long not to address it.
That is not a typo.
Admittedly, the deduction was absurdly low. Now it appears to be more-or-less equitable with other insurance. But another increase like that and I'll have to look seriously at reducing my coverage. And with that would come a commensurate increased risk of complications.
Aside from that, I'm sorry to hear of your situation. Please know that your are in my thoughts and prayers.
I hope that Mitt Romney's experiment provides some better indication of how we might improve the current situation. In this we agree: the current situation is not sustainable.
- Scott H
Me?
This would be the second time you called me Steve. I'm Jeff.