Healthcare Reform and the Collapse of Health in America

Healthcare in this country has hit a major roadblock, but most people don’t have any idea why or what caused the problem.  The cost of a good health plan has gone through the roof in the last several years, and the reason is Medicare and Medicaid.  These programs seem like a good idea because they provide healthcare for people who don’t have any way to pay for their own medical expenses.  Someone has to pay for them so some of the money is taken through higher taxes on all of us, and the rest is added to your health insurance premiums.  The government won’t pay hospitals and doctors their asking price, so the doctors have to charge private insurance programs higher prices.

 The cost of healthcare is the real concern that Americans have about their health insurance plans.  The more people that can’t pay for treatment; the higher the cost of health insurance becomes for those paying for it.  As the cost goes up more people can’t afford it and have to get it for free, this causes the price for the payers to go up even more.  Now the government is talking about healthcare reform, but their ideas will only make the problem much worse.  A public health plan offered by the government will completely destroy our healthcare system and bankrupt our country at the same time.

 The government’s idea to fix the problem is to offer their own health plan that essentially is more Medicare and Medicaid.  We have to pay for it with our tax dollars and the private healthcare industry can’t compete with a plan that everyone is already paying for.  In the future, private health insurance will rise in price to a level that will force everyone onto the government plan.  Once that happens you no longer have a choice, a substandard health plan that you have to take that takes away all of your options and limits the amount of healthcare you can receive.  They will argue that it won’t happen that way, but we have seen several other countries go through this process.  When everyone goes to the doctor for every little reason because they don’t think they are paying for it, the national healthcare bill goes through the roof.

 The bill for all this wonderful healthcare will end up costing us about 3 trillion dollars per year.  That’s twice as much as our national budget for everything including defense. We can’t afford this no matter what our tax rates are, so the government will have to start limiting what people can get.  The UK now has a government body that examines cases to decide if a person’s needed healthcare is worth the expense.  Without the ability to make good money as a doctor, the number of people who want to be doctors goes way down.  In Canada, there is a waiting list years long to receive life saving treatments because there just isn’t enough doctors to go around.

 Healthcare needs to be fixed with free market solutions like Ameriplan and other discount health plans.  Medicare and Medicaid need to be severely cut to drive prices down, so every American can afford to get a health plan.  Once the government gets its fingers in the healthcare industry, it will be nearly impossible to get them back out.  Our government is on an eternal quest to control our lives, and this would be a big step in the wrong direction.  Their public health plan will only lead to the government telling us what healthy living is and forcing us to live by it.  As Ronald Reagan once said, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help".