This Is Health Care Reform?

Some politicians are saying the current health care “reform” bills will reign in costs. But the facts don’t seem to back up those statements. The Congressional Budget Office (which does non-partisan estimates) says all the proposed bills will actually increase costs. The bills seem to be targeted at increasing the income of health care providers by collecting more money for health care. That  money will come from higher taxes. I haven’t seen any ideas that would actually lower health care costs across the board. It will still be cheaper to drive to Canada to get our meds.

If the “reform” is supposed to lower health care costs then the following paragraph from the NY Times article needs to be explained:

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, has said he hopes to have a health care bill on the floor by July 27. That goal appears unrealistic, even though members of the Finance Committee said they had made progress in talks on how to pay for their bill, expected to cost at least $1 trillion over 10 years.

So a bill that costs $1 trillion will lower costs?  Sounds like an oxymoron to me. When they talk about lowering costs they just mean they’ll find new taxes to pay for it so the budget deficit won’t grow. Not all of that will come from taxes on personal income. Companies will get additional levies related to health insurance. Let’s lead the entire country down the path of the bankrupt automakers and the bankrupt California.

So, on top off all the deficit expanding bailouts and paying for the Iraq war we need to come up with another trillion bucks to add the insurance company and health care provider profits.

Why do we think we can control costs by forcing people to buy insurance but not limiting the profits of companies providing the services. Yes, a free market is better, but the reform bills kill the free market and are just a forced transfer of money. While I’m not a fan of government control, if you want to nationalize the payment system through taxes and forced payments by employers then nationalize the whole system (again, I think it’s a bad idea but it makes more sense to me than the current proposals). At best we’re removing any incentive for health care providers to lower costs and at worst we’re giving the health care an incentive to charge more.

And now the proponents of the bills are trying to ram them through before anybody has a chance to fully analyze them. Any law has unintended consequences, especially something this complex so even the best of intentions can lead to disaster. Yet we again have a government trying to push through their pet projects before they can be fully scrutinized. They care more about meeting a date on a calendar than coming up with comprehensive health care reform.

Out government is again failing to server the interests of the people it’s supposed to represent.

Tags: Health Care Reform