Healthcare Madness

Big Daddy Obama gave his much-anticipated fatherly socialized healthcare reform speech last night. Did you watch it? I watched some of it. And I certainly felt like he was hollering at me for not being a good listener. Seriously, did I leave the refrigerator open again? Or did Michelle find out that I found his cabinet of girly magazines in the basement and now he's taking it out on me?

Some highlights of what he said:

1) Socialized healthcare will be self-sufficient. Do you mean self-sufficient like the Post Office, Amtrak, Medicare and Medicaid? Or self-sufficient like the tax payers will pump billions of dollars into this new government program in order to sustain it?

Directly from the liberal talking points:

Won't add a dime to the deficit and it is paid for upfront. This is because it will reform the healthcare system and curb healthcare cost growth. (This tells me absolutely nothing) invests in quality improvements (sounds like increased spending), consumer protections (more increased spending because of the required government oversight), prevention, and premium assistance (more spending). The plan fully pays for (itself )...with a new revenue including a fee on insurance companies that sell very expensive plans (this sounds like a tax. Let's penalize good insurance plans???)

Requires additional cuts if savings are not realized (because we know the savings will not be realized. Come on - the government is running it! This is the same organization that pays $600 to procure a hammer) Under the plan, if the savings promised at the same time of enactment don't materialize, the President will be required to put forth additional savings to ensure that the plan does not add to the deficit (let's see - need to cut costs - like......denying coverage? Not paying doctors and hospitals? How else do you cut costs in a healthcare plan? Can't raise premiums - they're already government subsidized.)

This is a disaster waiting to happen! If you're a smart person coming out of high school or in college, would you want to go to medical school? You will not live comfortably like in the days of yore. Currently Medicare and Medicaid do NOT pay the full costs of procedures and care provided. The government system pays only a portion of the costs. The shortfall in payment is made up somewhere. Where would that be? Oh, yeah. Everyone else has to pay higher costs for their medical treatment. So currently everyone who is not relying on the government for their healthcare pays artificially higher medical costs, most of which is covered by our own private health insurance companies.

And now the government wants to run an even bigger portion of the healthcare system and reform the system and remove waste? I think I found the waste - the government bureaucracies that interfere with the current system. How is the government plan going to help doctors and hospitals? What about all of the other people that are employed in the industry? This can only hurt them - less money received for treatments means less money to be spent on buying new equipment, hiring more nurses, building new facilities, etc....

2) Socialized healthcare will be better because it will allow for more competition (conservative buzzword) and we all know that competition lowers prices. We need more competition? Because Kaiser Permanente, MetLife Medical, UnitedHealth, Blue Cross, Aetna, Cigna, Fortis, Assurant, Golden Rule, Health Net, Humana, Premera, Principal, Regence, Shelter, Thrivant, Unitrin, and Wellpoint do not provide enough competition???

This reminds me of the old joke - how do you know when a politician is lying? His lips are moving.

3) Whether or not you like the President's speech (this President or any other) - be polite and do not heckle him, (read South Carolina Congressman Wilson). You're just making an ass of yourself and your party. And did you see Obama's face when Wilson called him a liar? Obama was PISSED! I could almost read what he was thinking: "My white mother who raised me by herself would be really mad if I ran out there and gave Congressman Wilson a beat-down right now."

4) Socialized healthcare will not impact your current healthcare insurance. I don't believe it. My current health insurance (which I think is very good) has to be efficient and provide a profit to it's shareholders. I'm okay with that. However, if they started treating their members like crap, they can leave the plan. It's in the private health insurance companies' best interests to provide good high quality care to their members.

With the "public option", there is no profit motive. It can be as inefficient as it wants to be. See Amtrak and the Post Office. And if people opt for the government-subsidized healthcare plan, the private health insurance companies will lose their economies of scale and will not be able to compete and will eventually go out of business. THEN you will be forced into the government's socialized healthcare plan.

Additionally, one of the provisions of the socialized healthcare plan is that if your employer makes any changes to it's current healthcare options, it will be FORCED to also offer the socialized plan. How does that NOT affect my private insurance company? This requirement DIRECTLY affects my private health insurance company.

This reminds me of the old joke - how do you know when.....