We just have to keep working.
We'll get there if for no other reason than necessity is the mother of invention and we have a health insurance crisis that's only going to get worse if not fully addressed. Look how much premiums have risen in just the last 5 or 10 years. Or go back further and really get shocked. Look how much premiums have risen since Nixon tried to do something about healthcare. It's staggering!
The whole Tort reform and buying across state lines as a fix is a huge deception. Not only does it not insure even one of the 36 million people currently without health insurance... or cover any preexisting conditions to save lives and prevent thousands of American bankruptcies daily... it can't bring down actual payer costs hardly at all. This is why.
Less than 1% of overall healthcare cost are law suit related. Now we all know a lot of medical liability law suits are valid and necessary. I mean if it's your child or grandmother who dies because some asleep at the switch surgeon leaves a sponge in her that goes staff infection after an operation or it's proven botches a operation you'll certainly want & deserve to be compensated.
So there will always be justified large awards. But let's get wild and say we capped them at 50% of what they currently are. Even with that crazy never gonna happen savings we only made it where the overall law suit cost to healthcare went from less than 1% to less than .5%. See what I mean?
Then we go to buying insurance across state lines. Sounds good. But the minute that happens the companies will price fix so they all can drive the most profits in all areas of the country. (they'll call it going with the standard rate) There are states right now that have several major players in their state. They have no huge savings due to that. The companies just target different groups so that they can say they save customers that switch some amount of money. But when you look at that company across all coverage groups they're just higher someplace else.
I still believe we will get some type health insurance reform but if we don't this is what will happen. We will either have to start up and pay for a free clinic system for the uninsured and/or expand emergency room services to cover the guaranteed increase in need. Either way either the government raises the money through taxes for the free clinics or the hospitals recoup their loses through higher charges to insured patients continually raising their rates and your premiums.
See that's what kills me about those trying to block reform. In the end not revamping the current system only guarantees there will be a less comprehensive system that does little preventive treatment and because those treatments are so much more expensive you'll still be paying for it just the same one way or the other. In other words less for more.
Anyone not old enough for Medicare had better be very worried. Because once an injury or illness creates your job loss that worse system because we didn't reform our current system... is your system.
