Hillary Clinton wants to put a heath care chicken in every pot. You can buy it anywhere you want. It can be served in a variety of ways. Individuals with health problems and no health coverage (pre-existing conditions) will not be penalized with higher premiums. The best part of all, it will be affordable (virtually free).
All we have to do is repeal the Bush tax cuts.
Is that chicken frying, or do I smell a rat?
What is wrong with this picture?
Everything!
If you believe “HillaryCare: the Sequel” will lead to better, low-cost health care, then I’ve got a bottle of swamp water I want to sell you that will cure anything from cancer to ingrown toenails.
I have lived long enough to know that if something sounds too good to be true, it is!
Essentially, Clinton will require everyone to have health insurance. Hillary will provide expensive government subsidies to help pay for it, up to 50 percent for small businesses with fewer than 25 employees. She will provide a way of escape for big businesses that now pay the health care for their retirees. What’s not to love?
“HillaryCare: the Sequel” will not attempt to create a giant new government bureaucracy as she did in 1993. She learned that lesson well! In 2008, she simply will expand the ones we have now.
Medicare is going broke. The cost of Medicaid – health care for the poor – is skyrocketing! As part of her “cure,” Hillary wants to expand every government-run program: Medicare would be extended to cover younger Americans. The S-CHIP program designed to cover the children of low income workers would be extended to the middle class. This will squeeze millions of people out of the private sector into government-run programs.
Furthermore, Hillary will deliver a series of mandates to businesses, which will further exacerbate the problems we have now and drive private insurers out of the market. When that happens, the door will swing shut and the government will have complete control of your health care. Rationing will begin, as it has with all single-payer government run programs.
Presently, the difference between the haves and have-nots in health care has little to do with income and everything to do with your place of employment. If you are on a government program or employed by a large corporation, you have a health care benefit plan that covers virtually everything from aspirin to appendectomies. However, if you work for a small company or are self-employed, most likely you have a cut-rate, high-deductible plan that you pay for out-of-pocket.
This is a result of bad public policy decisions that occurred during the 1930s and 40s. During World War II, the government imposed wage controls so employers began competing for workers by offering prepaid medical care. The government then added fuel to this new benefit by making it tax-free for both the employer and the employee.
Everyone knows that the more you subsidize something the greater the demand. This led to the system we have today. Most people have no idea how much their health care costs because a third party pays the bill. Therefore, there are no incentives to shop around, which holds down prices.
The concept of every other kind of insurance is to cover the unexpected. What if you waited to buy your automobile insurance until after you had an accident? Then you show up at the insurance company with a wrecked car and broken bones (pre-existing conditions) and demand a policy to cover these expenses? That would be completely unrealistic!
What if you demanded a policy that covered everything from your spark plugs to the gas you burn? It would be prohibitively expensive! That is, essentially, what we have come to expect of our health insurance.
It is unrealistic to wait until you have a health problem to demand health insurance. High-risk pools are available in most states to cover those with pre-existing conditions, but these policies are, as reasonable people would expect, higher.
Health insurance that covers everything from soup to nuts is expensive. However, most people can afford a high-deductible catastrophic policy, the kind you buy for your automobile.
The Census Bureau found 44.8 million uninsured people. One-third live in households earning more than $50,000 per year. Twelve million of those people qualify for government programs but haven’t bothered enrolling, and 10 million are illegal aliens. Many of the 8 million that remain are simply changing jobs.
We can make free market reforms that put consumers back in control of their health care, or we can go down the road of HillaryCare that will lead to rationing and government control.
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