Soitgoes, I think you made my point. Even you, an Obama supporter, realizes that SOMEONE has to pay for it. But Obama didn’t say that today. He said it would have zero impact on everyone.

And the employer thing is a great example. When you boost employer healthcare costs, who do you think pays for that? Sure, the employer foots the literal bill, but increased costs can decrease work forces, or limit employee growth in companies. And the increased overhead is passed onto the consumers of the products.

I’ll leave Obama out of this one because although he wants to tax the hell out of corporations, it’s more of a Democratic party line to screw the corporations, and these days there are plenty of Republicans joining in on the game. It sounds warm and fuzy to ordinary people to tax evil corporations like Exxon, Microsoft, Walmart, . But, when was the last time a company/industry faced increased taxes and said, “gosh, our profits are going to suffer because now we’re getting taxed more?” Almost never. It gets added to the price and shifted onto the consumer. So you tax the companies and pay for it at the register. It’s basic economics. The problem is, basic economics doesn’t sound too good in a political speech.

…I don’t want to get into the specifics of a healthcare plan, or a tax plan. I just wanted to point out that Obama basically fed these people a big pile of crap and they ate it up. Not to say that the same thing doesn’t happen on the McCain side, but he wasn’t on the radio today. I have plenty of beef with him, but I’ll save that for another article where we can focus on his misgivings.

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There’s a “fundamental” difference between us on the healthcare issue. I’m probably going to piss off a lot of people by saying this, and if I ever run for office I’m sure these comments will be spread across the papers, but here goes:

I believe we, as US citizens, were given the rights of life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness. We have the right to live, do what we want, and achieve all that we desire. Of course, there has to be some laws governing this so we don’t just rape and pillege each other in the name of liberty, but I like to think that the 10 commandments serve as a good rule for the laws of our country. Not to be religious here, it just so happens that the 10 things layed out in this simple list do a good job of covering bad things. Stealing is stealing, whether it’s shoplifting or embezzeling. Don’t get hung up on the religous reference.

With that being said, I put healthcare in the “persuit of happiness” category. I don’t believe we have the right to affordable healthcare. I beleive we have the ability to pursue afforable healthcare, and would not like the government taking that over and nationalizing it. Which it would eventually do under Obama’s plan. It’s a slippery slope in that first you subsidize the small business. You basically have taxpayers footing the bill here because they won’t be able to afford it. I’m not sure what the actual size of the companies you work for (except for Admin working for a company bigger than the governement!), but I deal with mostly medium and small business on a daily basis. Not to mention tons of non-profits. Most of them can’t afford a huge increase in healthcare costs–if they could, they would do it because it would help them with employee recruitment and retainage–which means the governement will foot the bill.

Actually, you could take the above paragraph and just replace “Obama’s plan” with most healthcare reform plans and the same would apply. It’s not necessarily a knock on Obama, but on the way the government is currently approaching the problem.

Admin and I had a conversation about this last week, and he has some good ideas on the subject. Sure we differ a bit, but at the core we both agree that something needs to change.

One approach could be the deregulation of the healthcare industry. By this, I simply mean removing restrictions that are currently in place that limit you from pricing out insurance outside of your current state. This would allow you to shop for better plans and create a more free-market approach to healthcare costs. Deregulation in this sense does not mean abolish all regulations like some Dems argue. They’ll still be regulated the same way, but just remove this one restriction.

Second, after you deregulate, allow for full transparancy in the healthcare system. Allow consumers to view costs of medical procedures at hospitals and allow them to price out their best options. This will make people more cost-conscious, and will pit hospitals against each other to provide services in a cost effective means. Plus, it will lower an insurance company’s ability to strong-hold hospitals with regard to costs. Currently, many insurance companies have set costs that they will pay for procedures. It forces healthcare providers to increase their costs in order to adjust the payments they receive from insurance companies. For example, a hospital may charge $100 for a visit, but the insurance company will only pay $20. This leave poor average joe w/o insurance to foot the $100 bill for a service the hospital only typically receives $20 for.

Third, I have no problem w/ the pre-existing conditions thing. If you want to throw that out, go ahead. Just realize that that would cause premiums to go up a bit. After all, insurance companies have to make money to stay in business.

Fourth, why not pass a law making it illegal not to have health insurance? We do it with auto insurance. Plus, this could open the market for minimal coverage for life threatening/major procedures, as well as open up venues for comparison shopping companies such as geico and progressive in the auto insurance industry.

Fifth, we need to redirect some of this government wellness program money to focus on personal and fiscal responsibility. As evidenced by the current market crisis, Americans live in an I want it Now society and are perfectly willing to leverage their life in order to get it. And when it fails, and their financial house of cards falls apart, they expect the government to step in and make it all better. ENOUGH OF THIS!! Let’s start teaching financial responsibility in our schools. Mandatory classes in middle/high schools & college focused on teaching personal finance basics and the benefits of living within your means. Plus, provide public outreach programs for adults. This is perhaps the biggest issue here, in that I see a good bit of our societal issues stem from economic issues and our missmanagement of money at a personal level. Fix this problem (and maybe get the governement to work off of a zero-based budget), and we’ve got a shot.

That’s 5 different steps with very little governmental impact financially, or regulation wise that could revolutionize and help change the healthcare industry. Would it be tough for a few years? Absolutely, but if it was an easy process to change this stuff, it would have already been done.

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Agreed w/ SoItGoes. Although it could impact you if you were to move from IC to small business by bringing on some people. Then you’d be one of the employers forced to pay for health care…and then get subsidized.

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