Though Obama pledged to save the average family $2500 a year in health insurance premiums during the presidential campaign, his Baucus conceptual plan will increase the costs by 2016 by $2900 relative to what they would otherwise cost. What is more, given only 3 more years, to 2019, the projected added cost of ObamaCare to private health insurance premiums, in the milder Baucus form, will be $4000. These figures come from the PriceWaterhouseCoopers study of the Baucus plan on private health insurance premiums.
The Socialists made a big to-do about the CBO calculation that the conceptual plan was revenue neutral, despite the huge increase in government spending, the huge new taxes, and the elusive nature of the cost reductions promised by the plan. Their only response to the PriceWaterhouseCoopers study was that it was funded by the health insurance companies. Well, someone had to pay for it. Duh!!! But the socialists have not come back with a rational argument against the findings of the study. There is a reason for this. Though Obama pledged his cost reductions for insurance premiums, the plan all along was really to bring about a huge cost increase in private plan premiums through government dictates on what those plans would have to cover.
Why would they do such a nasty thing to the American people? Simple. This is the easy route to the total control of American health care that the socialists see as the central and most fundamental way to make Americans all dependent upon the government. Sure, gaining control of our use of energy is way up there in their sights also, but the socialists have hungered for total control of our bodies for many, many decades, while the idea of control over our energy use is relatively new.
For at least 80 years, the socialist philosophers have been claiming that the truth is that which advances socialism. Obama does not think he told us a lie when he promised that he would decrease the cost of health insurance premiums for the average family by $2500. That statement helped put him in power to advance socialism, so the statement was truthful in the deeper, socialist philosophical sense. Those of us who are unenlightened in our commitment to socialism may think it an obvious lie, but we must take notice of the fact that Obama is in no way embarrassed by his statement. From early childhood he was trained to be a good socialist and he is without peer in terms of his commitment. He literally cannot see the world through any means but the worldview of the socialist.
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The US should have a system like Taiwan
Under this model, citizens have free range to choose hospitals and physicians without using a gatekeepers, Working people do not have to worry about losing their jobs or changing jobs because they will not lose their insurance.
Most preventive services are free such as annual checkups and maternal and child care. Regular office visits have co-payments as low as US $5 per visit. Co-payments are fixed and unvaried by the person’s income.
Every enrollee has a Health IC smart card. This credit-card-size card only contains a kilobyte of memory that includes provider and patient profiles to identify and reduce Insurance Fraud, overcharges, duplication of services and tests. The physician puts the card into a reader and the patient’s medical history and prescriptions come up on a computer screen. The insurer is billed the medical bill and it is automatically paid.
Patients and doctors alike are very satisfied with NHI. Satisfaction has been in the 70 percent range. However, at the beginning of 2006, satisfaction decreased to the mid-60 percent range because the program needed more money to cover its services. Since then, satisfaction has gone back to the 70 percent range.
Taiwan has the lowest administration cost in the world of 2 percent
Taiwan spends a little over 6 percent in GDP and less than US $900 per person...less than half what the US spends
One problem that Taiwan faces is rising health care costs. Taiwanese don't bring in enough money to pay for all the services they offer. But Taiwan's politicians are reluctant to increase premiums: they're afraid the voters will punish them.
What they need to do is to increase their spending from 6 percent to , say, 8 percent. A modest increase and Still a far cry from the 15-16% here in the US
The US model is unsustainable. The US spends more than twice what other countries spend on health care per citizen. 15% of gdp. That is way too much to be spending on health care. And year after year the cost of healthcare far outstrips the rate of inflation.
Either we make changes now....or else and enraged consumers will force more drastic changes down the road.
For me, I say let the US system keep going down the road it is going...to the point where we are paying 3 or 4 times what the rest of the world is paying and healthcare costs are eating up 20-25% of gdp.
At that point you won't have too many Americans left won't be looking at the health care system other countries like Taiwan with envy.
Thanks for your comments Hamster. It is interesting to hear about the government-run health system in Taiwan. I wonder about a few things and I have some problems with their system.
The main problem I have with a taxpayer-funded health care system is that it is immoral. If someone needs health care, they should pay for it themselves, not expect they have the right to hold a gun to other's heads and demand that they pay for one's health care. The fact that government agents hold the gun for him does not change the morality of this theft.
You and many others complain about the great expense of American health care. These expenses can be categorized in two bins. One is those expenses of the free market which are an expression of Americans having the best doctors, the best medications, the best medical equipment, the best prostheses, and the best facilities in the world, because this is what they choose for themselves and their loved ones.
The other is for the unnecessary expenses due to subsidized Medicare and Medicaid programs which sponge off of the private insurance sector, the crazy quilt of state insurance requirements which make it necessary to set up different insurance programs on a state by state basis and force many plans to be expensive Cadillac plans and administrative expenses to skyrocket, there is our ridiculously expensive system of legal jeopardy, and we do not allow individuals the tax deduction for insurance they get if they get their insurance at work. People should own their insurance, not the employer. A completely government run system is not the correct response to these problems, which can be readily fixed.
Most people do not need free annual checkups, maternal care, child care, and preventive medicine. They can pay for the these routine things. What people need is catastrophic illness insurance, which is what Health Savings Accounts and high deductible insurance make readily available to most people.
So, what are the Democrats now trying to do? They are not addressing the state restrictions, they are adding many more people to Medicaid which will transfer more costs to private insurers, and they are not about to anger their huge Trial Lawyers Association donor with tort reform. They are attempting to force people into Cadillac plans nationwide and they are forcing premium costs for young people upward by factors of 2 to 4. They are killing off high-deductible plans, which are great for most people. This effort will finish off the private sector and will lead to a single-payer government system.
The Taiwanese are a rather docile people who long ago became accustomed to doing what government told them to do. They accept their low end medical care and have probably never expected better. The American people will find that health care controlled by bureaucrats is completely unacceptable. In time, the American people will be made docile enough. The government-run schools are already doing an excellent job of that with our younger people.
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