Cut costs and ensure enough primary care access first, then worry about the uninsured.
Even bloggers at the far-left Daily Kos get it: “Providing insurance doesn’t do you a helluva lot of good for people who don’t have any doctor to accept it.”
Obama is starting to realizing that’s his only option as he initially navigates through the rough health reform waters.
Given the backdrop of the recession, he has shifted his tone from covering the uninsured to cutting costs. This makes much more sense, as “four of five Americans are dissatisfied with health costs, while only 15 percent lack insurance.”
With out-of-pocket health costs rising for those with insurance, appealing to this middle-class majority will be much more effective in attempting to pass any meaningful reform legislation.
Related posts:
- Most Americans have health insurance, and what health reform is going to do for them
- The uninsured: A "Trojan Horse" of the health care debate
- When it comes to health care reform, winners and no losers?
- Health care costs, not the uninsured
- AMA: Curbing the rise in health care costs is key to health-system reform
- Health reform: Choose your side
- What doctors can learn from patients in the health care reform debate
{ 2 comments }
If we don’t cover the uninsured costs are certain to rise. People who are working are usually healthy and insurance companies and medicare count on their premiums/taxes to help pay for the healthcare of the sick. When jobs are lost it only forces a shift of costs to working people. When the unemployed or their family gets sick they visit the ER because they have no insurance, which really escalates costs.
Myth. Most uninsured people avoid the ER seeking care with private physicians or walk-in clinics. The ones who go to the ER for non-emergency care are not the temporarily unemployed but the work allergic Maynard Krebs of the world who have never paid any bill anyway and don’t care.
There are lots of similar myths that have risen to the level of common knowledge but are not supported by the facts. If we make decisions based on these falsehoods the results will be severely disappointing.
Another popular one is the notion that people with unhealthy lifestyles drive up healthcare costs. Dutch data shows lower lifetime costs for smokers and the obese than for the non-smoking normal weight–for the simple reason that they die younger.
Saves a lot of SS payments too.
A third is that “45 million American’s are uninsured”. Not entirely true. About 40% of the healthcare provided to Americans without health insurance is covered by other insurance–workers comp or auto liability. The other part of the falsehood is that nearly 40% of that 45 million are not even legal residents of the country. They are Mexican’s, Hondurans, visa-jumping Pakistani’s etc whom the government is obligated to deport, not support.
A fourth is that people who are uninsured are either too poor to buy it or irresponsible bums. Often it is a very reasonable risk to take. If you look at the history of successful small companies in America–the ones that create jobs, provided services, pay taxes and donate profits to civic organizations in your hometown without asking for bailouts–you will often find that the founder was able to start the company only by taking a wide variety of risks and doing without a lot of things that we think ordinary–like for example health insurance.
Comments on this entry are closed.