Healthcare dilemma sickens citizens (against) [ArticleImageHyperLink] Monday, March 29, 2010 By Madison Law Advertising Through over 2,000 pages of twisting legal text, President Barack Obama and his administration try to outline a cohesive and logical healthcare reform plan-of-action for the United States. Try is the operative word here. At its roots, the plan wants to accomplish these things: help those without insurance be able to afford quality care and coverage, keep the mile-high prices at a reasonable level and provide every American with basic protections. The problem with this is in the way it will come about. The plan is to provide every American who does not receive employer-provided healthcare the choice of one single healthcare plan known as the public option. This public option will feature a broad and basic coverage that will keep private insurance agencies ‘honest’ by competing with them. But then all employers will inevitably say to themselves, ‘Well, why should I pay for my employees healthcare when the public option is being offered to everyone affordably?’ Eventually, the public option will be the only option and no average Joe will be able to afford anything else. It will be government-run, socialized healthcare for all…just like President Obama wants. There will be no ‘competing with the private insurance agencies,’ because it is nearly impossible to compete with the government. No competition, no motivation. Just one gigantic monopoly on healthcare that the government will gleefully hold. Contrary to popular belief, people who are uninsured are not dying in the streets. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, there is a law that was passed in 1986 that everyone seems to disregard when talking about healthcare. This law is the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, and it states that hospitals are to render their services to anyone requiring emergency healthcare regardless of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay. So don’t worry. It’s not as if people aren’t being treated for their heart attacks or strokes. Now individual healthcare may be expensive, but putting the government in charge is not the answer. History shows that anywhere where there is government run healthcare, there are price controls, less doctors, less qualified doctors, less new drugs, rationing and it’s all bankrupt. Medicare and Medicaid is one example of this. They are non-profit government run healthcare plans, which may seem like free services, but are in reality paid for through higher taxes. The care received however, is extremely different from private care. First of all, not all doctors will touch Medicare or Medicaid due to all the price controls and red-tape involved. One simple way to lower outrageous healthcare costs is to remove some of that red-tape. Doctors have to pile on insurance just to protect themselves from malpractice lawsuits and often resort to ‘defensive medicine.’ They order numerous, unnecessary tests to cover their own butts and on the off chance they are sued, most verdicts are so colossal that it has raised all prices of healthcare. Tort reform is a proposed cap put on any damages from a mal-practice lawsuit. Essentially, under a tort reform, a limit is put on damages inflicted upon doctors, so they can’t be sued based on a highly interpretive charges like ‘pain and suffering.’ Though Obama’s proposed government-run, socialized healthcare plan sounds like a winner, a good rule of thumb is to actually stop and think rationally about what it is that is really being approved…a good and practical money-saver, or just another waste of time.

Back to the articles list