ARGUMENT #5 FOR SUPPORTING THE ACA
IT'S NOT SOCIALISM AND IT'S NOT A GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER!!!
Everybody worries that with ObamaCare, we have steped onto the slippery slope that will lead us straight to socialized medicine. But how close are we to a governemnt takeover?
...
A sample of what the spectrum of healthcare options looks like:
1) Laissez faire (very evil version): the system bases care on ideological grounds: you support the government (or ruling junta) and you get healthcare. We are not here yet. Although, by constantly trying stripping health care from the poor, we are on conversational terms.
2) Laissez faire (slightly less evil version): the system bases care on your ablity to pay and ability to pressure Congress to vote your way. Those with big bucks or political clout get care. The rest have to rely on Bill Gates, nuns and good samaritans. No death panels, but you wish there were -- to increase your odds of surviving.
3) ProfitCare: Insurers, Big Pharma, legislators and health care providers conspire to keep rates high, divert funds to high-profit procedures and medications and bump sick people from the rolls. No new vaccinews, but plenty of drugs for erectile dysfunction and the blues. Sound familiar?
4) ProfitCare with a (kind of) heart: This is ObamaCare. Insurers, Big Pharma and health-care providers stay in business, with some regulation of their activies. Profitability is protected by insuring more people, or getting them to kick in their share. The industry still makes hefty profits, but at least most sick folks get some level of care.
5) Light control: Insurance rates are more highly-regulated, administration is centralized to save money and paperwork, government taxes or subsidizes Big Pharma to get them to provide public service meds like cheap insulin, insurers and hospitals still compete for business and get to and make profits if they are efficient, lucrative fields like cosmetic surgery are open, small-town docs get small stipends to offer care to the inner city, elective procedures available for the wealthy. This is close to what is offered in Europe.
6) Heavier control: like its soft version, but with increasing regs and taxes for elective or medically-unwarranted procedures
7) Goverment takeover: government controls everything: how you pay, how much doctors get, which procedures are covered or legal, how many hospitals exists and where, etc.
We are so far removed from the government takeover of the medical system that the hysteria around ObamaCare is laughable, when it is not a cynical manipulation that seeks to maintain high profits. There are, of course, garduations and variations on all these options. What's amazing to me is that by taking a half-step away from a laissez faire medical model, critics claim that we are "becoming like Europe." As though that is a bad thing, with Europeans dying in the streets by the truckload. As though American health care couldn't possibly get any better.
IT'S NOT SOCIALISM AND IT'S NOT A GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER!!!
Everybody worries that with ObamaCare, we have steped onto the slippery slope that will lead us straight to socialized medicine. But how close are we to a governemnt takeover?
...
A sample of what the spectrum of healthcare options looks like:
1) Laissez faire (very evil version): the system bases care on ideological grounds: you support the government (or ruling junta) and you get healthcare. We are not here yet. Although, by constantly trying stripping health care from the poor, we are on conversational terms.
2) Laissez faire (slightly less evil version): the system bases care on your ablity to pay and ability to pressure Congress to vote your way. Those with big bucks or political clout get care. The rest have to rely on Bill Gates, nuns and good samaritans. No death panels, but you wish there were -- to increase your odds of surviving.
3) ProfitCare: Insurers, Big Pharma, legislators and health care providers conspire to keep rates high, divert funds to high-profit procedures and medications and bump sick people from the rolls. No new vaccinews, but plenty of drugs for erectile dysfunction and the blues. Sound familiar?
4) ProfitCare with a (kind of) heart: This is ObamaCare. Insurers, Big Pharma and health-care providers stay in business, with some regulation of their activies. Profitability is protected by insuring more people, or getting them to kick in their share. The industry still makes hefty profits, but at least most sick folks get some level of care.
5) Light control: Insurance rates are more highly-regulated, administration is centralized to save money and paperwork, government taxes or subsidizes Big Pharma to get them to provide public service meds like cheap insulin, insurers and hospitals still compete for business and get to and make profits if they are efficient, lucrative fields like cosmetic surgery are open, small-town docs get small stipends to offer care to the inner city, elective procedures available for the wealthy. This is close to what is offered in Europe.
6) Heavier control: like its soft version, but with increasing regs and taxes for elective or medically-unwarranted procedures
7) Goverment takeover: government controls everything: how you pay, how much doctors get, which procedures are covered or legal, how many hospitals exists and where, etc.
We are so far removed from the government takeover of the medical system that the hysteria around ObamaCare is laughable, when it is not a cynical manipulation that seeks to maintain high profits. There are, of course, garduations and variations on all these options. What's amazing to me is that by taking a half-step away from a laissez faire medical model, critics claim that we are "becoming like Europe." As though that is a bad thing, with Europeans dying in the streets by the truckload. As though American health care couldn't possibly get any better.
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