Healthcare Reform - Whats in a name?
March 05, 2010
– Comments (9)
So I finally did it. I held my nose and read the most recent version of the healthcare reform proposal. I was reading it in hopes that maybe, just maybe, this big bill that they are going to shove down our throats whether we like it or not may actually have some good proposals in it. As I was reading I noticed one glaring fact. This is not healthcare reform. Its health insurance reform. Every single proposal has to do with health insurance. Nothing addresses the actual healthcare. Yet we call it healthcare reform.
As I was reading through the document my eyes lit up when I saw a section called "Improve individual responsibility". My skeptical expression returned when I saw that their version of improving individual responsibility means punishing people who choose to opt out of health insurance. I thought this was the land of the free.
What really puzzles me about this whole reform is the liberal media spins opposition to the bill as if the "insurance lobbyists" are against the bill. But when I read the actual proposals, it seems like the insurance companies will mostly benefit from this bill. I would think making health insurance mandatory and adding 30+ million people to your customer base could only increase profits. And the bill doesnt say that health insurance companies can't raise rates. Its just rate increases can't be to honerous. Further, it looks like they will allow insurance companies to compete across state lines.
There are a few downsides for insurance companies in this bill. Insurance companies are no longer allowed to put lifetime maximums on insurance policies, decline customers due to pre-existing conditions, or as mentioned earlier, jack up rates sky high.
But this whole bill screams of more of a deal with the devil rather than actual healthcare reform. In the meantime, theres no incentive for people to improve their lifestyles in order to lower healthcare costs on the consumer side. If you want to smoke, drink, and eat and not exercise you are perfectly free to do so because you are covered by health insurance. If your doctor wants to prescribe 20 unneccesary tests just so that he's not on the recieving end of a multimillion dollar malpractice suit, he's free to do so because you have health insurance. If in the coming years I'm paying more for health insurance (I'm single) than I pay for all my utilities combined, its ok because I have health insurance.
Either way those are my thoughts on healthcare. Its good that I was able to confirm my suspicions about this bill. Yet I still have to deal with this uneasy feeling in my stomach as this bill comes closer to passing. Is that a pre-existing condition?
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