Some of us are old enough to remember how healthcare was once handled. You visited a doctor when you were sick. Now you are expected to go for an annual checkup that often results in being sent for additional tests to ensure you are healthy. Worse still are the growing number of people who use the ER as a doctor's office. Local hospitals are being crushed under the burden.
Here is a visual image of the complexity of Obamacare.
Look at Europe. Do they have head nurses who make $135K? Do they have hospital administrators who make $400K? Do they have knee surgeons who make $800K? Do they have salesmen for drug companies who make $250K? If you walk into a hospital in Europe, do you see a marble floor, designer furniture, free wi-fi, and a receptionist who looks like a fashion model?
Only government ‘officials’ could invent such a convoluted system!
That's not "part of the problem" at all. It IS the problem, as I've been saying for years.
We did nothing (but praise the system) when health insurance was State sponsored monopolies.
Not that it’s a Federal sponsored monopoly we get upset.
We should have been busy taking down ALL monopolies.
How? - Government got involved in ‘fixing’ it.... they saw $$$ in that.
As systems become larger they require decentralized control.
If that does not happen, the centralized control will limit the amount of the activity to a level that they can control, which is never satisfactory.
See Soviet Union, Venezuela, North Korea etc. Ad nauseum.
Politicians, insurance, companies, illegal aliens and welfare peoples would be relegated to their previous capitalistic policies and lose their money and power. And they will cry like the monsters they are and hate all who know that obamacare is benefiting the worst people of
America and they do not intend to let that money and power go away. DC is corrupt and the leftist liberal snowflakes are corrupt and so it can only get worse as time goes by as government grows and the citizen decreases.
How Has Our Health Care System Become Such a Mess?
Someone profits greatly either directly or indirectly.
Like PP (abortion) ..why do they require the government if
people, leftist, believve in it so strongly?
The article is a good one, but I have one bone to pick with the author. Since he is a Catholic priest, it would have been good for him to mention the complicity of Catholic hospitals in this whole mess. I believe every one of them in my area has sold out to secular partners who are firmly entrenched in the country’s health care mess.
Government and mainly the Democrats.
A good start would be to reorg the FDA. It has become a bureaucracy that fully caters to big pharma lobbyists. Not safety or the best interests of the people.
First thing that should happen is to fast track approval of foreign drugs that show adequate safety and copyright compliance. For example if China, Canada, Israel, India or any other country can make Sildenafil Citrate pills for $1 each, there is no reason for the FDA to perpetuate Pfizer’s price fixing racket of selling them at $100 each.
The same can be said of the thousands of other life saving drugs that are handled the same way.
There are numerous reasons.
The prolawyer legal system is one
The desire to provide medical treatment for the poor but no facilities other than emergency rooms.
Regulation compliance mandates that made small medical practices un competitive
How Has Our Health Care System Become Such a Mess?
The government started messing with it!!
When I was a child (way back in the 50’s), we went to our doctor, my parents paid him, case closed. No insurance involved! He even gave us pills when needed — no need to go to the drug store.
It should be difficult to say people have a God-given right to an entitlement that is worth about 18 percent of U.S. GDP, or about $10,000 per person. (Actual spending would differ tremendously among people depending on their health. This figure is the average spent on people or what an insurance policy covering all expenditures would cost.)
Such an entitlement would equal global GDP per capita. Such an entitlement would mean there is no money for food, clothing, housing and basic education, or anything else. So, God has not provided the resources necessary for this entitlement.
Maybe God discriminates on the basis of nationality. Americans have a God-given right to health care costing costing $10,000 per person, but not people in Colombia. I doubt it.
One of the things the good father is saying is that there is no God-given right to anything like the average expenditure on health care in the U.S. But, maybe there is a right - in the sense of a Christian duty whether fulfilled through the state apparatus or through private charity - to some level of health care, perhaps varying a bit according to time and place.
For the poor, we in America call this level of medical care “Medicaid.” People who want more than that level, who can afford it, can buy more. Perhaps, if we followed this principle … everybody starts off with Medicaid and those who want more, and can afford it, can buy more … then we can not only fulfill our Christian duty, but also attack whatever it is that is driving the cost of private health care through the roof.
There are two problems with this thinking:
(1) Medicaid is not a lower level of health care. Medicaid people get the same level of medical care as anybody else. Even more, considering that many in the working class cannot afford health care premiums (even with the subsidies) and cannot afford the out-of-pocket expenses.
We have a perverted system where the poor get health care for free, the upper middle class and rich can afford to pay, and the working class is stiffed. It is immoral. Only ignorant people can pretend it is Christian, because it punishes those who work, who marry and who try to raise their children, and reward people who don’t work, who don’t marry, and who abandon their children.
(2) Medicaid only APPEARS to pay for the medical care of the people it covers. In fact, it UNDER-reimburses health care providers, who are expected to OVER-charge those who use private insurance. That is, Medicaid is largely financed on cross-subsidies. Few people know this. Among the people who don’t, is the good father, who thinks health care cooperatives are a solution to the problem. Health care cooperative are absolutely fine. But, were a lot of people to shift out of private insurance to health care cooperatives, the cross-subsidies needed for Medicaid from those remaining on private health insurance would have to be even greater.
(I should say a few things about Medicare: Medicare is an earned entitlement. People pay into the system when they work, and should be able to draw out of it when they qualify for benefits. Nowadays, you can either remain in “traditional” Medicare or use your Medicare dollars to buy qualifying private insurance. I like the choice.)
So, what I conclude from what the good father says, is that we should reconsider what is included in the benefit package that is called Medicaid, so it is affordable to the taxpayer; and, maybe also we should reconsider what is included in the required coverage of private health insurance so working-class families can afford it. Our Christian duty doesn’t mean we provide the same health care to everybody. It means we have a moral obligation to provide a level of health care consisted with human dignity to those who cannot afford to do this for themselves.
The leftist/progressive movement...
It’s simple, government involvement.
Letting Government get involved
“health insurance to pay for every little thing?”
It is quite possible to have a personal fund account (think Health Savings Account) linked to a health insurance card.
You would pay 100%, but your doctor wouldn’t need to pay people to take your checks. Your doctor would bill your insurer and your insurer would take your money out of your HSA account and give it to your doctor. This can be easily automated.
“it covers ... even the most elective of drugs such as Viagra. Why?”
state treatment parity laws
People run to their state legislators and demand equal treatment - and they get it - because the state gets an income tax cut of every medical expense.