Republicans from the smallest neighborhoods in the U.S. all the way up to the United States Senate have been in an uproar since President Obama and the Democrats in our federal government have been pushing for public option health care. Activism has ranged from chain e-mails to nationally organized “tea parties.” Critics of HR 3200 and those protesting it have earned quite the reputation in the American media. Maybe you don’t have to wait a year for routine health care in Canada, and our government is probably not forming “death panels.” However, the truth remains that the bill is not going through, so these “tea baggers” are clearly onto something. The Democrats keep “refuting” Republican arguments, and the Republicans keep seeing right through them.
If I were on the sidelines of this argument, I would be wondering what “moderate” Republicans, or “smart” Republicans were thinking in not standing behind HR 3200. This bill, widely referred to as a bill promoting the public option, has some problems.
The first problem with the public option plan is there are holes in the bill intended to lead the U.S. into a “single payer” health care system within the next five years. The first mistake Republicans made in advertising what was so wrong with the “public option,” was calling it the “public option” in the first place. It is important to see not the results this bill would produce in the next year, but to look at the picture it paints for America over the next five years.
The main issues that outspoken critics are concerned with are speed and efficiency of care. This is, however, not nearly as much of a fiasco as most critics say that it is. Most people in other countries with national health care coverage receive care quickly and on time. All that individuals on both sides of our debate have to fight each other with on this issue are stories from their grandmas, aunts, uncles, cousins, Fox News and MSNBC. The concerning type of illnesses here are those illnesses which are rare, under-researched and serious. Without the capabilities and ambitions of the private market, or individuals, help beyond the medical status quo might be hard to come by. Other people in the world right now can come to the U.S. for care in this situation, but if we cross over to socialized medicine, where are they going to go?
Democrats continually insist that private companies will be able to compete with a government-run healthcare plan, so this will not be a problem. This is simply not true on a practical level. Private health insurance will exist, but will only be truly affordable for those people who make the top amount of money in America. What this will ultimately do is force the middle class out of private health insurance and on to a government-run option which was originally designed for those who could not afford health care in the first place, not the middle class. This can potentially lower the quality of care for those in the middle class and broaden the class gap even more.
In a country where we claim to be proponents of the middle class and working class, this not only does not make sense but is unacceptable coming from those who say that a healthy, functioning middle class is essential to a prosperous America.
Although the public option bill has been the hot media topic, there are numerous other plans being thrown around the House and Senate.
One health care bill proposition by Sen. Baucus (D-Mont.), is an effort at bipartisan support but highly depends on the “proper reaction” from the economy. This health care plan does not have a public option or government-run option for individuals but plans on taxing the high cost, or “over the top” health care plans in hopes that businesses will choose more reasonable plans for their employees; thus reducing the over use of health care services.
The plan is projected to cost $850-900 billion over the next 10 years. This plan also taxes health insurance companies at a rate which would raise a new $6 billion for the plan each year. This is not seen as much of a problem because if things go as planned, health insurance companies will obtain 40 million new customers.
What this plan does not have is a “trigger” for the public option. It has been proposed that along with this plan there should be the provision that in any state which cannot provide more than 95 percent of their citizens with affordable health care, there will be a public option provided.
This idea seems to be one of the most realistic Democrats have come up with to incorporate the public option into health care. The problem here lies in the fact that we have no idea how much this is really going to cost. We can predict the way the market will react to the Baucus plan in specific states and the nation as a whole, but there is never a guarantee.
There are so many factors in this equation that it might just as well be left up to chance. This is clearly an unwise move because the plan will not pay for itself even without a public option, not to mention the debt we have to worry about left from Medicare.
The more general argument against nationalized medicine has little to do with the logistics, and more to do with the prevailing political culture in the U.S.
You will hear many proponents of nationalized medicine say that the U.S. is the only industrialized country without a form of health care coverage for all of their citizens. However, many of these countries were not previously in debt through a system such as Medicare.
A more general and obvious argument is that the U.S. is not other countries. Other states, with the exception of Canada, who have nationalized health care systems are much smaller and don’t have such a wide range of medical problems simply due to the fact that their population is less diverse in terms of everything from ethnicity to geography. That argument is not necessarily one against a socialized health care system but is surely one against a health care system at a federal level as a specific state surely knows better the issues that need to be addressed in their healthcare field than the federal government could ever know. This is simply a testament to the fact that our political culture in the U.S. is different than that of other states, and thus it is not really valid to say that we should do something just because “everyone else is.”
That being said, the question of what we should do is still out there. Democrats seem to be the people with all the answers here and Democrats from state legislatures all the way up to President Obama have said those in opposition to their health care options hold no weight because “the other side has presented no solutions.” I am not about to yell about it in the middle of a speech . but that is just a blatant lie.
Many other health insurance and health care plans are being pushed forward by Republicans and have gone unnoticed because most Democrats are frankly not interested in bipartisan support. Republican house members such as our own Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), have been hard at work drafting plans. Rep. Ryan’s plan calls for all Americans to be ensured without raising government spending or taxes and is titled the Patients’ Choice Act.
Other pieces of proposed legislation are the Medical Rights and Reform Act, and the Empowering Patients First Act, both of which also focus on lowering health care costs, covering all Americans and fiscal conservatism in our health care system. So to say Republicans are not working just as hard to create a plan for the American people is an unfair lie by those who so desperately want to gain support for their own lost cause.
In my mind, it is not only sad and a little intrusive, but it is flat out insulting that the federal government wants to find yet another way to even slightly regulate my life in Wisconsin all the way from Washington D.C. There are some people who are truly in a disadvantaged position and need friends, family and even the government to step into their lives in the area of health care every so often. However, too many people who say that their lack of health care coverage is “not a choice” have not even looked at their options or their budget.
What I would say to those people is that it is your choice to go out and spend money, your choice to have your cell phone, your choice to go get that tattoo or piercing, your choice to spend four times more on organic food or your choice to not have a job. This is a situation that for most people is more about choice than they might even take the time to realize, and it is insulting and essentially pointless to have your government subsidize a part of your life that you are, for the most part, fully capable of paying for yourself.
