- What is health care reform without a public option?
- What is a “Public Option”?
- Folks are rallying behind Health Care Reform, but do you really know what it is? Why is it important? What’s wrong with the old health care system?
- Can we as a country afford it?
Time to ask some questions. Time to get some answers.
What is health care reform without a public option? No public option. Hmmm… First of all I guess one must ask what exactly is a public option. The public option is a tax payer sponsored plan, that allows the public to opt in if they don’t like anything else that’s out there. It would be sponsored by the government because our government could leverage it’s buying power to get the best prices and therefore bring savings to the insured. Moreover, it is set up to give healthy competition to private insurers in order to help keep prices low.
Well one might say, “Hey! Wait a minute! How can private companies compete with the government? That’s actually anti-business and will control prices and will put an invisible and unspoken cap on industry prices. It would be a de-facto form of regulation and price control”.
Okey Dokey… one could look at it that way, yet another way to look at it is this: The government’s health care would provide essentials. The government’s public option is meant to steer our society towards preventative services so the ER is no longer America’s number one stop for health services.
“That’s all nice to hear but you’re skirting the issue about regulation and price control.” Well actually the government isn’t. Since the government is offering the basics, there is nothing out there that says private insurers can’t offer different tiers of services. Better services, such as longer stays in hospitals. Fast track services. And services that are not basic, yet desired. The big word here is “Services”. Service. The insurance industry is a trillion dollar a year operation that has placed its focus on how much they make, rather than how much they make because of the quality of service they provide. In doctorly terms, they’ve become the elective plastic surgeon rather than the family doctor. Though there is room for both, it must be remembered that medical insurance is the supportive arm of medicine, doctors and healing. That’s how they began. Health insurance actually began as a means for a safety net for those who should need medical care would be able to afford it because they pay in a little at a time over the course of time and it would be there for them. It was indeed a valuable service to their medical needs. But… those who paid in and did not have to use it found that they were creating a pool of funds that insurers could take chances on investing and turning profits, while pharmaceutical companies saw this same pool as a reason to be able to raise and raise the price of drugs. And why not? It’s not coming out of an individual’s pocket, it’s coming out of the insurer’s huge pool of money.
So the games began. The insurers got into the money game, with their investments, which included so called research funding to pharmaceutical companies and then the cutting back of services to the insured as cost cutting efforts to keep that big pool of money big. Thus the decline of service had begun.
So how does a public option fit in? It’s a means to get back to basics. Oh sure, folks can still make money. It’s America. It’s capitalism. But, it’s also time to take a step back and bring service back into the paradigm of the concept and practice of medical health care. The public option puts this ball into play.
“Lastly, since you know everything… CAN WE AFFORD IT?”
No one blinked an eye nor asked could we afford to bomb Iraq. And if they did, they eventually went along with the program… err…war, because it was for the good of our country. There are fifty million Americans who do not have health care. Our health care system is in shambles. Once again, now is not the time to blink.
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