Well the good news is that the house passed a health care bill. The bad news is that it probably won't pass in the Senate how it is. I don't understand why there is so much people against the government for setting up a system that will allow everyone the opportunity to get some form of health insurance. People complain that it will cost them more money. Who do they think is paying for the uninsured now? When people go to the emergency room to get basic health care because they can't get turned away, and can't pay that bill, who do you think ends up footing the bill? The hospital just charges everyone else more to make up for the loss. Who do they think is paying for the health care costs for people on welfare? If you pay taxes, then you are, already.
Here are some basic reasons why a health care plan is needed:
1) There are millions of people not insured as the jobs they have don't offer it, and they can't afford it on thier own.
2) Some companies do offer some health care plan, but the employee contribution amount is so high and their salary is so low, that if they paid for their portion of the plan, they couldn't afford rent, food, etc. along with health care.
3) There are some who stay on public assistance because if they started to work, they would lose the health benefits for thier family, as most of the jobs they find they would not be able to afford rent, food and health care.
4) There are a lot of people that are self employed and try to get insurance for their family, but can't as someone in thier family has a "pre-existing condition", or find that after the insurance company has taken thier money for years, when they have a substancial claim the insurance company drops them or deny payment for the claim because only then they will find something they will call a pre-existing condition.
Government is supposed to be "for the people". I can't think of anything more "for the people" than to try to ensure everyone has the chance to have affordable health care coverage. I have heard that universal health care is not a constitutional right. That may be true, but come on, are we as a people that callous that we don't care if some kids die or suffer because their parents tried to work as they didn't want to be on public assistance, but couldn't get a job that would provide affordable health care? Then they couldn't get their kids medical treatment until it was too late because they didn't realize they were that sick and couldn't really afford to take them to the doctor? Do people realize that we are also making public assistance "lifers" because they won't take the chance of that happening with thier families? How much do you think that costs you? I'll bet most of the people that bitch about paying taxes for a government health care plan will be one of the first ones bitching that the government didn't do enough for kids that suffer from a lack of health care.
Another big argument I have heard against a health care law is that government will screw it up..... and this arguments has even been made by some congresspeople. Government doesn't have to screw it up. It is the very people who are using that argument, who are trying to dilute it and tilt it to the insurance companies favor that are screwing it up. It will be easy to make the law include provisions that the premiums for the government version has to cover the costs, i.e. not subsidize premiums for people that make enough to pay for it, and they can offer subsidies for people making under so much a year for any plan they chose. That would not put a disadvantage to the insurance companies.
The disadvantage the insurance companies would have is that they would have to figure out how to compete with the government who wouldn't have multimillion dollar executives to pay, nor would they have shareholders they have to pay. I feel this is the main reason they fight a health care bill so much, they are afraid that they will have to accept that they might have to limit thier own salaries to compete and still pay their shareholders. And they fight by trying to spread some misinformation and scaring people into being against it. They can't fight with good numbers so they hired a firm to study only parts of the health care bill to try to come up with a large number for cost to scare people and then relay those numbers as an actual cost of the bill. Then they spend a lot of money to pressure congresspeople to dilute and fight the bill. It is just shameful
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