EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS-88

HEALTH CARE CHANGE

I just heard John Boehner, Speaker of the House, and President Obama comment on health care within the same hour. Not a pretty sight. Both need to do something else. We would all be better off. When queried about the Republican approach to health care, the Speaker referred to an obscure (to most people) government website for the Republican approach to health care. He has been in government too long. What is wrong or hard about a clear statement of the Republican approach? I am a conservative voter and I could not tell anyone what the Republican position on health care is in any detail. The leadership of the Republican Party is sadly lacking in talking to the American people.

On the Progressive side, we have plenty of detail. Plus 10,000 pages and hundreds of executive regulations and changes to The Affordable Care Act. A fog of words, both written and spoken. Many spoken by a man who consistently lies to sell his radical change agenda. I don’t believe a word of what President Obama said in his press conference on November 14, 2013. His goal was clear, however, and that is to keep the Congress from passing any legislation on Obamacare by engaging in another unconditional executive decree. If Democrats and Republicans ever got together, they just might come up with reasonable changes to health care that would benefit all Americans.

Since that probably won’t happen, as the Speaker seems to be comfortable with Obama doing his job, I’ll list the eight principles of health care that I think should guide fixing health care:

Help the people who do not have health care either because they can’t afford it or can’t qualify because of pre-existing conditions. After means testing, provide government subsidies to those who cannot purchase the coverage they need.
Do not include people who already have health care they have selected and like.
Allow insurance companies to sell their plans across state lines.
Pass tort reform legislation to limit the impact of lawyer profits from questionable malpractice law suits.
Allow children to be covered on their parents’ health insurance plans until age 26.
Consider legislation to restore the doctor/patient relationship to control costs and improve patient control of their medical choices.
Allow policy holders to select what they want covered and the deductible they want.
People own their insurance coverage and it goes with them when changing employment or retiring.
Do not allow the executive departments of HHS and the IRS to be involved in the management of health care.

We have the best health care system in the world. Let’s fix only the things that are broken in a step-by-step approach.

Escape From ObamaCare (online.wsj.com)
Obama announces fix for canceled healthcare plans from Obamacare (nydailynews.com)

4 Comments

Filed under Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, Obamacare, Progressives

Tagged as affordable care act, Americans, Barack Obama, Democratic Party (United States), health care, Insurance, John Boehner, Obama, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Republicans, solutions to health care, United States

by Barry Kelly | November 4, 2013 · 3:51 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS-85 THE ADVISOR

IS ANYONE OUT THERE?

Fighting loneliness in his subterranean office suite was the Advisor’s hardest problem. When he was approached a few years ago by the Keepers of the Book to become the next Advisor, he had had no idea how hard it would be to maintain perspective without face-to-face human contact. After his wife died, the Advisor had moved to an isolated cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains where he could write and think in peace and quiet. When the Keepers of the Book approached him, he had thought How hard could it be to go from my ridge-line cabin to an underground existence? Turns out it was very hard. He even looked forward to the twice a month delivery of food and supplies even though no conversation was permitted.

In reading of the Advisor Journals from long ago times, he could sense the isolation and loneliness that plagued his predecessors. He searched the journals for ways to cope but found none, only just to endure day by day. If only the President would allow him to get more involved it would help. Sometimes he thought, I may be the only person in America who enjoys talking to the man. He continued his musing.

Obviously, the President is tangled in the mess of the Affordable Care Act‘s rollout of its website. Another example of a hands-off management style. The President is a superb campaigner as long as the opposition cannot figure out what he wants. After five years, thousands of people have figured out Obamacare is primarily a giant step to a socialist government. Health care is not the prime issue. The real issue is capturing seven or eight percent of the nation’s economy. The cost doesn’t matter. Patient care doesn’t matter. Destroying the best medical system in the world doesn’t matter. The history of socialized medicine is ignored.

Every progressive/socialist is comfortable that the government knows better than the people what medical plan is good for them. The Progressives fervently believe that anyone who doesn’t like Obamacare is either a racist or a selfish-right-wing-tea drinking Republican. Why don’t they recognized health care can be fixed without destroying what works now? Tort reform, competition across state boundaries, concentrating on those who don’t have insurance coverage and want it would fix most of the health care system. Obamacare or any health care system cannot work without bi-partisan support and a full debate and discussion of each proposal.

If the people and states don’t fight it now, they will have little or no chance of fending off the imposition of a full socialist society. By the time the real Democrats wake up they will find their party gone. Big government bureaucrats will control all aspects of their lives. The people have to wake up and pay attention or the greatest democracy in the history of the world will be gone.

Overcome by his musing and in an effort to fight the quiet loneliness, the Advisor became to speak his thoughts out loud. “Elites don’t need to worry. They always get special treatment in totalitarian, socialist governments. After all, they make the rules and they know what the people need. Just ask any Russian senior citizen. All Progressive movements start with hope and change and end up with camps and no economic, religious , or political freedom. If you’re not in the elite Progressive hierarchy, prepare yourself for a quick slide to poverty and government medicine. Don’t worry, the issue won’t be you can’t keep your own doctor. The challenge will be you don’t have and can’t see any doctor when you want or need to. Fight now or pay later!” The Advisor hoped he was wrong, but was afraid he wasn’t, and there was no one to tell.