I am coming to the conclusion that the Republican establishment does not want to Repair the Healthcare System.
The Republican establishment has the same goal as the Democratic establishment.
Recently the mainstream media is saying that a single party payer system is looking good.
Neither party has any interest is having consumers control their healthcare dollars. It looks as if both parties want the government to control the consumer’s healthcare dollars.
All the politicians ignore the fact that government control is unaffordable. It also ends up not working.
The best example is the bureaucratic VA Hospital System and its system wide corruption.
A reader wrote:
“I have read your last blog post carefully and agree with many of the points put forward but there is a glaring omission.”
“How are patients supposed to be responsible for their healthcare dollars when there is absolutely no transparency and no consistency in pricing.”
The lack of transparency is a major defect in our present healthcare system.
Only 20% of consumers use the healthcare system at any one time. Eighty percent of the consumers have not run into the lack of transparency problem in the healthcare system.
Most consumers do not care about transparency because they have first dollar coverage provided by their employer. They think their medical care is free. They believe they have excellent healthcare insurance.
President Obama took care of that notion with Obamacare. The defective structure of Obamacare caused healthcare insurance premiums and deductibles to skyrocket. First dollar healthcare insurance became too expensive for most employers.
Employers stopped providing first dollar coverage. Middle class employees are now noticing that out of pocket expenses have made their healthcare insurance unaffordable. Consumers have tried to compare prices of competitive providers. They have discovered that it is impossible!
Consumers are becoming aware of the lack of transparency. They have been astonished by this lack of transparency.
There is nothing in the new Republican bill that addresses Republican politicians’ awareness that the lack of transparency is a major defect in the healthcare system.
The lack of transparency is only one of the major defects in our healthcare system.
There is nothing in the Republican bill that speaks to the consumers’ responsibility for their health and healthcare dollars. Consumer driven healthcare is completely ignored.
There is nothing in the bill that addresses effective tort reform. The Massachusetts Medical Society survey showed that defensive testing to avoid lawsuits costs the healthcare system between $250 billion to $700 billion dollars a year.
The lack of the development of systems of care for chronic diseases cost another $700 billion dollars a year that our healthcare system does not address. There is nothing in the bill that emphasizes this very important defect in the healthcare system.
The Republican establishment thinks consumers are too stupid to take care of themselves.
The mainstream media likes to tell us that people love entitlements. The public does not want to give up these entitlements.
My question is how come less than 9 million people signed up for Obamacare’s individual healthcare plans last year if they love entitlements?
It is because they cannot afford to buy the health exchange insurance even though 85% of the premiums of those 9 million consumers are subsided by the government. Their high deductibles are not subsidized.
The Republicans are going claim they are promoting health savings accounts. The public is not told the amount of money they can put into a health savings account or whether it will provide first dollar coverage over that amount if they get sick.
There is no financial incentive for consumers to be responsible for their healthcare or their healthcare dollars.
My Ideal Medical Saving Account is a much better idea.
These are only a few of the major defects in the Republican establishment’s concept to fix the healthcare system.
President Obama did some of the awful things to Obamacare through rules and regulations after certain vested interests complained about the law. Obamacare’s rules and regulations have to be eliminated
There were crony waivers that would make one’s blood boil. In fact, elected congressional members got the best exemptions.
It is becoming apparent that congress doesn’t want to fix the healthcare system for the majority of Americans. The congressional establishment wants to control consumers.
Socialism does not work!
Our political establishment does not tell us about the economic result in other countrys’ single party payer universal healthcare systems.
We don’t have to go to other countries. We only have to go to the indigent areas in California were everyone is covered by Medicaid.
The Republican establishment needs to get off the stick before all of them are kicked out of congress.
Just imagine the healthcare systems savings if every consumer were empowered to shop for the best healthcare at the best price.
The result would be a free market healthcare system in which competition would cleanse the system and make it affordable to everyone.
The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” is, mine and mine alone.
All Rights Reserved © 2006 – 2017 “Repairing The Healthcare System” Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE
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