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Posts Tagged ‘single payer’

Universal Healthcare aka government run healthcare.

June 23rd, 2009 1 comment

Think about it….companies shop around for the best deal on insurance on behalf of their employees. They do this to keep the cost down. If the government offers lower cost health care than private insurers, just watch how fast companies don’t offer insurance anymore. This will improve the companies’ bottom lines. And private insurance will then basically have to go away because people, looking for the best deal, will buy into the government’s plan. Insurance companies can’t offer group pricing for health care when there is no one in the group. So, private insurance companies will not be able to compete. All this sounds OK so far, right? Lower cost health care for everyone! Wrong. First thing that will happen is the government will raise taxes to cover the expense of treating everyone. Even after raising taxes, when the gov’t figures out that they can’t afford to pay for every person that wants to be checked for a cold, or a sports injury, or needs a knee replaced, or bypass surgery, they will start finding ways to deny service. The UK already does this. They are denying smokers bypass surgery and overweight people hip and knee replacements claiming that their “lifestyle choices” are what created the need for treatment. The other side of this is that the government will start mandating how much it will pay for service. This will cause hospitals to lose income. And physicians, surgeons, anesthesiologists, etc. will all have to take pay cuts. People who wanted to be doctors may pick a different career path because of this. Doctors, lawyers, baseball players, football players etc. may get into their field because they love it, but they stay because they get paid enormous sums of money. So, while the messiah says that the government isn’t going to take away your option to keep your current health care, he’s not being totally honest. He knows that companies will dump the costs of healthcare leaving the employees with very few options, one of which is the government’s plan. And my prediction is that if that happens, if the only real option for health insurance is the government plan…it won’t be too long before the government passes a law that says you have to buy it. I’ll leave you with this thought…If a doctor has the opportunity to treat someone who will pay out of their pocket for care at a rate higher than the insurance would pay, don’t you think he’ll take that patient and put that patient in front of all other patients? (This happens in the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia.) So there’s another “new law opportunity” for Congress.

Supporting link: http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=18103