It’s not fought where you think.
Hillary Clinton takes pains to prove that she will faithfully continue the work Mr. Obama has done to destroy health care, women, and the nation. She calls herself “the best standard bearer for the president’s health care act.”
The Obama administration has admitted that premiums for plans under the Unaffordable Care Act known as Obamacare would soar by an average of 25% next year.
“I want us to defend and build on the Affordable Care Act and improve it,” Ms. Clinton said. “That is one of the greatest accomplishments of President Obama, of the Democratic Party and of our country.”
Greatest.
My new friend Diana Bauer, up where the air is thin in New Mexico, was forced onto a Bronze plan. “Last year my premium was $389 per month for covering practically nothing,” she said. “I’m afraid to go to the doctor.”
It gets worse.
“I got a little bonus at the end of last year and all of it and more was eaten at tax time because it bumped my premium for the entire year. With the new rates coming, I won’t be able to afford ‘Bronze-level’ coverage. I need ‘dirt-level’ coverage.”
16 million American women do not have health insurance despite the Obamacare juggernaut Ms. Clinton will defend. Without significant change, Ms. Bauer and many, many more will rejoin the ranks of uninsured next year.
Yeppers, that’s one of the great accomplishments of Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party. There are more and Ms. Clinton will faithfully continue them.
“If fighting for women’s health care and paid family leave and equal pay [and raising the minimum wage] is playing the woman card, then deal me in,” Ms. Clinton says on the stump.
3.7 million more American women ive in poverty than when Mr.Obama took office. In 2015, there were 43.1 million people in poverty, up from 39.3 million in 2008. Even NPR admits that “there are somewhere in the neighborhood of six million more people in poverty now than there were before Obama took office.” There are 24.1 million women living in poverty now, up from 20.4 million in 2008.
Fighting for women.
Yeppers, that’s another of great accomplishment of Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party. Ms. Clinton, the self-proclaimed “women’s champion,” will faithfully continue that trend.
I agree that this is a problem that needs to be fixed. I say move to a single payer system and cut out the insurance companies unless you want to pay more for special services. What is your plan?
Sadly, that’s not the answer. Single payer is just that. It is a method to pay for health care concentrated in the hands of one entity, usually a government agency. It fixes nothing in and of itself.
Turkey, f’rex, has single payer with a delivered cost of ~$941 per capita. That country has an entirely socialized public health system fully financed and administered by the central government. Unfortunately, their early successes are leveling off and costs are rising as delivery improves. And I’m not sure you would have wanted to have your surgery in Siran or Buharkent.
OTOH, Mexico spends $1,048 per capita for a healthcare system that includes public institutions, private entities, and private physicians. all the private providers are entirely free-market system so care is available only to those who can afford it. Cost is right down there with Turkey, though, and outcomes in Mexico are slightly higher — in fact, many US residents take “medical vacations” to Mexico.
US healthcare costs are perilously close to $10,000 per capita, ten times more than these examples.
The bottom line is that *how* we pay is not the question to answer yet. *What* we pay for and *how much* it costs are crucial.
Fixing “health care” has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with what doctor lives in your town or how you pay to buy a drug or how you get to the clinic or who pays the bills. We’ll handle all those issues after some groundwork.
At its most basic, Health Care has one essential job to do: to heal people. We can ask our Health Care system only to keep people from getting sick or injured and to treat people when they do. No more and no less.
That’s the first objective of the commission I would assemble to design they system. The second objective is to figure out how to cut the price in half. And then do it again.