I don’t think that current lawmakers are capable of continuing the necessary work to reform healthcare and in some instances modify the provisions of Obamacare. What comes across more than anything else is that they, Democratic and Republican are essentially OUT OF IDEAS.
The Health Care Cost Institute, HCCI, published its, “Press Release: 2012 Health Care Cost and Utilization Report,” http://www.healthcostinstitute.org/news-and-events/press-release-2012-health-care-cost-and-utilization-report, and among the statements made, “Out-of-Pocket Spending Continued to Grow,” stating, “Out-of-pocket spending for consumers continued to rise, and grew faster than health care payer expenditures.”
That’s right, OUR out-of-pocket spending was the biggest increase in paying for healthcare. Not the insurance companies, not the government, us. This is the trend where consumers must advocate for reform.
Even as insurance companies put in more restrictions on how, where, when and what type of healthcare people can get, even as the Federal government attaches more hoops for people to jump through to obtain health insurance assistance, they are doing so AND WE ARE PAYING MORE, THEY ARE PROVIDING LESS ASSISTANCE IN PAYING FOR NEEDED MEDICAL CARE AND SERVICES IN THE EVENT A PERSON NEEDS SUCH CARE. Remember, ultimately insurance is ONLY as valuable as its ability to help you pay for needed medical care and services when you get sick, covering the contingency, if I get sick, then I won’t go broke. We are less secure than ever in this realm.
It’s a model of an abusive relationship. Much like a boss who pays well and demands a lot, then stops paying as well and demands the same amount, then cannibalizes your vacation time, your raises, your job security and STILL demands the same level of performance, the scenario slowly transforms into a situation where the boss eventually asserts that you should be “grateful” for your job even as your situation has worsened and worsened and worsened.
So the model is going with health insurance. We are being told to be grateful that there is any insurance at all, that Medicare must break its promise and change its agreement with workers who have paid in for decades, we are told that insurance companies cannot cover the sick and aged as well as they did in years past and remain profitable, even as we are expected to pay more.
Just like with the abusive employer relationship described above, at some point, people say, “Enough.” Of course, people who have been with an employer longer and are older have less power and are more afraid that they will not be able to replace the job even at the level they have it now, while younger people more confident that they have the time and flexibility to find a better job leave the abusive employer. Obamacare addressed that issue by mandating the purchase of health insurance, essentially telling young people, “You MUST participate,” because before Obamacare millions of young Americans had opted out the abusive “relationship.”
Consumers MUST stay alert to this trend and prevent too much time passing before putting the brakes on the abusive relationship. You provide less, you should charge less OR AT LEAST you should put fewer barriers between the consumer and the services your product still does provide. Unfortunately, this is not the case, our costs are up AND we’ve got more new rules to comply with to obtain the same product whether it’s paying more or jumping through additional hoops. Ultimately, it won’t work.
Consumers need to prepare for the day when the payers other than themselves say, “You’re lucky you have insurance at all,” and before we become too old, and too afraid, we should insist on common-sense changes to our healthcare reform “policies.”
There is nothing new coming out of all the talking lawmakers, and new thoughts that can counter the abusive relationship of consumers and healthcare providers must be our direction. The first step should be to get rid of Obamacare handouts, not because they’re good but because they’re bad, they’re a way of creating a dependence on premium assistance to soften the blow of the trend that is less coverage for more money. But like the employee who is older and more afraid, our ability and courage to demand more lessens each year we spend in that abusive relationship so that as we get less, and less and less and pay more and more and more, we will have even less will, less leverage and less time to make meaningful change.
