15.4 percent of the population is uninsured, but it is a myth that we should care about this number. By focusing on the UNINSURED as a targeted “Solution,” to the health care crisis, consumers opened the door for endless financial pain and physical jeopardy in the event they ever need ANYTHING but wellness care by allowing other stakeholders to identify CONSUMERS (albeit uninsured consumers) as the cause of the problem and therefore as the MEANS TO A SOLUTION for the crisis in health care.
Enough with the junk facts and minutiae. Get to the real deal. Why do YOU care how many people are uninsured? The answer is that in our system you should not. How do you know this? Fill in the blank: If everyone had health insurance (was insured) then I would benefit because…
Do you believe the Obamacare pitch that if everyone had health insurance then more people would PAY for their health care which would SAVE everyone else money because health care providers wouldn’t have to charge more to cover their anticipated costs of non-paying patients?
Is this logical? No. Unless you believe that the only reason health care costs are high is because of certain bad debts, like retailers allowing for theft, or unpaid credit card bills by charging everyone else more.
But, let’s say that you do believe that. Now, if that same retailer reduces theft and gets paid by more customers, is it logical to assume that the retailer will forward those savings on to CONSUMERS? Not usually. What is usual is that the retailer makes more money because now it’s increased the money it takes in. There is NO reasonable assumption that can be made that those savings will be passed onto the consumer.
How do I know that the same scenario will follow in the event EVERYONE is insured? Because we’ve already seen it. Under Obamacare anyone who doesn’t buy insurance has to pay a tax to the government. How does that benefit you? It doesn’t.
How does that tax benefit healthcare providers who want to increase the amount of money they get? It doesn’t, the money isn’t used to help pay the uninsured’s medical debt.
OK, now ask the next question…If there are no uninsured do you anticipate that your health costs for needed medical care will go down? The answer to this one is NO. Health care costs in the US are high and keep rising because our system tolerates exorbitant charges by healthcare providers. However you want to justify those charges, the US is without rival when it comes to how much people pay for needed medical care. Do you think that by getting paid more by patients who formerly didn't pay means that healthhcare providers will charge less? There is NO evidence that will be the case. There will just be the next excuse.
The persistent and outrageously high costs of health-care in the US have been reported all over and continue in spite of Obamacare as reported in an annual study by the International Federation of Health Plans, discussed by Ezra Klein in his article, “21 graphs that show America’s Health-Care Prices are Ludicrous,” 3/26/2013, (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/26/21-graphs-that-show-americas-health-care-prices-are-ludicrous/).
There is NO meaningful way that health care charges are addressed in Obamacare AND actually, the likelihood is that these costs will go up faster for any American who is not covered by an entitlement program (Veteran benefit, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare) as health care providers and health insurance companies continue to increase their profits in spite of new restrictions on how much money they get from governments, meaning who will pick up the slack? Citizens. Those who get entitlements will also see expenses go up but at a slower rate. Who wins? Not consumers.
So what’s the myth? The myth was the identification of the uninsured as one of the key reasons for America’s health care crisis. How do we know? Because there is ZERO direct evidence that having any health insurance, no matter how inadequate that product is will improve either the cost of health care in the US or impact one of the most obvious measurements of health, life span of the citizens of a nation, where the US ranks 26th out of 36 countries according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
What can we do? Confine discussion of the “Uninsured,” to whether it improves the healthcare crisis as it was alleged to do by way of a continued examination of the individual mandate to determine A) whether it reduces the number of uninsured and B) whether the drop in the number of uninsured has improved life span in the US. It is proposed here that UNLESS there is evidence that there is improved health measured by lifespan year-over-year when the number of uninsured is decreased, then the provision should be amended to expire, there should be no individual mandate.
