On Heath Care: Insuring the Uninusured Appears No Longer Important!

Going all the way back to Hilliary-Care in the early 1990's, the push for health care reform in America has always been to inure those -- now 46 million Americans -- who have no health care insurance. Suddenly, with Obama in office and with the Democrats in full-throttle control of our government, the need to insure the uninsured has become less important than totally dismantling our current health care system.

The goal now seems to be for the Democrats to create a single-payer health care system that is run by the government and that will ration health care so that bureaucrats of Washington, D. C. -- not your doctor -- can decide what medical procedures and practices are necessary to keep you alive. That decision won't be based on efficacy but, instead, simply based on cost. In the health care world according to the Democrats, there will be no extraordinary efforts, by either drugs or procedures, to save our lives. The Democrats not only see this as reducing health care costs in this country; but, they also believe it will save Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid by literally shortening the lives of an ever aging population who statistically rack up the largest amount of medical expenses in the last few years of their lives. But, you will never actually hear that from any of them. One of the biggest expenses of Medicare/Social Security is the cost of long-term nursing home care for people being increasingly kept alive "longer" by extraordinary medical practices and drugs.

I know that insuring the uninsured is no longer important because the initial Kennedy-Dodd Senate bill for health care reform only reduced the uninsured population from 46 million to 38 million. So, obviously, the plight of the uninsured is not what's really important to the Democrats. Simply, they want to have complete control of our health care and, subsequently, our lives. Or, better said, control over our deaths.

Nowhere in the Kennedy bill or in the Obama mindset on health care reform are there any plans for tort reform to reduce rapidly rising monetary awards stemming from medical malpractice lawsuits. It is these awards that are, more than anything, pushing up costs. Almost every economics study of health care costs in America have identified malpractice lawsuits as the primary driver behind the rapidly rising costs. By far, we are ten times more the litigious society than any other country in the world. If countries like Britain, France, and Canada had the same malpractice activity as seen in this country, their health care costs would be just as expensive as ours.

To put this fact into perspective, just think about what happens in a court room when a doctor and his insurance company are being sued for supposed malpractice. The lawyer representing the litigant in the malpractice suit won't ever focus on what that doctor did right in providing care to his client. Instead, that lawyer will focus on what the doctor didn't do or should have done in the most perfect of medical worlds. To reinforce that opinion, the lawyer will bring in paid experts to tell the jury what the doctor failed to do. This fact, alone, has driven most doctors in America to protect themselves by initiating every unnecessary test in the world so, that if they do have to go into court, they can testify that they covered all the bases. Besides unnecessary tests, doctors now rely heavily on expensive specialist referrals as a means of covering their rears in the event of any future litigation. That's why health care costs have spiraled out of control. But, the Democrats get a lot a campaign funds from the lawyers and they have no desire to punish these golden geese in order to lower heath care costs. They would rather ration health care than minimize big paydays for the lawyers of America.

If all that health care reform is supposed to do is to cover the uninsured, the task is both simple and cheaply done. All you would have to do is force employers to cover all their employees through some access to lower cost pooled insurance. Then, for those not able to afford insurance, provide private pooled insurance that is partially funded by the taxpayers. Further, make insurance coverage portable so that workers can move from one job to another without losing insurance. As part of this portability requirement, make it illegal for insurers to exclude coverage for anyone who has a pre-existing medical condition.

But, the true fact is that Obama, Kennedy, Pelosi and Reid and the rest of the Democrats could really care less about the uninsured. Their goal is all about government control. And, that's the truth!