Health Care
I am about to expose my 23 year old son to America's health care system - uninsured! He's got a low grade problem which has persisted for about a month. My general philosophy on these things is that you usually you get better, but sometimes you get worse; this doesn't seem to be doing either.
My son is marginally employed - he works about 12 hours a week - but he hasn't even been doing that since his recent problem developed. So there's no medical insurance through work, and he doesn't earn enough to buy an individual policy. He's got an underlying medical condition that prevents him from qualifying for the lower cost policies sometimes made available to young people.
So he's about to get a physical and probably get some tests for which an insurance company would pay a couple hundred dollars; my son's bill will probably be double that.
I understand all the arguments against getting the government involved in health care, But, what the people making those arguments don't seem to get is that the existing system isn't working! We've got however many people who have no health insurance, people with health insurance are seeing higher premiums and co-pays and sharing more and more premium costs with their employers. The FDA is approving new drugs each year which carry a premium price tag, on the basis of clinical trials that are only later subject to scrutiny. The drug companies argue they need high priced to encourage research, yet they're willing to sell for less in Canada and they spend billions on advertising directly to consumers who can't even buy their products without a prescription.
Bottom line, there are serious deficiencies in our current health care system. The Democrat approach seems to be some sort of single payer system, at least for the uninsured, with the ability of the government to negotiate drug prices. The Republican answer seems to be "NO". Under the circumstance, we need more than a "NO". If the Republican presidential candidate doesn't signal some willingness to deal with this issue, he won't have the opportunity to stop whatever the Democrats finally come up with. To quote George C. Scott, channeling General Patton, he'll be "shoveling shit in Louisiana"(or Arizona or Arkansas or Massachusetts) while the Democrats create an experiment we'll be living with for a long time.
My son is marginally employed - he works about 12 hours a week - but he hasn't even been doing that since his recent problem developed. So there's no medical insurance through work, and he doesn't earn enough to buy an individual policy. He's got an underlying medical condition that prevents him from qualifying for the lower cost policies sometimes made available to young people.
So he's about to get a physical and probably get some tests for which an insurance company would pay a couple hundred dollars; my son's bill will probably be double that.
I understand all the arguments against getting the government involved in health care, But, what the people making those arguments don't seem to get is that the existing system isn't working! We've got however many people who have no health insurance, people with health insurance are seeing higher premiums and co-pays and sharing more and more premium costs with their employers. The FDA is approving new drugs each year which carry a premium price tag, on the basis of clinical trials that are only later subject to scrutiny. The drug companies argue they need high priced to encourage research, yet they're willing to sell for less in Canada and they spend billions on advertising directly to consumers who can't even buy their products without a prescription.
Bottom line, there are serious deficiencies in our current health care system. The Democrat approach seems to be some sort of single payer system, at least for the uninsured, with the ability of the government to negotiate drug prices. The Republican answer seems to be "NO". Under the circumstance, we need more than a "NO". If the Republican presidential candidate doesn't signal some willingness to deal with this issue, he won't have the opportunity to stop whatever the Democrats finally come up with. To quote George C. Scott, channeling General Patton, he'll be "shoveling shit in Louisiana"(or Arizona or Arkansas or Massachusetts) while the Democrats create an experiment we'll be living with for a long time.
posted by Crotchety Old Fart at 1:35 PM
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