Health Care Politics
Today, Hillary Clinton unveiled a universal health care plan. The first of many health care schemes that will come out of this election. While I support a reasonable solution to our serious health care problems, I am nervous that we will end up with another half-baked policy that will make our health care system worse off.
While it may seem hard to imagine that we could be worse off than we currently are: we have an increasingly large uninsured population, relying on expensive ER services for their primary care. Hospitals are increasingly at risk of going under because they have to provide services to those who can’t pay, while they are having their profitable services cherry-picked by specialty providers.
We have a government-funded services (Medicare and Medicaid) that already can’t be funded by the government. If we expand the government’s role, are they going to start accounting for these liabilities?
On the other hand, an increasing government role could improve some problems. Insurance and medical services are increasingly expensive. This is partially because people who pay their bills are subsidizing those who can’t or won’t. Making insurance mandatory should decrease the losses experienced by providers and drive down costs.
While I support decreasing the cost of health care by making insurance mandatory, I have some reservations about the politics of health care. My main reservation is how any program is going to get funded when the government can’t even fund it’s current medical obligations.
