Greetings!
ObamaCare has been found constitutional, but the uproar for “Repeal and Replace” continues. How it would be repealed is a little hazy and there’s stunned silence when it comes to what would replace it. Joshua Holland had a great piece on AlterNet explaining why people like ObamaCare once they know what’s in it. Any incremental change toward a single payer system is good change in my
book, but I’d be with the “Repeal and Replace” crowd if they would replace it with- SINGLE PAYER HEALTHCARE!
What would it mean for our country to join the rest of the world in providing healthcare for ALL our citizens? What would life be like if we didn’t have to dread health-care-cost-caused bankruptcy in our lifetimes? What if we didn’t have to spend our energy jumping insurance company hurdles at the weakest, most stressful times in our lives? What if we knew that we could take chances on taking new jobs or building new businesses because we knew the risks weren’t the health of our families?
Aside from the quality-of-life benefits for all, think what that would mean for our economy… small businesses (and I certainly know what I’m talking about here) would be freed from the massive expense and paperwork of our current system. People could be free to change jobs based on the job and the pay, not based on whether their loved ones will be covered for their pre-existing conditions. Workers Comp complexities would be a thing of the past. Tort reform would be unnecessary as the incentive to sue would drop. Injured people would no longer have to sue for the medical care they need, and would only sue for actual compensatory or punitive damages. Imagine the amount of healthcare we could get for our country by dropping the overhead from about 15-20% (under private health plans) to about 3-5% (under non-profit or government-administered plans like Medicare). And the biggest economic bump… what would the economy look like if everyone now paying for family coverage had an additional $14-28 thousand to spend every year? We would see the biggest jump start to our economy ever with the increased consumer ability to demand.
I’m glad ObamaCare is here because it’s a large step in the right direction. It fixes many of the problems we had before, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. I’m not naïve enough to think that we should dump in now in the hopes we could get single payer, especially in today’s political environment. Perhaps the greatest strength of ObamaCare is its flexibility, which would allow states (like Vermont is doing) to set up their own single payer systems within the overall governmental framework. ObamaCare isn’t perfect, but it’s here, it’s already made things better, and we’ll be able to work to improve it in the future. It’s a pleasure to see the Supreme Court change course and do something that will actually help the American people!
Make a great day,
