Health Care Debate - Circle Pines, MN

Government is the most inefficient provider of ANY service. Our country is broke and getting broker by the second.

The govt is horribly inefficient.

It doesn’t matter that 85% of Americans with insurance say they want to keep their current insurance programs. Congress and the Obama Administration are plowing ahead with plans to ultimately force us all into a one-size-fits-all health insurance program administered by the federal government.
Businesses will be forced to provide some form of health insurance to their employees. Those that don’t will be penalized with higher taxes. So will they choose to buy private insurance, or by into the taxpayer-subsidized (lower cost) public insurance?
The socialists in Washington say we need public health insurance in order to introduce competition to the insurance market. Because the hundreds of private insurance companies don’t already compete for your health insurance dollars.
This national health insurance program will have a “wellness component.” So the bureaucrats will be able to tell you that you must exercise, or lose weight, that you can’t eat foods that have too much sugar or salt, that you must stop smoking/drinking, or whatever the politically-correct fitness fad de jur happens to be.
We’ve been assured that this new federal health insurance program will reduce overall costs and won’t result in rationing of medical services. We’re told costs will be reduced through an as yet undefined reduction in expenses and elimination of waste.
Our federal government is assuring us it will reduce waste if only they administer this new program. After all, they’ve done such a wonderful job with the Medicare and Medicaid and Veterans Administration programs.
When government bureaucrats start talking about “efficiencies” in health care, they’re talking about rationing. It will be up to some unknown bureaucrat to decide if you’re life is valuable enough to “invest” precious health care resources into. And those decisions can and will change with the political winds.
The legislation doesn’t say how all this will be accomplished. It’s being left to the bureaucrats at the FDA to figure it all out. After all, such a policy worked so well when they left it to the Treasury Secretary to figure out how to spend the $700 billion in TARP bailout.
We’re supposed to believe adding 49 million more people to the ranks of those covered by health insurance and curbing medical reimbursement payments to doctors and hospitals will somehow make the whole system more efficient.
To pay for their new medical insurance program, Congress is proposing to tax your employer-paid health care benefits. Oh, unless you belong to a union. Union health care benefits would still be exempt from taxation. And Members of Congress would be exempt from the law, too. Yet another case of do as I say not as I do.
Congress’ own accountants in the Congressional Budget Office say even after all this, this legislation will still leave 39 million people uninsured. Yet it will cost in excess of $1.6 trillion.
Meanwhile, the legislation says nothing at all about reforming the nation’s tort laws. Those are the laws that allow someone to sue for millions in malpractice cases. Insurance companies all say that if such malpractice awards were limited to actual expenses associated with the malpractice, plus a limited amount as a penalty (punitive damages), say $250,000, they could reduce insurance premiums for everyone.
It’s not surprising, considering the nation’s trial lawyers contribute heavily to the Democrats now in control in Washington.
There’s also nothing in the legislation to provide for personal health care savings accounts. If you’re able to invest after-tax