Unless you're saying that the 'Obamacare' bill was *specifically* designed to fail in order to cause the public to demand a government takeover, I disagree with you. The idea that you can influence public opinion that far in advance is ludicrous. I mean, look at the mid-term elections. Who saw that coming in 2008?
A big part of the problem with our health care system is the division between provider and payment. Your doctor is thinking "patient first". The entity who pays him the lion's share of his money is thinking "shareholder first".
Of course when government TRIES to correct some of these things, we naturally get the Law of Unintended Consequences. Pass a law so that an insurance company can't say they're kicking you out for getting sick? Fine - the insurance company now drops you with no explanation. To THEM, the law meant you just couldn't SAY why you were doing it. The whole IDEA of insurance is spreading the risk around.
But I'd also like to give another example of why we're in a health care mess:
http://bltwy.msnbc.msn.com/politics/...-1672702.story
This is the 'clarification' of the famous Dennis Kucinich $150K lawsuit-over-an-olive-pit. He goes on to explain how this was really a SERIES of events, multiple surguries, etc. But I want to bring your attention to one particular line in his explanation - HIS OWN WORDS about what happened when his tooth first broke:
Quote:
|
The internal structure of the tooth was rendered nonrestorable. Although the pain was excruciating, I shook it off and I went right back to work.
|
Instead of taking care of his problem and getting checked out immediately, he just went back to work. In the end:
Quote:
This injury required nearly two years, three dental surgeries, and a substantial amount of money to rectify.
...
The injured tooth and the bone above it became infected. I took a course of antibiotics for the infection, had an adverse reaction to the antibiotics which caused me to have an intestinal obstruction and emergency medical intervention.
...
My bridgework had to be completely reconfigured, a new partial was designed, so this injury did not affect only one tooth, but rather involved six (6) replacement teeth as well
|
All because he didn't seek proper, timely care.
It would appear to me that this is quite similar to the "using the ER as a doctor's office" problem that we hear so much about.