If you think health care is expensive now - wait until it's free!
Hi Everyone! So most of you know that I'm currently a licensed Insurance Agent and I work for an amazing company. I have a girl in my office that was writing a paper on the issue of Universal healthcare. In my job, she asked me a bunch of questions relevent to the topic and whether or not I believe in what I do. So what exactly do I do? I work to get Small Busineses and Individuals Medical, Dental, Long Term Care, Disability, Life Insurance, as well as Financial Planning. I thought I would share with each of you my concerns about the idea of socialized or Universal Healthcare. These are the answers I gave my friend:
1. I absolutely agree with and believe in what I do for a living. I'm not the type of person that enjoys having a job just to have a job and pay the bills- I value the fact that I'm helping people understand the whole Healthcare system and finding the best fit for them. I truly believe that I'm helping others through my work and I know that my clients very much value my feedback and advice. So I LOVE being an Insurance Agent! :-)
2. The Current Healthcare system is definitely flawed- however, every system in this country has some kind of flaw somewhere. Overall, I think we have a pretty great Healthcare System working for us - definitely one of the best in the world. Often times, As Americans, we forget how blessed we are to have the things we do - and we begin to de-value everything within our lives. This is also true of our healthcare. Since we live in a "now" mentality we are impatient to wait for change or won't work together with the Insurance Companies with any issues we have - we just throw our problems to the government and expect them to take care of us.
**Strengths of current system- FREEDOM OF CHOICE! You can choose your own plan to best fit your Medical Needs. Overall GREAT healthcare where you can see any doctor and have the freedom to get a second opinion at any point. Costs are another plus - most Businesses will pay for their employees health insurance costs - thus keeping the costs low. And higher risk people (AIDS, cancer, Coronary Artery Disease) are placed in a different payment pool so the healthy people don't have to be penalized in cost for the unhealthy.
**Weaknesses- Cost- The costs are increasing due to Increased Technology, New ways of doing procedures, increased Doctors Costs (they have to insure themselves for malpractice suits), Prescription Drug Cost, Hospital Services, and Increased Usage. What MOST people don't understand is that most Medical Insurance companies are NON-PROFIT organizations - which means in essence that legally they are NOT allowed to keep more than 3% of their annual revenue. That means the money is NOT going to the Insurance Companies but DIRECTLY to the consumers, doctors, hospitals, etc. for their increased everything (see list above). So the cost is a good thing in that we get better coverage overall - but it's a bad thing because it costs so much.... Talk about a conflict!
*BTW - EVERY governmentally supported Medical system is broken and barely functioning. We see this most greatly in Medicare. The system is running out of money because the Baby boomers are retiring and they didn't populate the earth enough to pay for their high cost Medical Bills (that's us - they didn't have enough kids to pay it forward). :-) HA! But serisouly, Medicare is a dying system that is a MESS To work with and no one in the government has any answers on how to fix it. Payments are not paid out according to the bills sent for patients. Medicare does not pay 100% of everything and does not pay for Preventive Care at all - and if you want good coverage for your Medicare you WILL have to buy a public Market "Supplement" or "MedAdvantage" Plan. So the government is proving left and right that they cannot support their own "Universal Healthcare" for old people. And you will still have to pay HUGE amounts of money out of pocket for the quality care so many are looking for.
3. Universal Healthcare is problematic simply because we lose the ability to CHOOSE. The government begins to make our decisions for us. With Capitalistic Medical (what we have now) Doctors, Hospitals, and Pharmacy's have the ability to "compete' for clients and usage. This encourages better growth and better care by the Hospitals and Doctors to keep people coming back to them. However, with Universal Healthcare competition is stifled and thus doctors will all be paid the same for the services rendered.
Another problem with Universal Healthcare is COST. People have this notion that the government has extra money lying around just waiting to be spent on us, the people. I'm not sure if you know this, but our national DEBT or DEFICIT is like at 7 trillion dollars at this point - and rising everyday! I would say that we don't have ANY extra money lying around. So then, how do we pay for everyone's healthcare? Oh simply by taxing the people more of course. And everyone likes having more cash in their pocket instead of paying the government more money - wouldn't you rather get the whole $1 instead of only $.70 cents of it? I think so.... :-) There are conservative estimates out there that if Universal Healthcare comes into effect many people can see their taxes rise up to 50% of their total income. So if you make $50,000 a year, $25,000 of it goes directly to the government and probably about $15,000 of it will be for healthcare (regardless of age and health history).
Yet another issue is FORCED participation. This means that with most of the plans out there you won't even legally be able to get a job unless you are enlisted in the Governmental Medical Plans. So if you don't want to pay for the cost of Insurance you will still be FORCED to pay for it anyway. And you lose your freedom of choice in the meantime.
We see another problem that has to do with ETHICS - because competition is stifled Individuals getting care are often placed on waiting lists for care (see video below). A great example of this is found in Canada where many Canadians are coming to the US for care because their doctors are overworked so much that some terminally ill people are turned away for care. So if you want to live America is the key to freedom from illness. For example, the Doctors in Canada see two patients one is 60 and one is 40. The 60 year old is in great health and takes care of his body, but has prostate cancer. The 40 year old also has cancer, but he is inactive, overweight, and diabetic. The Doctor can only treat and heal one person - and he sees the 40 year old as having more years to live because he's younger. So he treats the 40 year old and the 60 year old dies. Why in the world should doctors be making the choice of who deserves to be treated or who gets to live another day?? I don't think that should be the choice of the doctor but the choice of the PATIENT. Ethics my dear Watson... Ethics! :-)
I'm a little passionate about this -if you haven't noticed. :-) I've had many conversations with friends and family members about this. And in all honesty, Socialism is the way to demolish a society. We see this in Germany, North Korea, France, and many other countries. When we rob the rich to pay for the poor we are stifling economic growth and encouraged Small Business and Competition. Hopefully this little informaton has shone light upon a topic that is greatly influencing our world today.
Example Video!: http://www.freemarketcure.com/brainsurgery.php
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