We do not have the best Health Care system in the world, we have the 28th best.
The major failing with enacting a national single payer health care plan – which the majority of Americans want – is two fold. First that it’s presentation is far too complicated for the short attention spans of the average American.
Secondly the Republicans refuse to do anything about the problem other than handing it over to Wall Street. After all, they already have good coverage and don’t give a rat’s ass about your coverage – which is what makes them Republicans – it is the nature of the Beast.
If Democrats can make the presentation simple enough to get the populace behind it, the GOP will have the choice of either accepting it and trying to make it as meaningless as they can, or getting voted out of office and having no say at all.
So to make it easy Democrats have to knock this issue down into a few simple sound bites.
National Health care should be modeled after Social Security which is cost effective to run, understood, accepted, mandated and successful. The only problem with it was the serendipity of far too many WW2 veterans coming home and going on a 15 year long celebration of unprotected sex.
Next get the numbers down to just one or two. Pick a reasonable number, say $3000 a year deducted from everyone’s check to pay for it. This will be offset by two factors.
First, as the plan will replace Medicare, that payment will no longer be deducted creating a big savings on withholding taxes. Secondly, with employers no longer having to pay their workers health care benefits, they WILL give that $3000 a year back to their employees in salaries and wages. So we are close to being even.
Insurance companies will do fine as they will immediately find everything that the national plan does not cover and fill the holes, while the buying power of employers will be able to offer similar plans including the dentist.
Congress will have long debates upon what the benefits will be and how doctors are paid – which is how all things are accomplished – all that is needed is the starting point.
Here are the big four:
Preventative care free across the board.
Basic health care with co pay.
Perscriptions with co-pay.
Catastrophic coverage.
Let’s begin this long overdue project January 21, 2009.