Government intervention and regulations were a big part of the problem in the first place.
How?
Now that the government is all-in on healthcare it's only going to get significantly worse
Why?
The majority of americans were satisfied with their healthcare...
No they were Max. Before Bear Stearns collapsed Healthcare would swap positions as the number one issue among voters. The rise in premiums was considered unsustainable, in the short term (9.9% annually on average), and there was no good explanation for why we pay double what everyone else pays.
we should have concentrated on fixing just those that weren't.
There is no realistic way to do that without massive reforms. A mandate is required to provide for those with preexisting conditions. We needed larger insurance pools, not smaller ones, so that we could get better and more stable rates. We also needed some form of standardized plan that could be used to set a baseline for rates.
We've been having this conversation for over 40 years. In fact, 35+ years ago, it was Nixon and the Democrats who were in favor of a single-payer health care system, as it would've kept costs low (although there are other problems associated with it).
But Obamacare is a Republican, capitalist, and as WellYouNeednt aptly stated a corporatist solution to the problem.
The Govt can't do anything efficiently and screws up most everything it touches.
But this is all abstract emotion.. Why specifically won't Obamacare work?
It's already thrown $500M at this stupid website and what do we have to show for it after a month?
You've got to do your own research. That $500M figure is the amount allotted for all digitization of the insurance exchanges, that's total, nationwide, to create the databases, website(s) (plural), servers, and most importantly, years worth of salaries for administration, technicians, customer service, and middle management. That's what it costs to run the digital side of the health care exchange.
The web portion of that, including the creation of the site, it's maintenance, hosting, and the staff that is responsible for all forms of processing was allotted $89M, not $500M.
The $500M is what's getting tossed around like red meat in the Republican echo chamber, without any real reference whatsoever just "OMFG THIS COST WHAT?"
Very few satisfied customers and millions of people getting cancellation notices from their plans that they were promised they could keep.
I find this argument the most intellectually dishonest because it places blame on Obamacare for people losing their plans, when in fact, it is the insurance companies that are choosing to contract their customer base to shore up profits. Insurance companies are making business decisions, and for some reason people are blaming Obama for the decisions of their provider. I guess the reasoning is that, "well, I was doing okay, and now I've got to find coverage." But what's being lost is that, "Yes, you may have been okay, but everyone else wasn't."
There are alternative plans out there, they just never get any media coverage.
Some ideas i've heard that i liked---
Allow small businesses like me to pool together with others to spread risk and get better rates like large companies.
This is like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound.
Allow individuals to purchase across state lines.
Went over this at length during the debates. It's not feasible. Every state has completely different regulations and requirements, making their costs very different. You would end up in a situation where every state would race to the bottom with respect to minimum standards just to attract businesses.
Get creative with health savings accounts so people can have control over their own health care...
This never made any sense. Someone finding out they have cancer will need hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatment. Without insurance, they likely won't have the money. And if they have insurance, how much are they expected to put aside for future medical care?
Keep in mind, we're already spending 2x what any other western nation in the world spends, annually per capita, on healthcare and insurance. So these "savings accounts" would offset that number, but probably result in lower ROI (compared to insurance payouts) and higher overall cost to the consume
allow people to transfer the money to family and friends.
You can always pay someone's medical bills without getting taxed. My mother paid her sister-in-laws medical bills to the tune of over $25,000 and there was no tax.
But creating some tax provision where people are moving money around -- who does this benefit? People with large sums of money to move around? I never heard someone say, "I can't get medical treatment because of IRS regulations!"
Pool those with pre-existing conditions.
:chuckles: Pool them into what? The I'm fucked club? You need 5 healthy people for every 1 person who has a pre-existing condition.
Massive medical liability law reforms to end frivolous bullshit lawsuits.
Why are medical lawsuits automatically frivolous and "bullshit?" Relax. While there are some bogus claims, most certainly are legitimate. I'm totally against placing caps on financial returns with regards to medical malpractice.
Transparency in pricing so people can shop and compare costs.
Agreed, but this doesn't address the primary issue.
Remove the thousands of unnecessary regulations that do little to help the patient and only drive up costs.
Easy to say, but hard to do. And it's unlikely that we have such high premium rates due to "regulations."
Just think you are oversimplifying the problem so that it can be rationalized and solved with the Republican mantra. We can fix the problem just by reducing the size of government, and reducing regulations. But wait, let's add some regulations that I like, like say, forcing insurance companies to disclose their price schedules, or forcing them to compete out-of-state, or forcing them to cover people who have preexisting conditions, or forcing them aggregate risk for small businesses without really appreciating the fact that it may not be financially advantageous for the insurance company to do so.
See, those are all "good" government encroachments, good regulations.. but other stuff you didn't mention is bad...
It's kind of silly right? Just like CleveRocks, saying that it's the government and centralization that causes globalization, rather than realizing that free trade is a result of decentralization and deregulation, not the reverse. On the one hand, you propose that the government dictate to the insurance companies how to do business, how to calculate their prices, who the must accept, etc -- completely changing their business model. But on the other, you say numerous times that it is exactly that type of big government encroachment that's creating the problem. It's doublethink.
