Dear Mark,
Thank you! By admitting you are not a healthcare policy expert, you are the first person to admit what everyone who is far more involved in this than they should be, is now denying.
Your astute observation is a correct one. We should be consulting with healthcare policy experts, not politicians. What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of 50? “Senator”. Our politicians are almost all really bad or worse, failed lawyers, taking a crack at politics. A lawyer is trained to argue bad arguments until the other lawyer caves. Rarely do ANY cases end up defending the just, and mostly it is about the money the lawyers will make on either side of what is an ego driven competition. Which should now explain the political deadlock we find Washington DC, and ourselves in.
But in reading your thoughts, the naturally entrepreneurial way in which you broke down the main elements of the healthcare enigma, was illuminating to me. Hearing you say it, allowed me to focus in on what I have been observing about the issue myself.
And since you asked for feedback, here is some I hope will move the ball further.
You established that, “The stakeholders in Obamacare are the Insurance Companies, Health Care Providers and Consumers. Will Insurance Companies be willing to take lower profits?”
I will now offer a Yes, but add in a necessary: Yes, but should Insurance companies necessarily be stakeholders in providing quality affordable health care?
Insurance companies and their over-complicated and all too often rigged actuarial calculations, is akin to a Casino calculating the odds of gamblers winning and losing. Always IN their favor. Once the ideal optimal sweet spot of profits has been determined (the real function of actuarial exercises) the slot machines are then rigged and the card table’s statistical probabilities are arranged, so they pay out accordingly.
We should not gamble with everyone’s right to health in this way. We should certainly not put Casinos in charge of determining the odds of people getting sick.
Maybe healthcare should not in fact be tied to insurance, or any sort of statistical probability pretending to be market force driven profit motives, at all.
But to get back to your original genius admission. Not knowing anything about healthcare policy.
It seems that no one is trusted enough now, to offer any sort of unbiased, untainted, uncorrupted sound advice on the issue. Certainly 15 evil intending inept politicians squirreling behind closed doors, has been disastrous. Even their own caucus caught them cheating!
What is required in my opinion is a National Reset on this issue.
Americans must first honestly and openly discuss, debate and decide exactly what kind of health care system they want to have.
Once that is done, they must price it out.
Once they have the price for the kind of healthcare they want, they must decide how they are going to pay for it.
NO, current pricing for healthcare cannot be used. An entire overhaul of costs for health care needs to be assessed. Because the costs of health care now are unreasonably high. As a result of the unregulated and unfettered Big Insurance and Big Pharma collusion and conspiracy to set high prices for themselves, health care in the US is unreasonably high. Certainly it is not really $3 Trillion a year, $10,000 per American.
Once we have have made the national decision as to what kind of health care we want, and how much it ought to fairly cost, budgeting for it is now relatively easy. People forget that we are the USA. There are more ways to make Money here, than Google Ads. Actually you could probably pay for it using Google Ads! Point is, we can make the money to pay for Healthcare anytime we want.
Especially if we tax ourselves fairly.
Or we can borrow it. From ourselves. OK, China.
