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Health Care Reform
Americans deserve freedom and choice when it comes to their health. The U.S. healthcare system remains the greatest in the world, possessing more qualified experts who generate more exciting medical breakthroughs than any other nation on earth. The proposed bureaucracy, and potential elimination of free market forces, would quickly lead to rampant inefficiency and rising costs. Meanwhile, with a scarcity of those capable of providing the care, more Americans would be left without a doctor. Before we implement an enormous new federal program, we need to be sure that “new” is “better” and not just “different.”
Our current health care system is in need of reform. While two-thirds of Americans have health insurance coverage, mostly through benefits offered to them by their employer, there are nearly 44 million non-elderly uninsured. Some of these individuals work for small businesses that cannot afford to offer insurance like larger employers do; some make a conscious decision not to purchase insurance because they are young and healthy and do not want to spend the money on it; and others have just fallen through the cracks. Programs such as Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) extend health coverage to low- and middle-income families, the elderly, the blind and the disabled. However, this still leaves a significant number of people left without health care insurance coverage.
Worse than the number of uninsured is the growing number of those without adequate access to health care. There is a growing shortage of doctors and nurses in this country, and a large number of current health providers are set to retire soon. I believe that this is a bigger part of the current problem more so than the lack of insurance coverage. After all, what good would insurance for all be if there were no practitioners available to see the patients? It’s easy to give every person an insurance card, but the underlying problems still go unsolved. This will lead us to a health care system that is overseen by inefficient, government bureaucrats.
To view the healthcare bill being considered by the House, click here.
Link to H.R. 3962 - Affordable Health Care for Act as Introduced here
Link to H.R. 3961 - Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act of 2009 here
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