Other economists point out that government-run insurers actually haven’t done a very good job of reducing unnecessary medical procedures and expenditures (one of the main drivers of runaway health-care spending) and contend that the public option would drive private insurers out of business and ultimately reduce the supply of medical providers. In other words, a public option solves some of the health-care challenges we’re currently facing, but a true health-care revolution will require Americans to confront our conviction that more health care is better health care.
Or. as President Obama put it, “send Grandma home with a bottle of aspirin” when she needs a total hip prosthesis.
The problem with rationing health care — which is what you seem to be advocating — is that it’s already happening, as any Medicare patient fallen into the “donut hole” of Part D or who can’t afford Medicare supplemental health insurance to cover the hefty co-pays of Medicare Parts A and B can tell you. They don’t get all the healthcare they need, as Medicaid patients do, and they wonder why that is.
And they have a President who doesn’t give a damn for them. His idea of controlling runaway health-care spending was a closed-door session with Big Pharma which allowed Mylan to increase the cost of their EpiPen 500 per cent, which is the tip of the pharmaceutical pricing iceberg, six new taxes on the provision of health care, and mandatory health insurance that ultimately increases health care spending by making early intervention in the disease process very expensive for most American workers.
It’s the most regressive set of taxes ever imposed on Americans.