Somewhere Between Two Extremes, There Is a Health Care Plan that Works in Health Care Reform
The divisive nature of the recently passed health care bill has left many Americans wondering exactly what kind of medical coverage will be available to them in 2014.
For those struggling with individual health insurance or small business health insurance premiums, the idea of receiving tax breaks and finding an affordable option that still offers decent coverage is a great one.
But for those who already have employer provided medical coverage there is still concern that the plans they enjoy now won’t be available to them for much longer. Democrats are currently walking a fine line with employers, trying to maintain a flexibility that makes offering medical coverage attractive without overburdening workers with rising costs, many of whom didn’t want much change in the health insurance sector to begin with.
And then there are seniors, who are wondering when they will receive rebate checks will help them to pay for expensive medications, even as some Medicaid and Medicare services are trimmed down.
And now a study out of the University Buffalo finds that the uninsured are far more likely to die of injury than the insured. Even those individuals with Medicaid fared better and had greater survival rates than the uninsured.
Sadly, similar data has been found for men and women who suffer from cancer, and heart disease.
The reason? Researchers think that what’s likely happening is that individuals without any medical coverage aren’t getting preventative treatments that could minimize their likelihood of dying of disease. When these people are injured, they are more likely to die because of the poor state of their health.
And before they die they’ll probably incur tremendous hospital bills that will eventually be absorbed by the hospitals who treat them, the insurance companies who deal with hospitals, and the public who must contend with high cost medical coverage due to the rising cost of health care.
Clearly having no insurance at all is a bad idea. On the other end of the spectrum a government run health care system – the so-called public option – was abandoned because its costs were deemed to high.
Somewhere between the two lies the answer to our health care problems. A recent study by the RAND corporation finds that the current health care bill will cover the most people at the lowest cost to the Federal Government. Whether or not that will prove true remains to be seen. But as many optimists are pointing out, 3 1/2 years is a long time to make improvements on the Health Care Bill until it can provide Americans with exactly the right type of medical coverage market.
