Healthcare Reform

On March 22nd, 2010 a historic event occurred on the house floor. The United States Congress passed a government run healthcare reform bill with a 219-212 vote. This bill was overwhelmingly supported by democrats while Republicans strongly opposed it. President Barack Obama succeeded in achieving a feat that many of his predecessors tried and miserably failed. On Monday this news was all over the media with many people from all walks of life weighing in on it. There were some strong opinions by supporters as well as people who absolutely hate it.

I as many of my fellow Americans have an opinion about this. Now I don't claim that I fully understand this bill because it is close to a thousand pages and I highly doubt that even the lawmakers who voted actually read and understood what all it contains; however, there are some points that jump out at me and I would like to comment on them.

Basically the government will take over all the healthcare provided to the American people in it's own hands. The government wants to insure approximately 36 million Americans who are uninsured to make sure that quality healthcare is available to them. The Operating word here is "quality". Most of the people who are already on Medicaid today do not receive quality care as is because Medicaid pays the doctors pennies on the dollar. With passing of this bill, Medicaid will add millions of more people who will want to see a physician who is already overworked and underpaid. When denied an appointment, these same patients will crowd the emergency rooms of hospitals further delaying "quality care" because hospitals don't have enough physicians nor nurses to meet the demand.

I support the bill as it extends healthcare to people who did not have a chance to go see a doctor before due to no insurance but I have a problem with the basic economics of it. It all comes down to supply vs. demand. The government has created a demand but they did not look at the short supply of medical personnel. The number of medical students willing to go into family care has decreased significantly in the last 10 years. There are many countries in the world who have implemented socialized medicine and from here the picture looks all rosy, but when you take a closer look you will realize that a patient wanting to see a Cardiologist in Canada or England may wait up to six months to get an appointment where in The U.S. you can choose a Cardiologist of your choice and get in the same week! This can mean a difference between life and death. Early prevention can eliminate higher medical costs in the future. Instead of giving access to people who are non-compliant why not promote a culture of healthy eating and healthy living?

I recently saw a show on ABC where a British chef goes to a small American city to change their eating habits. He is received with a lot of skepticism and hesitation because he wants to break the culture of processed foods and introduce fresh produce. He goes to a school and is horrified to see so much processed frozen crap that we are feeding our kids. Our goal should be to bring change from ground zero which is our school system. I think every parent should see that show to realize what kind of junk their kids are being fed. The basic root of the problem are our eating habits and our sedentary lifestyle and until we change that we will keep driving up the healthcare costs.

This new healthcare bill is very ambitious but it has several loop holes and can strain our fragile economy even further where hardworking honest taxpayers will give a huge chunk of their money to the government so that the government can support people who have chosen to be non-compliant. I like Barack Obama and respect many of his views but I do not like the fact that he took such a hasty decision on this very important piece of legislation.

R