20 Dec 2018 Do We Need The ACA?

Do We Need The ACA?

A federal judge has ruled the entire Affordable Care Act, “Obama Care,” is unconstitutional.  Now this may only be a short-term ruling that is changed on appeal or it goes to the Supreme Court and is upheld.

We do need a national medical Insurance law. This should not be a state by state governed process. It is too convoluted and costly. I’m not convinced that a government run option is the way to go. There needs to be competition in order to drive efficiencies. But these efficiencies should not be at the expense of quality care. The stockholders of the insurance companies are not the number one factor in decisions. The companies have to make a profit to compete.

I wrote earlier in the year what I thought the basic tests each citizen should get it each year at reasonable cost that is covered in their premium. The challenge comes with pre-existing conditions and paying for procedures to keep seniors alive another 9 to 12 months. Most people would be amazed to know how much Medicare pays to keep a person alive for 9 to 12 months instead of letting the natural dying process takeover. No one wants to tell someone they can’t have a procedure because it is not worth the expense to keep them alive another nine months.

However, if we are to afford quality care for all then some tough choices have to be made. We simply can’t afford to pay for every procedure for everybody all the time. Well we could but, we would first have to balance the budget and then decide what other area of federal spending needs to have drastic cuts on the order of over 100 billion.

We need national health insurance, are we willing to have the tough conversations and then legislation to implement it?