It could be worse. At least it's only one city that is offering to provide health insurance for every one of its residents. It's a great health insurance idea only because it doesn't involve the whole country, and when it fails it won't (at least initially) hit your and my pocketbooks. But it's also a terrible health insurance idea, because when it fails, you know who they'll eventually ask to bail them out.As Time magazine is reporting, San Francisco is now providing health insurance coverage for all of its residents who don't have health insurance and don't qualify for Medicare and Medicaid. If it would only work. It won't. But pay attention to the shell game, because if you miss it, you'll think it did work.
Here's what I like about the 'San Fran Health Plan'--it's starting small, and (hopefully) its failure will be observable (unless the state and federal money spigots transfuse the process beginning immediately).
Gigantic computer programming projects nearly always fail, because they are so large. It is critical when writing computer applications that you start small, that you start with a proof of concept that works, and then build on that. San Francisco is not very small, but at least it isn't the entire United States. Some computer programming projects are demonstrated to be failures from the get-go. I expect the same result of San Franscisco's 'universal' coverage.
What a cataclysmic failure it would be if the Mayor of San Francisco could guarantee health insurance for everyone in the country. As it stands, only the residents of San Francisco will be out in the cold when The San Fran Health Plan crumbles to the dust.
Someone once said, If you want more of something, subsidize it. It will be interesting to watch how many people start moving to San Francisco to take advantage of this too-good-to-be-true extravaganza.
Yes, people need to have good health care. We should do everything we can to improve our health. But government is the problem with health care. It will be interesting down the road for those with critical thinking and analytical skills to have observed how the city of San Francisco exacerbated the San Francisco health care problem, and that since the San Fran Health Plan failed, it couldn't possibly work on a national scale.
There are a lot of people with vested interests in seeing this succeed (including the reincarnated Francine Delano Roosevelt herself--Hillary Clinton). So it will be important for those who want to know the truth about government health care failure to watch the state and federal shell games closely when San Francisco runs out of money.
I read an interesting article on the Iraqi was and the effect on medical research here at home. Interstingly enough, the article slammed the Bush administration for mishandling the war, but advocated a government run Universal Health Care system.
ReplyDeleteMy doctor and I spoke about this a few weeks ago, and he had the best suggestion yet... Basically you have to encourage people to setup medical savings plans and then use hig deductible insurance. It would mean that people need to take back control of their lives, but that's what being an American is all about!!
His other idea is that all tobacco taxes be deposited in an HSA specifically for the person buying the product - This way it prevents politicians from using the money for other stuff.
My only fear with the San Fran plan is that it will receive massive infusions of cash to keep it afloat, and then be touted as a great success and model for the country to follow.
We've become so much less self-dependent in recent years. Interestingly, when the earthquake happened in San Fran several years ago, people rolled up their sleeves and went to work. The same thing happened with hurricanes of years gone by.
ReplyDeleteThen something happened. Maybe it was just because a republican president presided over a hurricane, but it's bizarre how much the mayor and people of New Orleans (as well as Democrats, media, and many other Americans) expected the federal government to do after Katrina. That does not bode well for our future that we expect the Feds to take care of us in everything.
I love the idea of tobacco taxes going into a health savings account for the user. It would help correct so many things. Unfortunately, I don't know how a program like that could ever be effectively managed without trampling people's rights to pieces.
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