I Don't Have Any Answers
The title could be about a lot of things but for today’s column it’s about the government shutdown.
I am going to go down a couple of rabbit holes so be prepared.
It’s been pretty well established that our government leaders suck. I don’t think there is any one who would disagree with that statement in some form. Politicians for the most part rank at the bottom of any list regarding trust and selflessness.
Maybe that is one of the reasons Donald Trump won this past presidential election. He isn’t a true politician. He may have a million different faults but very few of them are politically motivated.
The Republicans and the Democrats once again are at odds with each other. (I am going to be perfectly honest here, I have not done as deep a dive into the nuances of this battle of wills so keep that in mind.) The Republicans want to move forward with a budget that allows some of the features of ObamaCare (BidenCare) to expire at the end of the year. The funding for certain items in Obamacare (with Joe Biden’s auto signature) were created during the Pandemic. Those items should expire since the Pandemic ended over four years ago. Some of this funding went towards pay for healthcare for illegal aliens (Undocumented people, or whatever the left calls them).
That funding was set to expire at the end of the year and lo and behold, the Midterm elections were next year. Little bit of a coincidence right? You let funding expire, most of the coverage ends for illegal immigrants and a potential voting block starts to scratch their heads and say “Why should I vote (Illegally) in a country that has pulled the rug out from under me?”
Let’s cut the crap here. The millions of illegal immigrants in this country may be given the chance to vote, even though they are not citizens. I use the term “may” carefully here because I am not really sure how many undocumented people will actually be allowed to vote, but I do believe that the whole purpose of opening up the borders was to allow millions of people from foreign countries into our country and those people would be part of a new Democratic base as things would eventually work out.
It didn’t. Donald Trump got elected and shot that plan down pretty quickly.
I veered off here a little but the point is, the Democrats are trying to salvage something that was very enticing to a potential voting block, even though it is getting smaller and smaller.
The Republicans see it for what it is; A continuation of the most expensive scam ever thrust on the American people, Obamacare.
This is my rabbit hole.
The idea wasn’t President Obamas, it wasn’t even Hillary Clintons, it goes back decades and has been wrestled with over the decades until Hillary started making it a foundation for campaign for the Presidency. On the outside, it seems like a good idea to some extent.
Make healthcare available and affordable for every American citizen. Good start but it smells a little like socialized medicine but no matter. We will all be covered! Yeah!
The thought process was a decent one I will admit. Healthcare in this country was a mish mosh of good, bad and really bad. The wealthy or semi wealthy could afford the best care, middle class went with what their employers provided and they paid for it. It was a cost, like a car payment and you made do.
Obamacare comes along and next thing you know, healthcare costs start rising and rising and yes, the government foots some of that bill but at the end of the day taxpayers pay for it, twice.
The insurance companies cried and cried. All the way to the freaking bank. Obamacare was a raging success for the ones who fought so hard against it.
Why, you may ask?
Simple, look at the funding for various PACs and lobbyists and I am sure you will find the top donors to be the healthcare industry. They fund politician’s reelection campaigns because those politicians help keep the cash flowing into the drug companies, insurance companies and hospital groups.
Plain and simple, just like I like it.
Healthcare in this country is broken. Obamacare was supposed to be the start of fixing healthcare. It didn’t. As I said in my title, I don’t have a clue how to fix it.
True socialized medicine is no better. In Canada, you can’t wait weeks or months to get a much needed surgery. In Britain, the NIH is constantly running huge deficits and what was once a model for the World, now has sunk to just above Third World status.
Yes, there have been successful Socialized medical systems but they are few and far between. Everyone looks to Norway as a prime example of socialized medicine that works. Ok, there are a lot of difference between Norway and the US and the two most glaring ones are the differences in size and the amount of taxes Norwegians pay as opposed to the average US citizen. The clearest example of a successful socialized medical environment is Germany. 1/4th the size of the US but their taxes are similar to the US. Maybe we model our system after theirs. I just don’t know.
Which leads me to a more encompassing problem in this country and it is insurance in general. It has been rising faster than inflation for the last 20 years. Is there any reason for this incredible rise in costs?
None that I can see. They have more cars on the road. More accidents? No, on average, accident rates have held steady or gone down slightly. Cost to repair has gone up? Yes, that is true but does that increase justify the non stop 9% price hikes? Theft and fraud is at an all time high. No, according to government statistics, car thefts have gone up in some areas and gone down in others, overall thefts have decreased per capita. Fraud is a dubious term used by the insurance companies and they advertise that it’s a 300 billion dollar net loss but they never actually say how, where or when.
The rabbit hole here is that most states have insurances boards and those insurance boards review all requests for rate increases. OK, why then do we never hear about this? Why is the public never allowed to voice their concern about runaway insurance costs? Simple, politicians receive generous donations to their reelection campaigns from these secret PACS and if a politician is good at anything, he/she is good at knowing where his butter is bread.