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Musicmystery -> RE: Republicans Move toward Socialized Medicine (11/28/2010 8:35:21 AM)
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Employer-based health care was an interesting and excellent idea at a time when health insurance was a rarity. It gave employers a hiring edge, and it gave unions assurance against job cuts during recessions (as it change some marginal costs to fixed costs). It was a creative and beneficial sales approach for the insurance industry.
It never was intended to be a universal system, and never made sense as a universal system. Everyone realizes this--on the left, people (frankly, wisely) point out that only a public option or, truly, a single payer plan is long term viable (if the goal is universal coverage); on the right, forcing a clunky private system to embrace universal coverage is fraught with unacceptable problems (despite that they proposed this in the 90s, but their intent was to kill universal coverage, not to actually do it, and why they didn't pursue it when they had the power to do so).
For a number of factors, health care costs in the U.S. have been spiraling up far faster than inflation, and the old status quo is unsustainable long term. Businesses simply will not be able to do it; many have already had to drop it or lay the cost on employees. Now, expanding the pool will help (long term), but it's not a permanent solution. In the end, sooner or later, single payer health insurance, by whatever means, will be necessary.
And yes, consumers have to realize what health care actually costs. We also have to wake up to the reality that it doesn't have to cost this much (it doesn't in other countries). We will have to start making different choices, from lifestyle to savings to our views of heroic medicine and endless testing in a litigious culture. And we'll have a hell of a time getting there as competing economic and political interests try to turn the situation to their short term advantage with rhetorical spin.
But behind the talk, the reality is pretty clear. How do get there is the difficulty.
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