How, then, would you address them?
Serious question.
Serious question that deserves a serious answer.
I don’t know. I’m an army wife and a mom. I don’t have all the answers.
But I do have some suggestions.
I do believe that the clause exempting anyone from being discriminated against for something that they acquired before the age of 19 is a good thing.
I also think that FREE healthcare should never happen. That’s what leads to the abuse of the state-run health systems. I don’t remember where I saw it, but years ago I saw a study that showed that even a $20 ‘at the point of service’ fee for healthcare dramatically cut down on abuse. (people going to the dr for every sniffle)
We also need to stop illegal immigrants from using our resources. Close the borders and deport. (This is *killing* Arizona and Texas.)
Allow family members to pay to keep their partially-disabled sons and daughters on their insurance for a reasonable premium. (Again, we’re not asking for a freebie, just a chance. We’re willing to pay - but we couldn’t afford $700 a month plus co-pays. The average family can’t do that.)
I do agree with Romney that we need to use the fact that we have 50 states to our advantage. Let each state come up with their own system and see which ideas play out in the real world. (One thing that I hate about Liberalism is that they live with Theory as if it were Fact. The Fact is that gov’t-run healthcare has never worked well. We know what doesn’t work, but not what does... not yet. Most of these issues are less than 60 years old.)
We need to deregulate the medical system and allow doctors to see cash patients on their own terms. Let there be the opportunity for patients to directly buy from doctors who chose to opt-out of all third-payer health plans. (Their overhead drops dramatically and a much greater portion of each dollar actually goes to medical care instead of paperwork and compliance with regulations and insurance companies’ demands.)
Stop funding cheap drugs overseas. If they want the medications, they can pay the same price we pay. It infuriates me that OUR drug companies sell to Socialist countries at a lower rate than they do to our own.
If we can drive down the cost of medical care, then we all win.
I do not think that gov’t subsidies are the answer. Subsidies ALWAYS drive the costs up. Regulation drives the costs up.
I don’t have all the answers, but the ‘walking sick’ need help. It’s not just my kids. It’s the 40 year old waitress with hypothyroidism or the 55 year old man with his first heart attack. Or the miner who’s just beat his body so deep into the ground after 25 years of hard labor that every joint is inflamed.
Really think about it. We have more disabled because we have better medical care. People who would’ve died are living crippled. (Then we’ll add the fall-out of better armor and front-line medical care in the last two wars... soldiers who would’ve been killed are now brain damaged or missing limbs. We have a MUCH higher rate of disabled troops. Again, most of these guys aren’t so messed up that they can’t function at all, but too messed up to be completely productive.)
This is one reason I am so ‘pro-education’. Retraining people to work their minds instead of their bodies. Maybe that’s part of the solution. People who worked in manual labor can be seriously retrained to do something else when their bodies fail. I’d support that “teach ‘em to fish” program. (And I really, REALLY hate to think of such a gov’t program. I can see that being ineffective and falling apart very quickly... but maybe private companies who are given an ‘x-prize’ for the number of people retrained, self-reliant and employed instead of paying for the program itself. Only pay for success. Hell, that’s the way every gov’t program should be run.)
There’s a few ideas to get started. If a housewife can come up with that much, I’d expect our best and brightest to come up with a good, solid, conservative program.
For decades the Republicans buried their heads in the sand on this issue. Not accepting that our nation has changed. Job stability just isn’t part of our culture anymore. More and more lives are being saved, but at a price. The costs of medical care have been driven insanely high. This is effecting the job market. Employers are having to pay more to insure their employees - thus, hiring fewer people. (This was before ObamaCare)
Over the years, I’ve run across many FReepers who’ve been doing fine, then had a health crisis and NEVER recovered - physically, financially, spiritually. Their lives are forever changed.
The system is broken - like so much in this country. That’s why I loved Herman Cain’s tax plan. It threw out decades of crap, duct tape and band-aids and started over from a fresh point.
Our medical system needs a similar overhaul. ObamaCare tries to fix a broken system when we really need to burn it down and start over from scratch. All it’s doing is compounding the massive problems that we already had.
Where I’m disappointed with Romney is that he’s doing the same thing. He’s not facing the health care crisis as a crisis.
Hopefully, the deregulation will make a significant difference. But millions of our ‘walking sick’ will be out in the cold. My son’s best hope right now is a thriving economy. In a boom, even the poor aren’t as poor. We seriously need an energy boom and we need a big one.
My son has a desperate plan in place if things get too bad. (Not suicide, thank G-d) I’ll not get into the details, but it makes me sick that I can understand it.