Who should bear the burden of the American Health Care System?
The recent rules of Obamacare seem to force the burden of the American healthcare system on the shoulders of the providers. Currently according to cnsnews.com, over 214,000 physicians are opting out of the plans of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
As I explained in a previous blog, I could not be seen in an urgent care center that had not signed on with our government to take Medicare patients. In fact, they could not see me even if I paid cash. If this is the case also with private practitioners, what the government would be accomplishing is to gradually let the elderly of our society die out in a quiet, un-noticeable fashion, thus getting rid of the segment of society that consumes the majority of Medicare dollars. Once again they are not throwing Grandma under the bus. They are going to run over her before she can even get to the bus.
What our government fails to tell us, the American taxpayer, is the ACA means the care is affordable to our government but not to us, the people ultimately paying for that care.
Also, why is it that the care provided for this act is good enough for us but Congress has opted out of it for themselves and their families? Are we not as important as our Congressmen? Should not our Senators and Representatives want the same care as their constituents? I believe we all know the answer to that. But whose families are as important as the families of our government officials? After all they are making all of the decisions for those of us who have voted them into office. Do we really want these same people in office? Why don’t we all pay attention to which way our representatives in government lean on these issues. If our healthcare is not good enough for them, is it good enough for us? Why should we accept less?
The American people learn about how great our healthcare system is all the time from our news media. We constantly hear how poor the Canadian health care system is and how blessed we are. I have taken a couple of month long trips in Canada over the past several years. I have polled a minimum of 100 Canadian citizens and asked them if they would prefer the American healthcare system to their own. The answer is a resounding NO! What about those huge wait times for specialty care? I guess someone forgot to inform the Canadian citizens. I think we need to get our American newspapers to the Canadians so they will know about the inadequacies of their system.
Why should any American citizen listen to news media about how great our health care is when we rank 37th in the world in healthcare. You may ask yourselves, what do we get for that dollar? I feel we all know by now that we cannot even get on the same page to figure out how to handle a virus like Ebola. I guess that’s another blog.