To the Editor:
Four years ago, a practical doctor said something like this: “So let me get this straight. We’re going to be gifted with a healthcare plan we are forced to purchase, and fined if we don’t, which purportedly covers at least 10 million more people, without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that didn’t read it (but exempted themselves from it), supported by a government which has already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, all financed by a country that’s broke. So what the “blank" could possibly go wrong?”
Virginians are fortunate that Medicaid Expansion was defeated in our state. The Fed’s promises of temporary bailouts are merely band-aids, inadequate to the task of repairing dysfunctional “business models” such as Medicaid, Medicare, Obamacare, and the Veterans Administration health care. Their inherent fraud, waste, and corruption end up destroying the very goals they aim to achieve; namely: quality, affordable, health care! Most doctors even refuse to accept new Medicaid patients anymore. They can’t afford to because Medicaid does not reimburse enough to cover their costs. This begs the question: Why would we want to expand a system that would put doctors out of business?
Last week, the California Insurance Commissioner, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, and a Government Accountability Report all reported cost increases, continued failures in the Healthcare.gov exchanges, and billions more in subsidies needed to prevent collapse. So where will the money come from to pay for the doctors, nurses, administrators, hospitals, clinics, contractors, pharmaceuticals, medical schools, research and development, retirement plans, supplies and suppliers, utilities, and overhead? If it’s all “free”, then who will pay for it?
“Free" health care is unsustainable because people don’t make responsible decisions when something is free. Furthermore: When government pays our bill, then we lose our freedom because they get to tell us what to do. That’s a dangerous trade-off, because it leads to productive people being enslaved by an insatiable government that promises to take care of all the world’s unproductive people. Poverty can only be cured by making people more productive, not by eroding their work ethic and creating a culture of dependency.
“Free" Care does not result in Health Care. It results in more layers of expensive bureaucracy that must be created (and paid for by us) in order to administer and enforce largely irrelevant regulations. This increases costs and destroys the doctor-patient relationship. Doctors should be accountable to patients, not bureaucrats. America’s health care system needs market-based solutions such as choice (that meets patient, not government, needs), portability, and tort reform.
Elinor Bartlett
Vienna