Obama’s inaugural speech- What does it augur for health care in America

Jan. 21, 2009 - PRLog -- Obama’s inaugural speech- What does it augur for health care in America?
America and the whole world has just witnessed the swearing in of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States. In his inaugural address, he touched upon the prevalent economic situation. Health care reform is one of the key issues in his agenda. To this end he has co-opted Dr. Sanjay Gupta as his surgeon General. How does he propose to achieve this? Will his plans succeed in bringing down the cost of health care? Will
Will the average American citizen be able to get a procedure like a knee or hip replacement at an affordable cost in the US?

Health care in the US is largely a privilege. It is provided by Employer generated or self paid insurance, social security or veteran’s benefits.
About 45 million people lack insurance.
Insurance companies are the entrepreneurial business to provide health insurance. Like all businesses, profit is their driving motive. It is their judgment to lay down their premium value when offering health insurance to customers and businesses.
The making of profits calls for providing value to customers and getting value in return. Only they can decide on whom to give health insurance, the cost of policies and what procedures to cover. Profit making is their driving force. Businesses need to be left free to make profits and progress. Government regulations will infringe on this freedom.
If insurance costs are brought down by government intervention rather than by the market forces, it will end up in irrational & illogical pricing. When everybody has low cost insurance, what will they happen? They will start utilizing their insurance policies more and more. Demand for medical procedures will rise. People will demand a investigation or procedure unmindful of the cost as they are not going to pay for it. Rather the insurance company is going to foot the bill. They will be more insurance claims as a result. Profit margins of insurance companies will be eroded. They will necessarily have to jack up the cost of premiums. Demand for more procedures will escalate the costs of the medical procedures by hospitals.
The net result would be escalation of medical costs rather than affordable costs.
Elective medical procedures like Hip resurfacing, Knee replacements, shoulder surgery, cardiac surgery will become more expensive.
The economic burden on the taxpayer will rise. To fund low cost insurance to all sections, public money has to be diverted. Higher taxation will come into vogue. Incentive for productivity by the able will go down. Research will come to a standstill due to paucity of funds.
This is what a socialist or Neo communist approach promised by Barack will achieve.
The solution is not government intervention in health. The government is not the custodian of your individual health. Individual citizens are custodians of their heath just as they are the custodian of their property. The solution is to leave health care to providers like doctors and hospitals. They should be free to offer self pay patients at whatever entry point they wish to rather than have prohibitive costs dictated by insurance companies.
Governmental interference in health care is certainly going to see large scale exodus of patients abroad to countries like India providing high quality medical treatment.

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