Audience Shouts Down Sebelius, Specter at Health Care Town Hall in Philadelphia

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Sen. Arlen Specter got a preview Sunday of the tough sell lawmakers will face over health care reforms.

Among those at odds with the officials touting the $1 trillion, 10-year plan was a woman who earned loud applause when she said she doesn’t want Washington interfering with her health care choices.

“I look at this health care plan and I see nothing that is about health or about care. What I see is a bureaucratic nightmare, senator. Medicaid is broke, Medicare is broke, Social Security is broke and you want us to believe that a government that can’t even run a cash for clunkers program is going to run one-seventh of our U.S. economy? No sir, no,” she said.

This lady’s comments remind me of the saying – “Socialized Medicine – Delivered with the efficiency of the Motor Vehicle Department, with the compassion of the IRS.”

I believe in effective and efficient universal coverage. I do not like the costly patchwork that we have now. I believe in portability. Our established policy of tying health coverage to a job is just simply wrong. I believe that exclusions and denials based on “uninsurabilty” should be abolished. Group rates based on the law of large numbers can effectively control the cost of insurance to individuals (premiums), and the exposure that insurance companies have through equal distribution of risk. Out of pocket expenses can be reduced by choice through elective coverage as is the case now with many group and individual policies.

We will need the government to force insure the percentage of the population that can afford coverage but does not carry it. Let the Populist-Libertarian-Luddites (PLL’s) complain all they want, but we already pay the uninsured’s  health costs as a society. Those that can pay should regardless of how likely their potential loss is.

Health care is a form of welfare for part of society already. The government should on a needs basis pay the premiums in a private plan that is distributed equally among providers for those unable to pay for it themselves. Before my PLL friends complain about “them people will be taking my money and stuff”, keep in mind that they already do. This coverage should extend to legal and illegal alike. We again already pay for this. This would be a formal acknowledgement – yes - but also more efficient.

Abolish Medicare and Medicaid. They do not work well. They can not be tweaked to be more efficient. Get the government out of the health provider business and make the insurance industry pull the load they were designed to pull. There is nothing scarce about health care at all. It is not a “precious resource”. It is a commodity that we have plenty of. If we remove government interference in the market AND institute simple but effective insurance reforms we can control costs. The curve can be bent. Just not by the government.

The “Government Option” and the Single Payer system with  its resultant socialized medicine is neither needed nor preferred. Sometimes ‘da peop’le get it right.

ADD: An excellent article on Medicaid in City Journal today. Make sure to read “The Making New York’s Private Health Insurance More Affordable” blurb at the end. There is plenty of money in the system, multiples of the funds required in fact. The key is to get rid of the hybrid system.