Public Health Care

Let me start by saying that I am for public health care. Seemingly contradictory to this, I am also for a free market. This is not a contradiction however, I just believe that there are some things that people should have available to them as citizens, even above a minimum level.

Think of public schools. Over all, I believe that teachers should get paid more and that there are a ton of other improvements that should happen in our school systems, but this is not about schools. Regardless, every kid in the US is provided an education through high school. This is just a given and I believe that health care should be this way too. If you want additional or private health care above the minimum, I believe that you should be able to buy it if you have the means.

Right now, one of the biggest insurance companies, AIG, is failing because of bad investments. In a free market they should fail and disappear. This is the consequence for their mistakes. Instead, the U.S. government is going to float them billions of dollars so that they can stick around. Now, they will have the opportunity, using public money, to charge Americans for health care and make a profit. They will have to make a larger profit also in order to pay back the government.

To me, this seems as if the government is going to back track on having a true free market with loose regulations in order to keep the mystique of capitalism. This is 85 billion dollars that could be spent towards public health care. That 85 billion dollars comes from our pockets as tax payers. So, basically, instead of pushing for public health care, we as a nation are going to pay a company to pay their big shot executives a ton of money to charge us to go to the doctor.

In most states, you can visit your general practitioner for less than $85 if you pay cash.

That means that a billion doctor's visits could be paid for with this money.

That means that every American citizen could go to the doctor 3 times for free. No co-pay.

Or, that could mean that 850,000 doctor's student loans could be paid for. (There are only 301,270 doctors in the U.S. ) That means that they would have less of a personal financial burden and could charge less.

That could pay for malpractice insurance and thus lower the cost of healthcare to Americans.

Would it have to raise taxes to do these things? Well, the money is already coming from our taxes! (Well, our debt actually, but whatever. That is another story)

The bad thing here is that we as tax payers are taking on the risk for a company that has already shown that they cannot do a good job and we are going to let them screw us with higher premiums and worse service in order to make enough money to "pay us back".

That is stupid.

Yes, AIG does other things too and I understand that. I just do not understand why we are playing this farce of capitalism. If they fail, others will fill in the gap. Let them fail and use this money wisely.

Of course if you really want to see something that will make you sick, check it out. All of the heavy hitters got a lot of money from AIG already. If they go out of business, there will be less in their war chests for the next election.

 

Whatever.