Health Care Fraud
The entire debate we are having in this country on "Health Care" is fraudulent. The terms do not have plain meanings, because BOTH sides are trying to fool us into supporting their side.First: Is health care a right? The answer is that is easy - it already is a right. The law demands that any patient who goes to a hospital must be treated. Period. So we debate this - why?
Second: So many are uninsured. Answer - see first. Nobody goes without care in this country. Now some will get stuck with the bill, after they receive the care. That is a problem, but it has nothing to do with insurance. You can't insure your car after the accident, you can't give health insurance to the sick. You can decide to pay for it, but that is not insurance, it is charity, unless it is confiscation by the state to pay for the bills of others.
Third: Prices are out of control. The answer is that anything that you get for free will be overused. More demand drives prices up - always and everywhere. More than that the consumer of health services is not connected in any meaningful way with paying for it. I am one of the few who pays for most of my own health costs, and believe me, many times when you ask what a procedure costs they don't even know, then they don't want to tell you - it is that unusual. Then they usually cave on price, or I go elsewhere and the price is a quarter as much for the same thing. I talked my radiologist into giving me a $2400 MRI scan for $450, in about two minutes.
The democrats and the republicans are only out for themselves, so they are each selling their own brand of lying fraudulent snake oil. Right now the republicans are against the democrat bill which otherwise would become law, so they are on our side, but believe me, if the shoe were on the other foot I would be against them also, and so would be many others.
I could go on and on about this criminal enterprise, but suffice it to say that unless and until the patient is on the line for a proportion of every cent paid for their medical care, prices will keep exploding, and the lines at the emergency room will stay long. Politicians do not want meaningful reform, there is too much money on the line for them to steal. And most people are happy with the situation just the way it is.