Allow me to paint with a broad brush for a moment. To agree with liberals and their attacks on Paul Ryan’s plan is to agree with the willfully ignorant, the still drunk on Obama kool-aid, there’s nothing you can say to make me believe that our president is wrong on anything crowd.
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CNN recently published an article stating that 45,000 people die every year because they don’t have health insurance. So did Reuters. Neither article linked to the actual study (it can be found here). Liberals have been quick to spread this statistic, but not so quick to spread some of the other statistics found in the same report:
- Less educated people (those with less than a 12th grade education) without insurance are 50% more likely to die than educated yet uninsured people.
- Uninsured current and former smokers are 3-4 times more likely to die than uninsured non-smokers.
Instead, the CNN article starts the article with one of three sad stories (you can almost hear the strings in the background):
- A freelance photographer died from a ruptured appendix.
- A woman died from undiagnosed heart disease.
- Another woman died from an undiagnosed problem that is still unknown.
All tragic and sad. And all probably unnecessary. But, two of these deaths happened due to choices each of them made. The photographer was a healthy male that thought he knew his body better than he really did. The mid-life woman died from a disease that a healthier lifestyle may have prevented. The third death may have never been diagnosed, and insurance may not have made a bit of difference. But these sad stories all serve a purpose, they all are used to justify legislation that liberals want.
I think that there needs to be some sort of public plan. But I don’t have a single reason to trust that a government option would compete fairly with existing insurance companies and health providers. By low-balling its prices and by legislating ridiculous requirements to be considered a “qualified” private plan, the government can complete its stated mission of driving insurance companies out of business and become the single payer provider that Obama wants.
Why not extend Medicare/Medicaid to all adults? Well, part of the problem is that the current version of Medicare is short of its liabilities by a mere $38 trillion.
Did you know that people who fly are more likely to die in a plane crash than people that don’t fly? And women that don’t perform regular breast exams are more likely to die than those that do perform regular exams. I think that you are stating the obvious by saying that “people without health insurance are more likely to die than those with health insurance.” Ya’ think?
Let’s look at this in a different way. If 45,000 people die every year because they don’t have health insurance, and we supposedly have 47 million people uninsured… oh wait, the president recently adjusted this number to 30 million. If we have 45,000 dying out of 30 million uninsured, 99.85% of the uninsured are not dying due to their lack of insurance. Does this merit a multi-trillion dollar plan that us, our kids and their kids will be paying for?
- Nearly 43,000 people died in car accidents in 2005 (source)
- Almost 2,500 people die every day from heart disease. (source)
- More than 9,000 people were killed in 2006 by illegal aliens. (source)
- Nearly a million sex offenses were committed that same year by illegal aliens. (source)
- Almost 1,500 people die every day from cancer. (source)
- About 17,000 people die in every year from aids. (source)
Many of the deaths above were preventable. But where is the liberal angst and cries for government intervention to mandate heart disease funding or, god forbid, more secure borders?
My point is that death is a part of human existence. It is tragic, painful, yet often preventable. But stifling the most advanced health care industry on the planet with legislation and bankrupting our country instead of letting the free markets be free is simply not the answer. Neither is fining people that choose not to have health care.
I think we can make insurance more affordable and better for all Americans by doing three things:
- Allow citizens to shop for insurance across state borders. This will instantly increase competition between insurance companies, which will cause the bad companies to fail or reorganize, and will increase patient choice while lowering costs.
- Cap medical lawsuits (tort reform) so that doctors can focus on properly treating patients instead of practice defensive medicine.
- Motivate insurance companies to extend coverage to the poor by providing tax breaks to insurance companies that cover a certain percentage of its customer base that are below a certain income level.
