Look back into how the whole healthcare plan thing started and why. Believe it or not it was Henry Kaiser back around the start or just before WW2 trying to work a way around FDRs wage freezes to entice people to work for him. That's how healthcare started and today that outfit is Kaiser-Permanante (sp). By the mid 60's only some large businesses and some public institutions had health care plans. It was a "perk" or "bennie" you got for an otherwise low paying job. Somewhere along the lines doctors and hospitals figured out the healthcare plans would pay more than the average out of pocket Joe could afford, so the costs suddenly jumped for those folks. As costs went up, more and more people wanted someone else to pay the bill. Of course the welfare system came into the mix with all those people on the public dole wanting "free" care. Then low wage earners wanted their share too and they got their subsidized or "free" care. Big medicine bought out little medicine and doctors figured out they could keep more of their own money if they hid behind a corporation. Laws changed and pharmaceutical companies that did decades of research and poured millions into R+D and testing suddenly found they had but 7 years to make their costs back before the generics could be sold. So what might have been payed of over 10-20 years now had to be payed for in 7. Costs went up again. Somewhere along the line it was decided that the gov't should stick it's fingers further into the pot and mandate that those with poor health shouldn't be put in a higher risk pool...another huge jump. Now our gov't has the ability to force us to purchase healthcare or face fines and eventual imprisonment. The employer mandate has been illegally stalled several times and when that finally does go into play I think all sorts of people are going to see major, major changes in their income levels and cost of living.
Personally, I think this is all engineered to make single payer look like an answer from heaven. The sheeple who are seeing their paycheck shrink will grab at it like a drowning man grabs a rope. The employers that are looking at general strikes and violent protests will do the same. Municipalities that are faced with books in the red due to Medicaid costs and a shrinking tax base will see it as mana from God and jump at it. At that point you can kiss your ability to choose what healthcare you get goodbye along with your privacy. Once Big Brother has control of your healthcare and you are part of the pool then information sharing among agencies (IRS, Health, various sales tax agencies, DMV, BATFE, etc.) along with data mining by quasi gov't operatives (think GOOGLE) and domestic surveillance (you really think it isn't done?) will all combine to give a whole new meaning to "land of the free". Doesn't matter, at this point at least, if you vote D or R, both sides like the idea of vast new levels of power and taxation.
So, you tell me, at this point in the game what do you think is going to be done? Without a vibrant economy there is no way to pay for public healthcare and there is no way the working man can afford to foot the bill himself. No politician is going to get up and say that out loud. We could change it to a system where you have a health savings account and true catastrophic insurance, but that requires personal accountability and wouldn't answer for the 60-75% of people who have zero interest in paying their own way. And whats more, even though the states could do their own plans, like Mass did under Romney, no one is interested in that either. No one wants to pay for their healthcare, so the shrinking tax paying base is going to pay for it. It doesn't surprise me at all that no one is getting up and talking alternatives. They don't talk alternatives to SS either. Why? Because it puts the responsibility on the individual and we just "don't do that" anymore.
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Today's Featured Article - What Price Enthusiasm? - by Anthony West. Quite frankly, for some time now restorers like myself have become more and more concerned about the rapid increase in the prices of old farm machines here in England. There is now a growing market for "As found" machines. Which as machines get rarer, has found the birth of a new industry....one of the "procurement agent". These agents appropriate as much old machinery as possible then inflate prices at auctions. So at what price enthiusiasm? We are now seeing poor machines which 3 years ago ma
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