Ted & Bernie Talk Pros-Cons of Healthcare

Watching the CNN broadcast of this sparring exercise illustrates just how disparate the positions are relative to healthcare. On the Sen. Sanders side, you have the view that Healthcare is an explicit “right” to be provided by Government while on the side represented by Sen. Cruz you have the position that wrestles with “access” to a system that is wholly dependent on the efficient delivery of services provided by the private sector which use block-grants to the States to breach the affordability issue.

On the Sanders-side, whose solution rests primarily on using the Medicare model, he ignores two fundamental issues:

(1) Medicare coverage is mediocre and most who can afford to are forced to purchase add-on coverages. The system as it is, is an administrative nightmare and the current unfunded costs, depending on which CBO Report one references, are in the $52-$69 Trillion. This alone should be sufficient evidence to terminate any suggestion that Medicare, as a nationwide plan, is irreconcilable with fiscal realities.

(2) The effects of Medicare/Medicaid are the single greatest driving force in the explosion of Healthcare costs in this Country.  

The Cruz approach, generally, is a more appropriate choice, but only so long as certain components are integrated into a private-sector approach:

(1) To achieve any level of premium affordability participation will need to be no less than 85% of U.S. Households. This will require the merging of all Fed/State Government programs, including the VA, into one national risk-pool partitioned into 6-9 regions in an effort to balance risk among States based on population.

(2) Similar to State oversight of Utilities and Auto Insurance, the operational controls and risk/premium oversight will be monitored and administrated by each of these Regions whose overall functions being dictated/articulated from a Cabinet Level Office managed by a 6 year term appointee.

To appropriately enhance the stability of the product and related risk-costs only one base-plan should be offered enhanced only by a menu of for-fee add-on options. Funding premiums subsidies, by creating what I’ll refer to as a “subsidy-fund/pool”, can easily be accomplished by creating various revenue-streams developed by/thru various excise/user fees, corporate/business surcharges, licensing fees etc. I would, in particular, target areas of commerce where consumers, who claim to be impoverished, are spending large sums of money.

In the end, whatever direction the momentum takes there is one single obstacle that must be resolved: Risk Pool expansion is a must. Clearly few politicians understand the problem or they choose to not want to face the facts regarding a viable solution. For the American Public, mostly, they are completely ignorant on the subject and the true facts as it relates to what has happened to the American Health Care System, since the 1960’s, and why and how the system as it has become has actually driven affordable healthcare into the lexicon of the unachievable.

The reason why Risk Pool Expansion is so critical is because in order to make healthcare even remotely affordable costs have to be spread-out across a greater number of people. Nearly everything the Federal & State Governments have done, since the 1960’s, is the complete opposite and by doing so have actually absorbed the risk that is the sole function of the Insurance Industry. By doing this it has sanitized risk and knowingly or unknowingly made bundles of money for the Insurance and Medical/Pharmaceutical Industries by forcing the taxpayer to pay for it.

Curtis C. Greco, Founder

 

 

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