Apr 14 2008
NC-6 Democratic Hopefuls Discuss Health Care
Carter advocates moving the nation quickly to a system that would cover everyone under the same health insurance program that covers congressmen and senators.
“It can be done for the same price that we’re paying right now,” Carter said. He argues the country could pay for such a plan by taking the premiums currently paid by individuals and employers as well as negotiating with drug and insurance companies for lower prices.
Ovittore said Congress should work toward a universal, single-payer system but emphasized that transition must be undertaken in realistic steps.
“One of the ways to baby-step to universal health care is for me to put forward the mandatory military health-care bill, which basically is universal health care for soldiers class E6 and down in exchange for their service,” Ovittore said.
His suggestion would take these veterans out of the Veterans Administration-run health-care system, although the VA could still administer the benefits. “If we can prove on that level, we can handle our veterans and our soldiers’ health care with universal health care, then we can prove to the rest of the country we can do the same for them.”
Bratton said she favors the creation of a national nonprofit health-care company that could cover those who don’t have employer-based health insurance.
“We know that preventive care chronic disease management invests in long-term health and gives us cost return down the road, it saves us money…but there’s no incentive to the insurance companies to do that at this point because at the end of 12 months you may not be with them,” Bratton said.
Having a competitive national health insurance program, she said, would force private insurers to improve their services and rates. Eventually, she said, that could evolve into a single-payer system, but she emphasized she did not want to immediately shut down the private health insurance industry, calling such a step “unlikely to succeed” and potentially disruptive to the economy.
Bratton is the only one with a realistic proposal here and that is not all that surprising because she happens to be a doctor. If we eliminate the private sector out of the health care altogether we will ruin our health care system in this country. The main reason we are experiencing issues with rising health care costs is due to the free market hardly being involved as it is. The health industry is one of the most subsidized and over regulated in this country. All of these government programs, Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, all of the state’s individual programs, along with these “cadillac” insurance policies so many people have and the strict, bureaucratic regulation that has been put on the health care industry has caused all of these skyrocketing prices. We don’t have a health care crisis in this country. We have the best care in the world, but it is becoming less affordable with time. We need to deregulate and get the government out of it as much as possible and let a competitive market take over and bring down the costs. What we don’t want is complete government control. You only need to look at all the problems countries with Socialist health care are already experiencing to foresee what Americans can expect under that system.
The Federal Government has created this mess. The last thing we need is further intrusion from them on our behalf.
