Political figures before Barrack Obama had failed at bringing out Healthcare Reform in this country, and as we have seen so far, Obama is having his hands full on this issue. Republicans have described the issue as so monstrous and huge and it serves to ‘˜break any politician who have touched it, and thus no one dare, not even the Republicans themselves, reform that monster.
Is Healthcare such a monstrous topic? Is this going to break Barrack Obama too? So far, it seems that Obama has been holding up pretty well. Even with heated oppositions from various groups at townhall meetings, vehement and often emotional ‘arguments’ from both sides, he still chases after the Reform. Yet, the beautifully chosen words that often characterize his distinctive speeches have shown to be murky around the topic of ‘Healthcare Reform’. The details are being worked on, the slideshows presentations are a work in progress.
Why? Is ‘Healthcare Reform’ really a monster? Will Obama ‘get it right’?
The reason that ‘Healthcare Reform’ seems such a monstrous topic is because it is actually a misnomer. Rather than ‘Healthcare Reform’, what we are addressing is really a ‘Medicare/Medicaid Reform’, or an ‘Insurance Reform’. Within the various related healthcare professions, the doctors are not affected, the hospitals are not changed, and the drug companies are businesses as usual. The only loophole, the only real problem, is the insurance industry, and the insurance practices that left many uninsured, under-insured, and broke under the system.
Therefore, the only thing we have to fix, is the insurance industry. Government will provide affordable insurance to uninsured Americans who choose to participate and find a way to pay for that. That is it. There are no changes to the way doctors treat patients, hospitals run their facilities, and pharmacies at Walgreens sell drugs. These are not broken, these are running fine, and they do not need to be fixed. And the easiest way for the government to accomplish this is to simply change Medicare/Medicaid requirements for applicants from being at least 65 years of age to anyone of any age. That is it.
Employers who employ full-time workers are still required by law to provide (private) insurance to individuals, in which case private would still exist after a government option is introduced. At the same time, those who can not afford and need basic insurance can vie for a government-run Medicare or Co-op program that is available to all. In speaking only of ‘Health Insurance Reform’ rather than ‘Healthcare Reform’, we know exactly who and what we are dealing with, and we do not bring in unrelated parties into the picture. As such it is not an issue that is ‘too big to manage’, a ‘monster’. We can simply speak of extension of Medicare to the uninsured. And with regards to the costs and how to pay for it, I believe that hospitals, drug companies, doctors, have already pledged tens of billions to make this ‘Insurance Reform’ possible.
Due to the misnomer, however, I see how individuals have wondered into unrelated territory when it comes to discussions on healthcare, we are becoming fearful of a European style ‘Socialist’ system, hospitals, doctors being run by the government, government determining everything healthcare related ‘“ that is not the goal. The only goal, and the only topic of discussion, is simply ‘Medicare Reform’ to include individuals of all ages. Though due to this misnomer, and the failure at the correction of that, it made anyone addressing it feel like they are addressing a monster, it added confusion and murkiness into the discussion, it sidetracked some in the discussion, and at points hard to gauge its progress.
The ‘Insurance Reform’ can be done and must be done, because in an industrialized country we should not see its citizens dying on the street without medical attention or help. Yet this is not such a monstrous topic if we can, if Obama can remain zeroed in, and to the point, to see that this is not a Reform of the entire ‘healthcare system’, but of the entire ‘Insurance system’. With that, I think we should, and can get there.
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The bigger you make a problem look, the more insurmountable it seems. If the Right makes this issue look massive and confusing, then they will have every excuse for not doing anything should they suceed in stopping Obama and the Dems. They want to stop everything and start all over because they know this issue won’t go away, they have had to publicly admit that it is a problem that needs addressed and they want to be sure that they get equal credit. That’s why they won’t take the bill as is with some changes and the addition of things like malpractice reform and pass it- it still has Obama’s fingerprints all over it.