The more I hear and read about the various health (s)care reform proposals, the grouchier I get. On one side, we seem to have those who don't want any reform at all. These are people who trust insurance companies and don't trust the government. They go around uttering phrases like "government takeover," "socialized medicine," etc. These tend to be people who think the answer to everything that ails us is a tax cut and that government should limit itself to fighting our wars (and lots of them). On the other side, we have those who favor reform. These are folks who don't trust insurance companies and trust the government to make things better. These folks tend to believe that the answer to everything that ails us is a new tax or tax increase or selling bonds to the Chinese, or both.
The first group thinks it's just fine that the insurance industry, like major league baseball, enjoys an exemption from the anti-trust laws that allows them to collude to set prices and split up markets. To them, if Uncle Ned or Aunt Martha can't purchase insurance or if their insurance is cancelled because they filed a claim, that's just the American free enterprise system at work. And if they want to use the money they save from denying coverage to Martha and Ned to help pay for million dollar bonuses to their executives, why that's just the free market system at work. Any attempt by government to rein in these practices is automatically broad-brushed as "government intervention in the free market economy," or "socialized medicine." (These folks usually aren't amused when you remind them that Medicare and Medicaid are immensely popular government-run programs.)
The second group thinks a major, comprehensive overhaul of the entire system is required all at once to reform the system, no matter that such reform will cost upwards of a trillion dollars. They assume the insurance companies will simply "eat" the profits they will lose by being forced to insure Ned and Martha and won't pass those costs on to the rest of us in the insurance pool. Not only that, but such things as malpractice litigation reform and allowing people to buy insurance across state lines are off the table. A better solution for them is to have a "government option" to compete with the insurance companies. (These folks usually aren't amused when you remind them of the cost to taxpayers and/or the increase in the already ballooned deficit that many predict will result from their proposal.)
So where does The Grouchy Geezer come down? As usual, somewhere around the middle. Before becoming The Grouchy Geezer, I spent my career in the public utility industry. A public utility is nothing more than a private business regulated by the federal government. To me, health care should be reformed along those same lines, with insurance companies being regulated by the federal government in terms of the types of policies they could offer or be required to offer and their premium charges. The premium charges would be high enough to allow the companies to recover their costs and earn a fair and reasonable return for the risk they take. This would look something like "Medicare for all" but would remain in the hands of the private insurance industry, though subject to regulation by the federal government. There might be other alternatives I could live with. But most of what I have seen and heard so far from both sides makes me very very grouchy and even downright sick.
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