TimesArgus.com - We Are Vermont

@AYK
Here's a few reasons why the comparison of auto insurance and health insurance is not a good one and also how our current system is broken.

A person's automobile is a privilege. A person's life is a right.

All but two states (New Hampshire and Wisconsin) require that insurance be bought to show financial liability in case you are to blame for an auto accident. To my knowledge only Massachusetts requires all residents to have health insurance to pay if they are injured.

Automobiles are required to be inspected once every year in many states. I cannot name a single state which requires people to go in for a check-up on a regular basis to make sure they are healthy.

When your car gets totaled and it is your fault and you have no collision insurance (at least in Vermont, laws vary by state), it is up to you to pay for the damages and to buy yourself a new car. When you go to the hospital to be treated for the life-threatening injuries which resulted from this accident, and you have no health insurance, the hospital still treats you and other patients foots the bill through taxes to pay for medicare and increased insurance premiums.

Buying a car with a preexisting condition is something that people have s choice in, they can choose what car to get based on how expensive they think the insurance for that particular car might be. A preexisting condition is usually not a choice.

The point I am trying to make is that we should not model our health care industry after our auto care industry, but there are a few things that we can take and lessons we can learn which would be improvements.

For example I think a regular check-up with a nurse or doctor as well as with a dentist would be a good thing and it would help drive health care costs down by diagnosing problems earlier and avoiding costly treatments.

Everyone should be contributing to the overall health of the nation. In the same way that people contribute to social security so that when they get old they will still have some income (social security could use some work too, but that isn't the prominent issue here), people should be contributing to the health of the nation so that they know that if they get hurt, they will be cared for and will not have to worry about it financially.

Preexisting conditions should not be a basis for denying coverage. This will inflate premiums as we have seen in Vermont, so it should be part of a larger cost-cutting overhaul to offset this increase and take the burden off of families.

Our system should not be based on another country's, such as Canada's, but rather America should look at what works and what doesn't and create a system which has the best chance of working.

More doctors will be needed. I believe that part of an overhaul would have to include federal funding for incentives to encourage smart people to become practicing doctors. An example off the top of my head would be for med school loans to be paid off by the government in stages after 5-10 years of work.

Doctors should be paid in salary rather than per procedure or per patient. Health care should be all about quality, not quantity.

As much as possible should be made electronic to cut down on and ease the doing of paperwork as well as the ease of sharing patient information amongst health facilities.

Health decisions should be made between a patient and a doctor. Neither the government nor insurance companies should play a role in deciding what procedure would be best. The changing of doctorly pay from per procedure to salary based would eliminate the incentive for doctors to order superfluous tests and procedures. People would be able to seek second opinions if they so chose.

All Americans would have the same basic coverage regardless of economic status.

Abortions would not be paid for by taxpayer money with exceptions for rape and incest.

Nobody but the hardworking people making the healthcare possible should profit financially from it. No insurance companies. Hospitals and other health care facilities and the government would work together to distribute money.

The price gouging of the American people by pharmaceutical companies must come to an end. Consumers are being ripped off as evidenced by the difference in prices between here and Canada as well as nearly every other country in the world. The government needs to step in and protect the consumers. The same goes for college textbooks, did you know that the exact same textbook, with the words "International Edition" on the front and maybe made from slightly different materials, can sell for less than half of the "American Version"?



To summarize, our system is rotten to the core, on life support, and uninsured. The American people are footing the bill for this, as evidenced by our highest GDP spending on health care with little to show for all the money we're throwing at it. It needs to be fixed. Neither the Senate nor the House's bills do much of anything. They attempt to begin to fix the problems, but the Senate's is wrought with deals that tarnish its integrity and the House's will never pass the Senate, and it would not have passed there even before Scott Brown won in Massachusetts. As a nation, we need to sit down, consider healthcare as a whole, and make some massive changes. America is the best country in many ways, and there's no reason why we can't have the best healthcare system as well.



Sorry for how long this was...

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