Is it about Health Insurance...or Health Care?

Even as "Obamacare" is imploding from costs that are not covered, young people who are not signing up, and premiums that are sky-rocketing, the Media, Ideological Right and Ideological Left point fingers at each other, and talk past each other.  And it is so obvious that one cannot escape the strong suspicion, if not certainty, that they are doing it on purpose to mislead the vast majority of the public.

First, a review of the facts shows that Obamacare has apparently increased the number that is covered by healthcare of some kind.

The difficulty with this claim arises when we ask ourselves if it is insurance, regardless of scope, that we want to extend to people...or is it increased paid-for actual medical coverage that all of us see as the goal.

Healthcare Insurance comes in various forms...at least it used come in many forms.  You could chose to select catastrophic insurance plans, where the costs were low because you had no benefit until medical costs exceeded a selected limit...often more than $5,000 for an illness...because you budgeted for normal and ordinary Doctor's visits and accidents.

Then there were the normal, what I used to think of as the Blue Cross/Blue Shield, plans.  These covered normal costs of doctors and hospitals in a variety of ways.  You could chose a network of doctors and hospitals, out of network providers and select any number of co-pay limits and/or drug coverage.

The point of these offerings was to enable any person or family unit to balance cost of premiums against their medical coverage preferences.  Those who had the choice of insurance provided by their employers usually benefited from the employer's negotiating good premium terms, and often had portions of those premiums actually paid by the employer.  But if you left that job, every person had the option of continuing that coverage, albeit at a higher rate.  But you wanted to continue coverage so that you didn't trigger a non-covered period (usually a year or 18 months) for any discovered pre-existing condition.

The motivation for getting, paying for, and continuing Medical Insurance coverage was to protect against preexisting conditions which might or might not develop.  It wasn't enough to have just any policy; you needed to have coverage that was useful.

Obamacare was and remains the equivalent of a con, because it claims to offer a benefit that turns out to be non-existent; the premiums are increasingly exorbitant while the deductibles are so high as to turn the policies into catastrophic only coverage that isn't what most purchasers had before and expected to continue under the promises made by President Obama regarding Obamacare.

And now the Congress is repeating the same mistake.  The only motivation that will cause younger people (and families) to chose to purchase Medical-care Insurance is the fear of discovery of preexisting conditions.  Obamacare proved that a financial penalty wasn't enough if there were no prohibition of coverage due to preexisting conditions.  Besides, without that exception of coverage, what you are trying to provide is NOT insurance at all, but socialized medical coverage.  Without making citizens responsible for the consequences of their planning and their actions, you are socializing the medical costs of everyone.  And that is exorbitantly expensive.

If the government wants to provide ability and incentive for all citizens to have USEFUL medical coverage, provide a limited period (perhaps 18 months) for everyone to select, sign up for, and begin to pay for medical coverage of their choice with coverage for preexisting conditions.  But upon expiration of that period, reinstate the preexisting condition exclusion.

Additionally, for the poor (and there needs to be a certain definition of what that is) set up a means for catastrophic coverage costs to be reimbursed to the purchaser by the government, with the government also picking up any intervening hospital and practitioners' costs upon their supplying factual and audited data.

The key, though, is to mandate that the people themselves have to be responsible for selecting, and processing the necessary applications for coverage and, where appropriate, reimbursement.  If that is done, truly everyone will have the opportunity to access meaningful medical insurance coverage.  But it is opportunity that needs to be provided...not a guarantee.

Has the United States become "Balcanized?"

After much effort and planning, my father emigrated from Norway to the United States in the early 1920s.  He first had to arrange a sponsor, then get a written guarantee of a job, save money so that he would not be a burden on the government, show that he had a place to live when he arrived and finally, upon entry, go through a physical exam to show that he was not bringing with him any communicative disease(s).  He told me he never thought that these requirements were burdensome, wrong or illegal; they were good, common sense requirements to protect both the United States and him.

He spoke little English, but those he lived with and worked with immediately began teaching him English and he enrolled in Citizenship Classes to prepare him for the Citizenship Exam.  He...and all who attended those classes with him...came to America to become "Americans."  He honored his birth country, Norway, and taught me to do the same...but he emphasized that he hadn't come to America to make America into a "little Norway,"...he had come to become a true "American."  He wanted to, and believed in, assimilation.  He and all the other immigrants that he came to know were anxious to become a part of the the miracle that was the United States of America...a country where one found the freedom to try to succeed in ways not available to him in Europe...and understood that that freedom came with the possibility of consequences of failure, too.  That was the trade-off: freedom to strive came with no guarantees other than the right to "try."  And he found that if you failed, you had the opportunity to try again.  And he did.

Dad loved visiting Norway in later years, and being with old friends and acquaintances...but he never failed to exhibit a sigh of relief when he came home again to America and say, "it's so good to be home again"...he was an "American."  Not a "Norwegian-American."  And he was both proud and thankful for that.

As I was going through school I was surrounded by kids also born to immigrants...from many different countries.  We got to know and appreciate each other and each other's national backgrounds...but always there was the attitude that those backgrounds were nice, they were part of "us"...but they were incidental; we were Americans.  We appreciated and we abided by the rules and the laws of America...and expected everyone to do the same.  Those who broke the laws and the rules were outcasts...not by any command or written edict, but automatically by their disregard and disrespect for the essence of "America."

Sadly, my observations reveal that this "America" has largely disappeared and is well on its way to extinction.  First, I see multitudes (particularly in the Southwest) who have not come here "by the rules" or legally.  Second, I see many groups refusing to assimilate, keeping to groups from their country of origin continuing to speak the language of their country of origin and refusing to even make believe they are trying to learn English.  Third, a majority of today's immigrants still hold allegiance to their country of origin and not to the United States of America...and attempt to make America into a "mini" version of their country of origin, even to the point of disrespecting the American Flag and flying the flag of their birth country.

 Most importantly, I see the Federal Government of the United States of America actually supporting these activities, aiding and abetting this lack of assimilation.  And the result is that the United States of America has become increasingly "Balcanized."  As Europe originally did in areas of the Caribbean and South America, areas of the United States now seem less like America and more like small versions of other foreign countries...America has disappeared.

The Federal Government no longer truly protects our borders or control who comes to America...and then takes action against border states that attempt to fill the need for that protection and control, leaving the citizens of those states unprotected and at risk.  Add to that the actions of some major cities that put the welfare of those who surreptitiously and illegally cross into this country above that of lawful citizens.  Arguably, those elected officials in those cities are in abdication of their oaths of Office...but neither the citizens of those cities or the Federal Government seems to care...at least not enough to demand that that be stopped.

America is losing its identity...and amazingly a great number of our citizens do not seem to mind or care.  Thankfully, my father has passed away...otherwise these actions would insure his dying of embarrassment for the country he adopted as his own and loved more than where he was born.  And I am embarrassed for my country's abdication of its character.