A recent article shows that there has been a significant decrease in the number of uninsured on Long Island and in New York State from 2010 to 2021. https://www.newsday.com/news/health/new-york-comptroller-thomas-dinapoli-health-insurance-w8hnj6g5
That’s good news. That’s an important result of Obamacare, and the huge expansion of Medicaid eligibility.
This column has been very critical of the details of Obamacare and the massive expansion of Medicaid without there being proper cost containment measures incorporated into these programs. With that said, at least these flawed Democratic plans were a plan of some sort.
Republicans deserve criticism for having ignored the fact that, at one point, there were 44 million uninsured Americans who were just a slip and fall away from bankruptcy. Something needed to be done to reform the system.
Yet, we rarely heard a coherent, aggressive plan by Republicans to deal with the uninsured. Republicans always seemed to be in a defensive mode trying to stop Democrats from implementing a nationalized system. OK, that makes sense, but what was your alternative?
There were plenty of alternatives that could’ve been suggested.
To be fair, some Republicans did have a bill here and there to expand health insurance across state lines or to implement tort reform. But where was the big omnibus healthcare plan by the Republicans that would’ve done all of this and more to curb the costs of the programs, while also getting more people insured?
They failed to provide an answer, which left a vacuum that liberal Democrats were eager to fill. Obamacare is enormously flawed, and was based on a lie that it would lower costs. It dramatically increased costs because, in part, it forced the insured to take policies for items of coverage they did not need. Unlike car insurance, where you can decide you just want liability and no windshield coverage, many people in the health field would like some type of coverage but not others. Yet, Obamacare demanded all or nothing.
And the very first move Obama made in promoting his program was to placate the trial lawyers special interests by taking tort reform off the table.
And, in the end, more people were covered by expanding Medicaid eligibility than they were through Obamacare itself. That would have been more acceptable if they at least put in place a requirement that recipients had to work to get the coverage.
So we now have a very flawed and expensive program, but at least it’s something that is covering the formerly uninsured.
We can do much better than the system that is currently in place. Here are some ideas:
- Open more medical schools to increase the doctor-to-patient ratio.
- End expensive defensive medicine by implementing real tort reform.
- Allow medical insurance to be purchased across state lines.
- Allow Medicare to negotiate prescriptions, as Democrats have sought to do.
- Demand that American consumers stop being forced to subsidize European prescription users who benefit by their price controls.
- Expand the use of Medicare Advantage programs.
- Where the government provides free healthcare, limit the lawsuits that attach to such care.
- Require able-bodied Medicaid recipients to enter a work program.
If Republicans exhibited more compassion for the uninsured and Democrats embraced more practical reforms to control costs, maybe we’d have a system we can all agree upon.