Heath Care Reform - Part 1

Wow, this thing is huge. I have been reading and reviewing all sorts of text and summaries on all kinds of websites run by all sorts of organizations.

First, let me say this. I am not against every American man, woman or child having access to health insurance or health care. However, I am not in favor of entitlements and give-a-way programs that allow people to create an entire lifestyle out of not working and living on government programs and handouts for their entire lives. There should be limits. For the most part I think everyone should earn his or her own way in life more often than not, but I digress.

So far, I can see there are probably some good things in this legislation, like not allowing health insurance companies to deny people for pre-existing conditions or dropping them if they get too sick and no longer allowing annual or lifetime limitations. I can also see some bad things, like the creation of so many new bureaus, committees, agencies, departments, task forces etc.

For the sake of this post, I am going to go touch on redundancy. Redundancy; exceeding what is necessary or normal or characterized by similarity or repetition.

Title IV, Subtitle B, Section 4101 – School Based Health Centers. In summary, his section creates and authorizes a grant program for the operation and development of School-Based Health Clinics, which will provide comprehensive and accessible preventive and primary health care services to medically underserved children and families. Appropriates $50 million each year for fiscal years 2010 through 2013 for expenditures for facilities and equipment.

Title II, Subtitle A, Section 2001 – Medicaid coverage for the lowest income populations. This section changes the eligibility and income standards to allow more low-income people, including children to qualify for Medicaid coverage.

Title II, Subtitle B – Enhanced support for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Section 2101 – This section basically sets up additional Federal financial participation in the CHIP program with certain state requirements, certain tax credits and increases in outreach and enrollment grants by $40 million.

Are all of these ideas/programs good ideas? Sure, but do we really need three programs that are so similar? They all aim to serve low-income children. They all have a bunch of eligibility requirements, income guidelines and program coverage’s. I don’t disagree that children should be and need to be taken care of but does there really need to be 3 programs to do this? There could even be other programs for low-income children in this legislation, I’ve barely scratched the surface.

Why not make one program that “does it all”? Why does it seem that our government makes things much more complicated than they need to be? It seems to me all that really needs to be done is to set up qualifying income guidelines, ensure they don’t have or qualify for any other insurance (via parents or guardians) and be under age 18 and set up the program coverage’s. Why can’t it be that simple?

Having all of these redundant programs, people to administer said programs and all of the mandated funding will only cost the taxpayers of this country more money than it needs to. It could be so simple. It really could.

It boils down to this; how are all of these programs going to be administered when they are so complicated and overlapping and with so many exceptions and exemptions? It could be at the very least financially disastrous for our country. The consequences could potentially be so far reaching I don’t think any of us can even begin to imagine them all.

I once had someone say to me and I’m paraphrasing here - no law is ever perfect, so let’s just get it passed the way it is and deal with the problems later. That is probably ok when you are talking about local ordinances regarding issues like noise or junk car regulations. But do we really want that kind of attitude when it comes to the huge issue of health care reform when we are talking about trillions of dollars? I do believe I have heard sound bites of President Obama saying something like “Just get it done.” Is this something we can afford to just get done or do we want to get it done right?

It makes you wonder what is going to happen at the voting polls in November. I guess only time will tell. I can tell you one thing though, I will be at the polls on Election Day and I will cast my vote!