Contrary to what poor or affluent people think, money does not solve all problems of health care, and it will never stop the issues of caring for one another in a health system.
I believe the entire national budget could be thrown at health care and there would still be a problem of ‘not enough money’. There is more than enough funding to maintain good health, wellness and treat those who are no longer healthy and/or well.
Precious resources are expended on studies, fighting fraud and abuse, having analysts draw graphs that either intersect dangerously at some time in the future, or have in the past. My favorite one is the exponential graph rising vertically into infinity.
The issues are much like the impasse about the debt ceiling. Political expediency and prostituting opinions for votes. We ask politicians to make decisions from false economics, and figures that may be highly inaccurate, against a setting of voting on issues they know nothing about except how it affects a state or federal government.
Case in point is the current conflict about mandated insurance coverage.
Much has been said about using the current medi-caid system to fill in the blanks. This is a more than stupid idea for many reasons.
1 The current system is not designed nor can it accommodate more patients.
2. The current system in many states do not have enough providers to service the huge increase in patients.
3.. The current system is not designed to care for patients. It is cumbersome and designed to deny care for any possible reason, financial, missing paperwork, or a vacant modifier in the billing codes.
4. The current system does not respond to market indicators, and reimbursement methodology is byzantine.
5. The current system needs to be “occupied”