Republicans Botched Health Care First

Republicans Botched Health Care First If you want to understand how the Democrats have been able to push through a gargantuan overhaul of the nation's health care system that the public overwhelmingly opposes,a good place to look is the Republican Party. It's not that Republicans didn't do anything;in fact they passed a lot of legislation on health care.They enacted the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act,the State Children's Health Insurance Program,Medicare prescription drugs,Medicare Advantage,and new waivers for state Medicaid programs.Many people useMicrosoft Office 2007to help their work and life. But they didn't have any coherent analysis of the real problems in the U.S.health care system.Republicans have never seemed truly interested in the issue,and they enacted these bills in the hopes of deterring Democrat initiatives,not actually improving a dysfunctional system. It's a pity because each of those efforts could have made a big difference if they had been done right. The first problem in American health care is excess reliance on"third-party payment,"which divorces patients from any knowledge of or concern for the cost of the care they receive.This inevitably puts a bureaucrat in a position of power between the doctor and the patient.It is the bureaucrat,either public or private,who decides what is worth paying for and how much should be paid. The second problem is that health insurance is likewise provided by a third party,either an employer or a government agency.The individual consumer does not choose the policy,has little information about what it costs,and has little power to insist on changes if the insurer performs badly.