MY HEALTHCARE PLAN IN ACTION?

I have talked about how to fix our health care dilemma many times before. My suggestions appeared to fall on death ears or they were just not understood. I feel that in this state of Michigan, with a large auto industry and even larger unions, everybody was waiting for the federal government to create a universal coverage health plan where the taxpayers would pay for everybody, even those that did not pay taxes. In this way, the auto companies would save billions and billions of dollars and turn them into profits while the taxpayer would have just another tax to pay.

Now Massachusetts (see below), passed a healthcare bill that will create UNIVERSAL COVERAGE without the federal government creating another huge, inefficient bureaucracy. Please remember the systems in Canada, UK and elsewhere (socialized medicine) do not work!

Anyway, my idea was to mandate health coverage, just like auto insurance but offering many plans that would be affordable. This, in theory, would eliminate the uninsured that drain the system and cause others to be overcharged for medical care just to pay for the uninsured and there are a LOT of uninsured who need LOTS of medical care.

My plan envisioned the elderly being covered by MEDICARE. The poor being covered by MEDICAID and workers covered by their employers who would get generous tax breaks for providing health care coverage for their employees. Who does that leave?

Well, it leaves workers that do not have health insurance provided by their employers, students and others that I cannot think of at this time. In my plan, they would be offered very affordable insurance based on their ability to pay and their age (young, healthy people would pay the least). In that way the cost of providing health care to the uninsured would not impact our costs which now are artificially high to cover the uninsured costs.

Governor Mitt Romney and the people of Massachusetts have enacted a similar plan based on the same principle of eliminating the uninsured. I don’t mean executing them but providing them with health insurance.

They would penalize employers of 10 or more that do not provide health insurance by making them pay into a fund that would provide low cost insurance to the uninsured. They would also penalize people who can afford insurance but do not buy any. These people would be assessed a special tax that would also go into the uninsured pool. People buying their own insurance could do so with pre-tax dollars; another incentive.

In my plan, I would jail people without insurance or write them a ticket, just like people without auto insurance but I suppose the Massachusetts plan is more doable.

Anyway, I am going out on a limb here because a state will actually try the plan I have been screaming about for so long. Now the proof will be in the pudding. Let us see if I will be forced to eat my own words.

GO MASSACHUSETTS!!!

Janusz