Today’s JY Provocative Question# 18: What specific changes should be made to improve the health care system?

You’d think that the United States would have the number one health care system in the world, given that people from all over the world come to the US to get health care treatment that is not available anywhere else. 

The Legatum Institute’s 2023 world health care ranking has ranked the US health care system as being number 69. Which is kind of sad, given the US world stature. But I couldn’t help noticing that the countries who were ranked at the top are countries with universal health care.

Usually, universal health care is a system that is subsidized by the government, perhaps government administered or run, paid for through the collection of taxes. One would think that the taxpayers in those nations are probably heavily taxed to fund the type of health care system they have.

What could we say about the American health care system; There are two factors, perhaps three. The first factor is that the States have a defacto universal health care system called “Medicaid.”  The second factor is that the US Federal government also has a defacto universal health care called Medicare.

The states give Medicaid to those who are too poor to afford to pay for health care. This means that most people on public assistance, food stamps, Social Supplement Income, the disabled, foster children, the mentally ill and most recently the illegal migrants all get to have free medical coverage paid for by the state taxpayers.

Then there is the Medicare program which is what senior citizens get when they start to collect their social security retirement, and those getting their social security disability.

Otherwise the American health care system is mostly private with insurance companies dictating the cost and authorize whether a person can receive the type of treatment that they need.

There have been attempts to bring universal health care to the American public. The Clinton administration came up with a plan. But, the plan was rejected. It called to tax those who have better health care then the one that was purposed to be gov’t run. Well, that was one issue.

Then the Obama administration came up with a plan which was actually adopted after a lot of political arm twisting and Congressional back door deals.

The plan dubbed Obamacare is in effect, but it is a flawed plan. The premise of Obamacare was getting the un-insurable some type of health care benefits. But in reality it is a big head ache, Forcing those with superior health care to down grade to be on par with inferior health care plan, I guess to equalize coverage for everyone. Co-pays for some people increased and some medications that were previously offered by a health care plan were no longer available. On top of that, those who does not have any type of medical coverage and refuse the marketplace insurance (Obamacare) are taxed. Can you imagine that.

You can also imagine that True_George has not even mentioned the Veteran’s health care system administered by the Veterans Administration. That is another animal that needs to be tamed, but it is part of the US health care system. One that is a waste of money. Veterans would be better off if they were given unrestricted Medicaid, allowing Veterans to seek a higher quality of care. After all civilian health care is more compassionate and caring than a government run system.

Well, as you see the direct answer to the provocative question is that the US health care system needs much improvement in all areas, and keep the government out of it.