Daryl wrote:From a distance Obamacare seems to be an attempt to build a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Basically just tweaking your highly complicated and profit orientated private system with a new set of rules.
Not politically viable, but the ultimate solution would be to research all the similar national systems run by the developed countries, design your own using that information plus knowledge of your needs and implement it. Possibly a quarter of those running your current mishmash could be brought in to staff the new system, and the rest sent off to get real productive jobs.
We have something called PEOs here. They are Professional Employment Organizaions. They serve to provide much of the administrative support for small companies by acting as the employer of record for insurance purposes. My company uses one of them. Well, we were recently sun off from a larger company. We are 58 employees and were part of a company employing about 500. Our health insurance cost were significant less with the PEO than it was with the self insured larger company. Our PEO "employs" over 300,000 employees.
If the government just offers people a chance to join a heavily regulated private/public organization that can offer a selection of catastrophic health insurance (in the traditional sense of insurance) as well as a variety of health maintenance plans, the problems would have been better addressed. The plan would gather enrolled as they grew larger and costs would have fallen to its members as membership increased. Eliminate the issues restricting plans being sold across state lines and receive the benefit of drawing from the larger national pool potential members. Anyone who was self employed could find a plan they can afford. The government could offer to subsidize those who needed it.
But that' not what was legislated.