The Affordable Health Care Choices Act

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Health care costs are soaring. Health insurance is gradually becoming unaffordable. 30 million Americans can't get insurance, and another 17 million choose not. With as much as 17% of the US economy spent on medical care, why is the system failing? And will President Obama's proposed bill, The Affordable Health Care Choices Act (HR3200 and its equivalent bill before the Senate) succeed in guaranteeing health care to every American? The health insurance industry lies at the heart of the issue. Touted as private, it is in fact crippled by government regulations. Imagine having to order everything on the menu each time you went to a restaurant. Such is the state of health insurance in the US today. Through what is known as Mandates, each state dictates what must be included in an insurance policy sold to its residents. The list of must-have-coverage is absurdly inclusive. Further, laws prohibit the purchase of insurance from out-of-state providers. Add to this legislations that require insurers to accept any group that applies for coverage and anyone in that group, regardless of health conditions or lifestyle choices, and insurance policies become equally expensive for the twenty-year-old health nut and the middle-aged, beer-swilling chain-smoker. So what is HR3200 proposing to do about the problem of State Mandates? Introduce Federal Mandates. First, the Individual Mandate, which will make it illegal for individuals not to have health insurance and second, the Employer Mandate, which will make it illegal for employers not to provide health insurance to their employees. Under this proposal, there is a danger that individuals will have to forgo buying food or other essentials just to avoid breaking the law, while employers might have to cut down on the number of employees they can afford to hire. Logic dictates that a problem created by lack of competition should be solved by reintroducing competition. A less sweeping law could achieve this by making it legal for individuals and employers to buy insurance across state lines. It will then be in each state's best interest to change their mandate laws so as to help insurance companies in their state be more competitive. HR3200 also proposes a public option, namely insurance provided by the federal government. This is the model used by nations worldwide, such as Israel, Finland, UK, Ireland, Australia, Canada, Japan... the list is long. The US federal government already provides a public option to Americans over age 65, known as Medicare. But if the future success of President Obama's public option is to be measured by how well government has handled the Medicare option thus far (on which 40 million elderly Americans are dependant), then the outlook is grim. Medicare is expected to go bankrupt in 2019. Further, rates paid by Medicare to doctors and hospitals are so low they fail to cover costs, let alone provide a profit. The health care system has been able to offset these loses by shifting them to privately insured patients. But what will happen when a far larger portion of the population is insured under a Medicare-type policy?