Surprised by the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act (ACA)? I know the blogosphere and Facebook erupted after the announcement. It is too bad we have a federal government who thinks they know best. Beware the statement, "Hi, we are from the government and we are here to help."
The fact is that the House of Representatives passed a bi-partisan bill called Association Health Plans a few years ago. It went through the usual process of hearings in the subcommittees and full committee. There was a vote and markup that was then sent to the Floor of the House for consideration. There both Democrats and Republicans in Congress recognized that Association Health Plans (AHP) would cover the millions of uninsured in this country due to small businesses unable to afford health insurance.
If you are unaware of AHPs, they would allow business owners to pool their resources to afford health care through a greater economy of scale. This would be on par with large corporations who can provide such plans without adversely affecting employees due to one employee becoming ill. In small plans covering 10 or less employees, if one got sick, the rest would have to shoulder cost increases. With the greater economy of scale, it wouldn't have the same effect.
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These AHPs would go through associations such as the National Restaurant Association. Imagine bus boys, servers, cooks, bartenders and managers nationwide being able to buy affordable health insurance through their restaurant association. That would be 13 million workers able to afford health insurance to take care of themselves and their families.
AHPs would be a private sector solution with little governmental control. And because the goverment would have little to say, Senator Kennedy was able to effectively block it in the Senate from seeing the time of day. It died there because Senator Kennedy wanted the federal government to dictate how a system would work. The late Senator's view and those who view government as the problem keeps both sides sharply polarized.
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Instead, we were presented the ACA which passed the House and was allowed to be hammered out in the Senate. Once it passed there, it was as good as passed. The ones to blame in allowing it to be passed I believe rests with the GOP Senators. With all the weapons in their collective arsenals, they could have prevented the ACA from passing but did not. Their incompetence begs for their removal from office. The Senate is designed to prevent bills from being passed easily and the ACA should have not seen the time of day either.
On a personal note, I am against the federal government being involved in health care considering I had an uncle pass away in Canada due to their slow acting socialized medicine. He needed immediate surgery done because of his heart problems only to be delayed indefinitely until he passed away.
Did their medical boards decide he wasn't worth expediting because of his age? Is this what we can expect from the ACA's future death panels deciding who is worthy and who is not? Time will tell unless the ACA can be dismantled.
There is need for health care reform of Medicare and Medicaid, but does it need to be so far-reaching?
Who is the government to say how much our highly educated doctors can earn?
