President George Bush enabled a Medicare reform while he was in office in 2003. The republican controlled congress created the Medicare prescription drug benefit, emphasized personal Health Savings Accounts, and did other things to promote consumer driven health care. A couple weeks ago, the Obama administration announced that over a million Americans receiving Medicare benefits would be getting $250 rebate checks to help balance the cost of prescription drugs. Democrats are taking credit for these rebates, when really, it was the Republican party that enabled this in the first place.
The new Health care law that President Obama worked so hard to push through is already expected to fail, even though it hasn't fully taken effect yet. Representative Wally Herger of California posted a video on the House Republican Website that said, "We have introduced a bill that would fully repeal Obamacare and replace it with common-sense, incremental solutions that would actually help bring down skyrocketing health care premiums by up to 20 percent."
A drop in health care cost sounds good to me, but it seems strange that when so many people were opposed to the new health care bill, how did it ever get passed in the first place?
In reference to the rebate checks, I don't think it matters who initiated the idea; it's the government regardless. At my new job working for the plan administrator for several companies' workplace benefits, I have had several people ask me questions such as, "When is Obama going to give me more money for these medical costs?" and "Why is my subsidy ending before my COBRA is up?" It is evident from these comments that Americans are slipping into a worrisome attitude where they are never satisfied with what they have already been given. For example, they get COBRA and they find out how much it increases the cost of their premiums, so the government gives them a subsidy with 65% coverage, and we, the tax-payers, end up paying for a continuation of coverage that the government granted in the first place! I believe that Health Care Reform was passed because these rapacious Americans saw another opportunity to get more--more money, more exceptions, more "freedom". No matter what the government does, it will never be enough. Medical costs will keep going up and tax-payers will suffer for it. The government isn't going to pay for rising medical costs...you are.
ReplyDelete