dirigo health insurance maine
dirigo health insurance maine
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Obama’s public insurance option – what are your thoughts?
I live in Maine where it sounds like out ‘Dirigo Choice’ debacle. What a mess.To give you and idea, Tarren Bragdon, chief executive officer of The Maine Heritage Policy Center, stated: “The promise of Dirigo Health reform, when introduced in 2003, was to create a new public option DirigoChoice and cover all of Maine’s 128,000 uninsured by 2009. To date, Maine taxpayers have spent $155 million on a program that today covers just 3,400 of Maine’s uninsured, about 3 percent. Premiums on this public plan have skyrocketed 74 percent in just four years.”
I’ve been behind Obama 100%, totally and completely…but this scares me.
President Obama campaigned on this issue, without giving many specific details. He has pushed Congress to pass health care reform without defining what reform would look like. The word “reform” means many different things to many different people. True leadership establishes specific goals, not nebulous terms like “reform”.
To some, reform would mean universal health care for “free”. Everybody is covered, whether you can afford it or not. To others, it is a simple lowering of costs by eliminating fraud/waste/abuse, and common sense business practices in the private sector, making health care more afordable for everyone. There are several points in between where the government provides health care at a certain cost to those without access through their jobs.
Without “reform” defined, it is useless to argue about how high taxes will climb or whether care will be rationed. Some in power see this as an opportunity for the federal government to assume control of more parts of health care, in the guise of “reform”. Many have been saying for years that health care in this country is heading for a meltdown. While at the same time, some polls show that a super majority of Americans are satisfied with their current health care.
I favor an incremental approach. Why not reduce fraud/waste/abuse in the current system first, and see where that leads us. Currently, there are unscrupulous/incompetent health care workers charging/over charging for unnecessary services, and bungling services which trigger lawsuits. Hospitals and health care workers avoid turning them in for fear of losing support in the future if they need it. Fraud/waste/abuse is passed on to the insurance companies who pass it on with higher premiums. Lawsuits cost insurance companies millions, who pass it on with higher premiums. This is not the only problem in health care, but it is the low hanging fruit that can be harvested as a first step. No need cut down the whole tree as a first step.
