Sarcoidosis Research

There is so much opinion floating out there as to the most effective solution to deal with the rising cost of our healthcare system. The debate has been on both sides of the table and has swung both directions for both Democrats and Republicans. Neither group can seem to see eye-t0-eye on how to fix the major problems inherent in the healthcare system. Democrats seem bent on making healthcare public. Republicans–for the most part–seem content with making the healthcare system private. However there are inherent risks with both methods. If you are banking on the costs of healthcare decreasing over the next ten to fifteen years, I would consider you a loony. Some of the issues with both proposals are discussed below.

The private method holds the risk that the outpacing costs of healthcare over GDP and real wage increases will make people more and more poor in real dollars. As the cost of insurance premiums continue to rise to keep up with the cost of the healthcare itself, people will have less money to spend on other goods and services, thus decreasing the money flow and spending power of those individuals.

On the public side of the argument, you have democrats claiming the making healthcare for everyone will decrease costs because of pooling. Some argue the other direction, claiming that those not in the system now are not in because they can’t afford. Once they enter, they will use it more and more actually causing the costs increase substantially more than they did previously. There are a host of other social and moral arguments on both sides of the spectrum that have yet to be played out. Perhaps only time will tell.

It is because of the rising cost of healthcare that the Obama administration has put the Affordable Care Act in place and is causing each individual state to set its own health insurance exchange program or HIX. Some are refusing to get their set up. In that case, the federal government is actually planning on usurping the states and helping to set up a federal HIX for the areas that fail to set one up themselves. Will the costs continue to rise? Some say no, but my guess is that we are just shifting the rising costs to the public in a different way rather than having privatized the insurance, we have made it public. The only problem I see is the inefficiency of government bureaucracy in dealing with the whole mess will be more costly than the private version.