Paul Craig Roberts On Why We Won’t Really Fix Health Care

The best fix is a non-for-profit single-payer system, says Paul Craig Roberts, who worked as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration.  Max Baucus’s plan, which forces everyone to have insurance or be fined, creates 30 million more customers for the insurance industry. And if you can’t afford the insurance how are you going to pay the fine?

The main feature of the health care bill is the “individual mandate,” which requires everyone in America to buy health insurance. Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., a recipient of millions in contributions over his career from the insurance industry, proposes to impose up to a $3,800 fine on Americans who fail to purchase health insurance.

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What the U.S. needs is a single-payer not-for-profit health system that pays doctors and nurses sufficiently that they will undertake the arduous training and accept the stress and risks of dealing with illness and diseases.

A private health care system worked in the days before expensive medical technology, malpractice suits, high costs of bureaucracy associated with third-party payers, heavy investment in combating fraud and pressure on insurance companies from Wall Street to improve “shareholder returns.”

Stop funding wars and fund health care instead.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.