Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Health care reform…in the wrong places
Health care reform…in the wrong places
Jul 1, 2025 7:25 AM

With all this talk of health care reform this year, I couldn’t help but do some digging into the real aspects of the proposals. Ranging from pletely disruptive universal medical care plan from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the socialist-like plan from Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) in the 110th congress, health care is big on the agenda for 2007. I am afraid that if the policies proposed by Schwarzenegger and Kennedy are passed, future generations will witness a detrimental effect on our economy. Kennedy’s home state of Massachusetts, being the first state to provide universal health care to its citizens, has already seen negative aspects in regards to business and job creation.

These arguments for universal health e disguised in many forms, but all contribute negatively to the economy. The idea of making health care affordable and available to citizens is an excellent idea, however, Governor Schwarzenegger’s and Senator Kennedy’s ideas are the wrong way to go.

Forcing employers to provide health care and penalizing them for not providing coverage is not the right direction to head.

The state of Massachusetts employs bination of subsidies and penalties to make insurance more affordable and to force people to buy it. The law requires employers with 11 or more full-time employees to offer health coverage or be subject to a $295 fee for each employee, as well as face being billed for services their uninsured employees get.

Because of this policy, employees are going to lose other benefits and suffer pay cuts, or even be fired. The cost of medical insurance is extremely high. The real solution rests in not forcing employers to provide coverage, but to make insurance more affordable.

The answer lies in eliminating all of the fraudulent law suits filed every day by money-hungry lawyers who pletely destroying the medical system. As lawyers sue doctors, malpractice insurance premiums increase. The number of personal injury litigations has steadily increased at a rate of 12% since 1975.

Jury Verdict Research, a database of plaintiff and defense verdicts, says awards in medical liability cases increased 43 percent in 1999, from $700,000 to $1,000,000. Jury awards in medical malpractice claims jumped 43 percent in one year—from $700,000 in 1999 to $1 million in 2000. Juries pensating plaintiffs more generously than in the past. From 1994 to 2000, Jury Verdict Research found that more than half of medical malpractice jury awards were for $500,000 or more.

Seeing the direct correlation between health care cost and the cost of medical malpractice insurance for doctors (driven up by law suits), the root of the problem is obvious. This must be attacked before anything else. If Senator Kennedy and Governor Schwarzenegger want to see real progress, their plans must be disregarded and tort abuse must be solved first. There are various other aspects to their plans that are also misinformed and misdirected, but I’ll save that for another time.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt” Is a Work of Bitter Greatness
Approaching the end of a great career, the Oscar, Tony, and Olivier Award–winning playwright has produced one of his finest works: both surprising and ferocious. Read More… Tom Stoppard’s new play, Leopoldstadt, is a triumph of the playwriting art. It’s also a triumph of marketing. That’s because its advertising and publicity campaign has sold the public on the idea that it’s a multigenerational saga. It is that, but only secondarily. To a much greater degree, it’s a ferociously angry Holocaust...
Better Economics for a Better, Not Perfect, World
We are men, not gods, and so utopia will always remain a dream, disappointing historians and economists of all stripes. But that is no reason to despair. Read More… As far as centuries go, the 20th was remarkable for many things, not least among which were wars fought on a scale unprecedented for their destructiveness, as well as convulsive debates about economics and economic policy. In the case of the latter, the 20th century witnessed economics emerging from being a...
Jimmy Lai Pushes to Halt National Security Trial
As the democracy activist is denied a jury trial, his defense team pushes for justice. Read More… Mere days after bringing a veteran British litigator on his legal team, jailed Hong Kong entrepreneur Jimmy Lai is moving to halt the trial proceedings entirely. In a pretrial interview, the 74-year-old Lai came before three National Security judges to review the charges brought against him. Lai’s trial, slated to begin in early December, is to be heard by a panel of judges...
Lives of the Saint: C.S. Lewis on Stage and Screen
Why has the life of this Oxford don, Christian apologist, and storyteller proved so seductive to filmmakers and playwrights? Perhaps because his life was a great story itself. Read More… Sometimes it seems as though the only things that exercise modern souls are sex, scandal, and sin, but all around us, every day, there are indications that a not-insignificant portion of the population seeks something more. These strivers and seekers are not looking for men whose flaws make them relatable...
The Catholic Church vs. Critical Race Theory
A new book by philosopher Edward Feser takes on the popularizers of CRT and demonstrates the theory’s incoherence and patibility with church teaching, even as racism remains an evil to batted. Read More… Two and half years ago, the police killing of George Floyd sparked rioting and heightened racial tensions across the United States, and many Americans began to hear the phrase “critical race theory” for the first time. Critical race theory (or CRT) has been around since at least...
Freeing the Market from Unfree Minds
A new book explores the long evolution of the free market economy, arguing it is more myth than fact. The problem is: The author is no economist, and so his facts are more myth than reality. Read More… Free Market: The History of an Idea by Jacob Soll, a professor of history, philosophy, and accounting, attempts to trace the philosophical and theoretical evolution of the free market over 2,000 years. But a century-by-century account would prove tedious if for no...
Jimmy Lai Gets Veteran U.K. Human Rights Lawyer
The imprisoned activist and entrepreneur faces life in prison as part of Beijing’s crackdown in Hong Kong. Read More… Although 74-year-old media mogul and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai faces life in prison under Beijing’s harsh National Security Law (NSL), he now has a new ally in his corner: veteran human rights lawyer Timothy Owen. Lai, already serving time for convictions related to the NSL, still faces a December trial that could leave him spending the rest of his life behind...
Who Decides What Books Your Child Should Read?
The fight over “book banning” and who has the final word in a child’s education has taken some nasty turns of late. Everyone needs to take a step back and put the debate into monsense context. Read More… At its best, a democratic polity ought to deal well plexity, posed of clashing ideas and principles as well as the interests of multiple actors and stakeholders. Such a polity will seek proximate solutions that require constant fine-tuning. It will recognize trade-offs...
The Collapse of a Cryptocurrency Guru
How could a much-celebrated billionaire be reduced to virtually nothing in a matter of days? When your reality is all in your head. Read More… At the beginning of the year, I wrote a piece for Acton on Elizabeth Holmes, the con artist behind Theranos, the fake tech startup promising a revolution in blood tests and, thus, the beginning of a solution to the problem of healthcare costs. Come the year’s end, we have, apparently, another con man vaguely associated...
Avalon Is Thanksgiving for America
Director Barry Levinson is one of the great American cinematic storytellers. And one of the stories he loves to tell is about making it in the New World, with lessons about the price of success for immigrants and their descendants alike. Read More… Barry Levinson was one of the most successful directors in America around 1990, when he made Avalon, an immigrant Thanksgiving movie trying to sum up the transformation of the American family in the 20th century. He won...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved