Friday, July 17, 2009

Healthcare in America Is About to be Destroyed

The decline in treatment and innovations is going to be very rapid, under whatever bill comes out of Obama/Congress. In five years, you won't recognize the health system.

There will possibly be one loophole, which I fear to mention here because they would most certainly try to close it. But outside the loophole, it's rapid decline

I fully expect that only the rich, offshore, will receive some semblance of the healthcare treatments we have now.

If you are in the medical industry, it's time to start thinking about a move to the Caribbean Islands. You are the among first that will be impacted by the rolling fog of interventionism.

Sheldon Richman has an update.

1 comment:

  1. I'm not sure if Obamacare will destroy health care in the US, but it will certainly cost an arm and a leg.

    When Australia introduced it's "universal" health care system in the mid-1970s, the justification given by the then social democrat (Labor) government was that 20% of Australians under the exiting system were "uninsured". So a compulsory income tax levy of 1% needed to be applied to provide for 'free' cover for everyone.

    Opponents claimed that the "uninsured 20%" was an exaggerated figure as it included people who "self insured" by maintaining liquid asset reserves, Queenslanders (that state had a free state provided public hospital system for decades) as well as other groups including ex-military personnel who had access to special benefits.

    Anyhow that was almost 40 years ago. How did the 1% levy hold up.

    Here's what Wikipedia says:

    "Program funding

    The original Medibank program proposed a 1.35% levy (with low income exemptions) but these bills were rejected by the Senate, and so Medibank was originally funded from general revenue. In October 1976, the Fraser Government introduced a 2.5% levy.

    The program is now nominally funded by an income tax surcharge known as the Medicare levy, which is currently set at 1.5%.[2] An exemption applies to low income earners. In practice the levy raises only a fraction of the money required to pay for the scheme. If the levy was to fully pay for the services provided under the medicare banner then it would need to be set at about 8%.

    There is an additional levy of 1.0%, known as the Medicare Levy Surcharge, for those on high annual incomes increased to $75,000+ in the 2008 federal budget who do not have adequate levels of private hospital coverage. This was part of an effort by the former Howard Coalition Federal Government to encourage people towards private health insurance."

    All this money presumably means Australia's public hospitals are flush with resources, manpower and lots of healthy stuff like that.

    Well, at least, not in the largest state, New South Wales, where the state-run (but largely federally financed) public hospital system is in something of a financial meltdown (See news report here).

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