The Affordable Care as a Cause of Death

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The Affordable Care was passed in 2010. It took the law a few years to become fully implemented. Lifespans of Americans began declining in 2014 and continue declining today. Count on this trend to continue into the future.

Declining lifespans are explained away as being due to things like suicides and drug overdoses. These are what might be described as up line causes and are in no way root causes. The cause of decreasing lifespans is the structure of the healthcare market in the United States. With the advent of the Affordable Care Act, personalized medicine has disappeared. What we have instead is mass market medicine. Mass market medicine is the child of lobbyist inspired legislation designed to increase the portion of GDP that is devoted to healthcare. It is also filled with skimming operations that enrich the insurance industry, pharmaceutical industry and to a lesser degree providers.

The level of genuine healthcare in the United States is severely diminished and as a result lifespans are declining. It will get much worse. It is impossible that the trend will reverse as long as this bill is law of the land. Citizens are not concerned enough to complain, so the bill is not likely to be repealed.

What about Medicare for all? That will not be any better and will probably be worse. There is no way to provide quality healthcare and feed the insurance and pharmaceutical industries at the same time. In today’s world, all legislation is for profit. The Affordable Care Act is on the books for the purpose of enriching the parties which hired the lobbyists to make sure the bill was passed. The same parties with massive political power will also write the provisions of any Medicare for al bill. Citizens will end up serving a government run healthcare system, just as they are doing now under the Affordable Care Act.

Does it have to be this way? No it doesn’t. However as long as American’s believe that this type of bill is passed for their benefit, nothing will change. American’s believe that having health insurance constitutes having healthcare. No one is getting genuine health insurance. What they are getting is life management and herding. Does anyone mind? Is anyone aware? It is easy to exploit folks who are unreasonably trusting and who wish for others to think for them.

What would constitute real government healthcare for American citizens? There are many services provided by government that are not skimming operations disguised as benefits. How often do you hear complaints about the costs of fire departments or road construction? There are no automatic skimming operations packed into the legislation that provides these types of things.

Any decent health care bill would have to eliminate all skimming operations in order to be of value. In any country the majority has a clear right to insist that government guaranty access to quality healthcare for everyone. Free market healthcare would provide the optimum net level healthcare, but that idea has already been rejected. Free markets, despite their overwhelming benefits, are not trusted. With these thing people are prone to opt for collective solutions. A society can only do what the majority agree to do.

I am citing a system that provides an outcome very close to the optimum a free market system would provide while providing full benefits to all who have no means to pay.

1.) Give everyone in the country a plastic healthcare card that can be used to pay for all healthcare, healthcare products and related services.

2.) Providers are never advised as to the financial well being of patients.

3.) Doctors don’t know who pays and who doesn’t so price competition would be present.

4.) Low income payers could be subsidized. A maximum healthcare expense would be possible.

5.) Those who can’t pay get a statement showing services provided but no balance due.

6.) All who pay, would pay far less than the insurance premiums they are now paying now.

7.) Those who are in the class that now pays lobbyists to write legislation for profit would pay their entire healthcare expense.

There is no such thing as free healthcare. Enslaving doctors is not a reasonable solution. Having all doctors work for the government is not a solution. There is no one in the United States who is getting free healthcare. They never will. Even citizens in countries deemed as democratic socialist, pay for healthcare. There are many ways for a service to be provided but free is not possible.

What I just described is a very efficient way for a government to guarantee quality healthcare for everyone. The key is to eliminate the skimming operations packed into these types of bills. Also, a decent healthcare bill needs to be inspired and written by ordinary citizens.
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