Health Insurance Costs Quotes
This quotation is interesting for two reasons: First, President Donald Trump had campagned on teh promise of Universal Health Insurance and in the early days of the Tramp Administration, Trump's Manager of the Office of Management and Budget effectivly repudiated Trum's campaign promise. Second, it ilustrates the narrownss to the thinking of soem of the very conservative politicians of the era. Virtually every industiral democracy in the world had universial health or health insurance coverage. Mulvaney's thinking was limited to teh classic U. S. model of health insurance premiums being paid by individuals and companies to privat insurance companies. Yet most other countries had teh government coelect the money and pay the health providers (the single payer system) of simply funded universal ehalth care through the general tax revenues, and had no specific act of buying a policy so there was no way for people to refuse.
The Republicans were trying to repeal the first national health reform since Medicare. But the part was split over what they would replace it with. Many wanted to give the health insurers more power and profits, but other Republicans like Cruz did not want to see the helath insurance premiums increase. Ironically, most members of Congress at the time agreed with Cruz's focus on lowering or at least holding health insurance premiums steady, but this was vert hard to do without heavily regulating the insurance companies or adding a public insurance program to compete with the insurance companies or eliminate the rights of the individual states to regualte and control; insurance in their state. And no majority could be found for any of these.
At the time in America, the insurance companies only paid out less than 80 percent of all the money they took in for health insurance. More than 20 percent went into their high overhead and profits. In contrast, to the 20 percent or more that it costs with insurance companies to administer health insurance payments, the agency that performs the same function for Medicare doe so with only a 6 percent cost Sanders argued that by getting rid of the insurance companies, the nation could save about 14 percent of the entire insured medical bills for the nation—many billions of dollars which would reduce average health insurance premiums by 14 percent. Opponents argue that the would be a socialist system and give too much potential control of individual health matters to a government operated or government controlled organizations. Politicians, in order to look good with the voters, would lower premiums and also pay out less either shortchanging doctors and hospitals or rating medial care somehow.
The last sentence of this quotation was very typical of many middle and even upper middle class Americans in 2016. Change, technological, social and political, was evident almost everywhere and unlike most change of the past, where the change took place over extended periods of time, change was occuring much faster. Voss, like so many others, was feeling overwhelmed, and powerless to control her own life adn destiny. She clearly still had much control over much of her life as her business wold not even exist were it not for the ideas and ahrd work of Casey and her partners, but compared to just decades ago the forces of change were so dynaic that many American felt as she did--that EVERYTHING was out of her control.
