MANY LOW INCOME PEOPLE AREN'T ELIGIBLE FOR GOVERNMENT HEALTH PLAN OPTIONS
Many in the government have spoken about health care reform and about making changes to help families get low cost family health plans. I don't think that most people realize that there are actually few medical care options available to the poor. Most people believe that the poor get free health insurance benefits via the government health plan Medicaid. However, few people actually realize that although this plan exists, it is truly primarily for pregnant women and children, and that the parents of these children still remain without health care coverage, and other adults without children who are not disabled and not over 65 are not eligible for Medicare either. These plans were only designed to cover very specific groups of people and don't cover near the 46 million people in this country who are currently not insured.
Now many people say that it is not the government's responsibility to cover these people, and in theory that is fine, however do realize that these people still receive medical care, but on the government's dime. They allow themselves to get sicker before getting treatment and this costs more and then the bills that they rack up in the emergency rooms, can't be paid, because these people don't have anything to pay them with, so the health care system and the federal government wind up eating this debt anyway. That is why it is imperialist to find a way to provide low cost family health plans to these people. As a country, we are really not saving any money at all by denying these people health care coverage, instead it is costing us more to keep them uninsured.
The costs of insurance are up and salaries are not keeping up with the rising costs of insurance, so we need to find a system that can put a cap on some of these health care insurance costs, or find some other way to keep costs down. Administrative costs in our health care system are extremely high, so perhaps that is the first place we can look to make the much needed cutbacks.