As a Democrat I have taken a lot of direct fire from many of my colleagues, co-workers and friends in general. Without delving too deeply into the rhetoric, I would like to clarify my position on the Affordable Care Act. I believe there is a need for a policing in the area of Medicare reform and health insurance abuses. As an employee of a local orthopedic firm I do NOT support the device tax provision. It makes absolutely no sense to add cost to medical devices in an effort to lower medical costs overall.
Perhaps our industry should have lobbied a little harder or combined our efforts as a group much like the insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Perhaps we should have pushed for exemptions for certain types of devices, or even a better definition of what constitutes a device.
In any organization, incompetence, corruption and greed can become pervasive if left to their own devices, so in that regard, how do you implement a system of checks and balances on the health care industry as a whole? You cannot simply fall back upon the free market strategy of supply and demand. A person in agonizing pain is going to be willing to pay anything for relief. In matters of health you have a captive market that will never diminish so the potential for abuse is always present.
The largest share of what's needed to pay for the Affordable Care Act will be gained from the curtailing of these abuses in Medicare. I recently took my father to see a local specialist whose business is in dealing mostly with Medicare patients. Before we left the office on our initial visit, we were administered to by seven different people just to see one doctor. I'm sure everything at this particular practice is legitimate and of the highest quality, but just how cost efficient, I cannot say.
Can those of us with good medical insurance even imagine what it would be like to pay for everything out of pocket, and then do so in the event of a catastrophic illness? Next time you get an explanation of benefits, take a good look at what was actually paid out for the services rendered and think about why it really costs so much.
So again, I ask for a little decorum, before we start calling each other Witches, Communists, Socialists, Nazis. Let's use a little common courtesy.
Before Nov. 2 do a little research for yourself, don't rely upon sound-bite television ads that distort the truth, or cable news media outlets that flat out lie. Search for the truth and vote with your head. For the Democrats in particular, you have a duty to come out and vote. Don't let all the out of state campaign contributions influence the outcome in our state, get out and vote.
