Why no candidate's health care plan will work

Written by: pinetrees on Feb 4, 2008 1:49 PM EST

In today's NY Times, Paul Krugman presenteed an analysis of why it is better economic policy to adopt a health care plan with mandates, as proposed by Clinton, rather than a plan without mandates, as proposed by Obama.  As a voter and not an economist, I would like to state the opinion that neither candidate has come up with a plan that will result in people getting the health care they need.  Any plan in which a beaurocracy decides how much it thinks a person should be able to pay will simply not work.  Here are some examples: suppose you have a single mother living in an apartment with one child.  She works as a secretary and earns $35,000 per year.  She had her child in Cheaper Day Care Center, but had to take her child out of there because another child was hitting her child.  She put her child in a day care center that costs an extra $100 per month, but her child is doing well there.  In addition, she can't afford to live near Suburban Stock Broker, where she works, so she incurs the cost of gasoline to drive 25 miles each way to work.  She bought a reliable car and pays higher car insurance for driving a newer car.  Having the car makes her a very reliable employee who always arrives on time.  The health insurance bureaucracy will disallow the extra cost for the daycare.  Also, they may disallow the car insurance.  (If she lost her job in an economic downturn, the food stamp program will disallow her car insurance, even though she needs the car to find another job. Will why will the government insurance bureaucracy be any different from the food stamp bureaucracy?)  So she will be charged the amount that the bureaucracy thinks she should pay.   Something has to give.  Perhaps she will just not be able to afford the copays or the dental visits, so even though there is mandated "coverage," she will not get the health care she needs.  No candidate except Kucinich has convinced me that he or she has a plan that will actually result in working class people actually getting health care.  There already is some non-profit health care in New Mexico in community health clinics and at the university clinic, so Richardson is the only who actually has experience in administering some affordable health care. 

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