Megan McArdle predicts that Americans will be disappointed with the new exchanges set up with the health care reform bill: "In health care, no free lunch."
What people are expecting seems to be a very expensive form of insurance (no gatekeepers or restrictions) on the cheap. What they're going to get is cheap insurance that they will be forced to buy.Force seems to be the modus operandi of this Administration. So far, people aren't buying.
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I had an HMO for many years - the Kaiser Permanente Health Care system. It was basically good, a little slow sometimes, when you needed a referral. But the doctors were competent, and took the time they needed to care properly for you.
They participated in the profits at the end of the year, so had some incentive to keep costs down. Still, I never got the sense that they were short-changing me.
This will NOT be the case with the new "HealthCare" system. If fairly stiff co-pays are not used, some of the patients will suck up all of the time of the doctors. I will lose my current health care, and be forced to use whatever system replaces it. I won't have choices regarding my doctor (to save money, Obamacare will use foreign doctors and nurses), and making myself understood will become progressively more difficult.
They will HAVE to ration care - there's no other way to manage it. So, unlike the system I have now, when I found that I had an enlarged heart, spent the money to make sure that it wasn't a serious problem (it wasn't). In the process, I racked up some bills, but the system took care of the majority of the costs.
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