Mental Health Blogs

So I watched President Barack Obama’s health care town hall meeting this morning and went away seriously unimpressed because there are several key questions about health care reform that the President failed to address today and which his aides seem incapable of addressing either.

How are we going to pay for this, consistently and over time, without taxing the public to death?

How are we going to keep employers from cutting off their employees in order to shunt them onto the public system and save themselves money?

How can we add 40 million to 50 million people to whatever health insurance system we wind up with while utilizing roughly the same number of doctors, nurses, etc. and expect to provide the same level of access to care and services?

How are we going to drive down costs in the health care system? The President and his people keep insisting they will make this happen, but how?

What services are going to be covered under the public component of the ill-specified plan and at what price? And for that matter, beyond general PCP types of things, will naturopaths, chiropractors and other alternative medicine providers be covered?

I know what President Obama is trying to do is deeply complicated and fraught with political risk, but that doesn’t excuse him from answering some fundamental questions about health care reform if he expects the support of moderates such as myself. I’m in favor of health care reform–I am one of the 47 million Americans without health insurance–but I want to know what I am getting into.

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3. The House Dems, Pres. Obama Have Lost Me On Health Care Reform
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