Joe Douglas

Your Marxist President has been redistributing the wealth for six years now. The poor, you speak so passionately about are getting POORER, not wealthier under the Marxist. The Rich are getting richer as is in EVERY SYSYEM.

Your sense of wealth would appear to be healthcare. Like somehow the furtherance of Obamacare is going to make poor people less poor. Your Idol, Bill "the cigar soaker" Clinton just came out this week and said, "it is likely that the poor will not be able to afford policies under Obamacare"...

I applaud Lynn Jenkins and other Republicans that SAID THEY WOULD DO EVERYTHING THEY COULD TO STOP IT IF ELECTED and then did what they said they would do.

Obamacare was poorly written, has innumerable flaws everyone see's including Democrats but, no one tries fixing them because Democrats want a single payer system and if needed they will shove it down our throats.. It's costing jobs, it's costing hours people can no long work. It's turning full time jobs to part time jobs. Companies are not expanding. More companies are moving overseas than ever. Insurance premiums are going up, not down, Doctors retiring rather than put up with the mess, people losing their Doctors, people having to go to hospitals across town instead of the one across the street.

And, somehow, Joe Douglas, this is good? This is progress? Please!

Your problem Joe, is you're a Marxist too. Out of great ciaos comes great benefit. What you don't get is, that as is the case with all systems, Marxism still has the very wealthy and the very poor. And, the very stupid think they've made a change.

price controls never work and lead to shortages naturally.

big government solutions invariably have many unintended consequences.

that $200 ER visit comes about by lowering malpractice/defensive medicine, getting government out of the way, enabling patients to have greater choice about how their healthcare dollars get spent.

it is sad to see the letter writer, a psychiatrist, engage in such ignorant slurring of his political opponents. he knows better than what he writes about the motivations of republicans.

first, obamacare is in many ways making things worse than before.

second, yes, republicans have a plan and have had one. but the democrats are owned by the trial lawyers and won't ever work to reduce malpractice and defensive medicine costs. this is certainly a fact Dr. Douglas must know and confront in his own practice. these costs add much to the overall cost of healthcare.

^^above: Secondly, NO ONE can now be turned down for insurance due to preexisting conditions and the law does away with lifetime caps on benefits.

---and you think the costs of these along with all the other mandates like keeping 26-hyear-olds on their parents' policies just magically appears?

this is how the costs get pushed way up instead of decreasing costs.

turning health insurance from actual catastrophic insurance into an entitlement vastly increases costs, pushes people off of their previous healthcare, and is now even deforming our employment. now, thanks to obamacare, far too many part time jobs are being offered. total jobs in the economy have shrunk by nearly 2million. some of that is because of obamacare effects too.

There was a time when we did not have a massive health insurance network. Thus, if a doctor wanted to stay in business, he or she could not charge more than what customers could pay. If they did, they would see a great reduction in business as patients had the ability to choose a doctor that provided the same service for a better value.

Now, a doctor or hospital can charge exorbitant amounts of money because, "the insurance company can pay for it". Of course, we the patients pay for it one way or the other thanks to our insurance premiums.

If we got rid of insurance, health care costs would plummet dramatically.

The problem is the insurance industry, not the health care industry. Unfortunately, the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare), does not affect the health insurance industry except to require that we purchase their product. This will simply increase the costs of a doctor or hospital visit.

The entire situation with the Affordable Care Act reflects how dysfunctional our federal system has become in recent decades. As in typical fashion, it is a great idea in concept and a poor bill in its execution.

Over time, I am hopeful that the individual mandate has some teeth to it so that we actually get participation by younger and healthier participants. At this point, a $95 fine on your taxes (in 2014) will not induce someone to pay several hundred dollars a month for coverage.

My concern is that we will have adverse selection in the exchanges. The people who need coverage and are the most expensive to cover will elect to participate, and the healthy folks will not since there is no economic incentive to do so. This will balloon the federal budget and not significantly impact the number of uninsured.

Overarching all of this is Medicare. We will have twice as many enrollees in 15 years, and the health care system is ill-prepared for this transition. Currently, participants do not pay in near as much into the system as they take out in benefits.

So, what are we talking about now? Grinding the government to a halt, pointing fingers and fighting over a piece of legislation that in no way is the entire picture as it relates to the future of the economics of health care.