No way to operate a health care system

     
     So the Republican Congress finally passed a bill trying to dismantle the Affordable Health Care Act.  While the Act is far from perfect, as it has no public option or single payer system, it still is a beginning effort to address our dysfunctional health care system.  I was reminded of this dysfunction when I received a Go Fund Me appeal for the grandchild of someone with whom I graduated from school.  It seems that the child's parents had a health insurance coverage with a very high deductible that they couldn't pay.  This is the second Go Fund Me appeal I have received within the past year.  We are the only developed nation that places its citizens in this situation that they have to make this kind of appeal or declare bankruptcy.   Republicans say they stand for life but apparently not the estimated 45,000 Americans who died each year because they lack health insurance before the Affordable Health Care Act.  Americans who live in states with Republican Governors who refuse to expand Medicaid will have more deaths from the uninsured.
    It is hard to accept that Americans will have to continue to wait to have a health care system that produces better health outcomes at far lower costs as most other developed countries now have.  We will get there eventually but only with Republicans dragging their feet the whole way. We are still waiting to hear the Republican answer to this situation that doesn't just think that turning over more of our health care system to the insurers and providers will magically give us a better system then they are presently privately providing.

P.S.
     So what are the Republicans and insurers afraid of with the public option?  Maybe its that a public option might be too popular and threaten their business.  A public option like a "Medicare for All" program would be the next big game changer and correct many of the problems with the current Obamacare program.  Of course that will have to wait for a Democrat landslide like 1964 that brought us the current Medicare program.

P.S.1
    Don't hold your breath for a Republican alternative to Obamacare ever being proposed.  Republicans are not into policy making for change except to roll back to a previous time. They never seem to have a policy that moves anything forward.  Not surprising that you never hear a Republican slogan "Take our Country forward."  For them yesterday is always better than a better tomorrow.

P.S. 2
    My apologies to those Republicans with real policy agendas (Libertarians?) but your party has let itself get hijacked.  

#hocopolitics