http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-07-27-costofobesity_N.htm

Can’t disagree with you on what you have to say. There are problems in the health care system and the health insurance industry, but the problem I have with Obama’s approach is his sledgehammer approach to the whole thing, and the deception in it all. I have to admit that, after a good night’s sleep and a re-read of what I wrote, I didn’t flesh out my thoughts on some of the topics very well. I started writing that the day of the press conference, intending to give my thoughts of the proposed bill, but got sidetracked and didn’t get back to it until last night. After reading the transcript of the conference, the post ended up being an off-the-cuff reaction to what I’d read, and it shows.

I’ve got a bit more to say on this subject; not sure if I’ll just append this post or put it in another, but… Soon. I’ve got some time off next week, so maybe I’ll see if I can squeeze that in amongst the arm’s-length honey-do list Yvonne is leaving me while she’s away!

1. The U.S. is out of money, and there’s no way something like this can be revenue-neutral.

2. Very few things in the world have been improved by having the U.S. government take them over.

3. The U.S. is just too big for this to work. For a smaller nation (think Norway, Sweden, etc.), it works fine. But it’s just not going to scale to 300 million people.

I’ve blogged in the past about the reasons for rising health care

1. There’s a general over-utilization of services compared to 20 years ago.

http://deanebarker.net/blog/post/310

2. As a population, Americans are doing a terrible job for caring their own health. Harsh as it sounds, we’re getting fatter by the day, spending billions of dollars on the consequences, and complaining about it non-stop.

http://deanebarker.net/blog/post/316

However, I bristle a little bit when people say there’s nothing wrong with U.S. health care.

Unless you’ve had to buy health insurance on the open market while parenting a child with health problems, then you can’t say nothing is wrong. There was a time not long when ago when 1 out of every 5 take-home dollars Annie and I had were going toward health insurance and prescriptions — things that would be covered by standard employee health plan. And the insurance sucked. It was 80/20 with a $5,000 deductible per person. Our daughter ingested some peanuts and and to go to the hospital. $8,000 out of pocket. We could cover it, but there’s a lot of people for which this would have ruined them.

I’ve also been on the other side of this. My company got a health plan for our employees last year. It was expensive, but it was the right thing to do. Our reward for this? A 35% premium increase to start Year Two. We were told we can expect something similar for Year Three.