Government Bureaucracy

We can eliminate the current bureaucracy and stop the plans to expand bureaucracy by getting single-payer

Government Entitlement Programs
and Government Cash Incentives
to be eliminated

Examples of items that are part of the current complexities of U.S. health care financing.

• Medicaid programs in 50 states
• SCHIP State Children’s Health Insurance Program in 50 states
• COBRA The U.S. Department of Labor’s management of the program resulting from the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA)
• The medical component of:
  
  • Workers compensation programs in all 50 states
    
  • Auto insurance health insurance component: seen as “coordinated medical benefits”; this does not apply to all states
    
• Government cash incentives to health insurance companies
  
  • Just a few examples so far for this list:
    • Medicare Advantage Plans — this is a huge issue of the spending of our tax dollars that has been in the news a lot. It’s payments of our tax dollars to for-profit health insurance companies. It’s costing us a fortune, as part of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003.
    • The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 included a guarantee for the initial period of the Drug Prescription Benefit program that health insurance companies would not lose money. (I’d have to research to confirm if this was a year or longer.)
    • The further privatization of Medicare, scheduled to start in 2010 as per the same Medicare Modernization Act, is also scheduled to pay billions of dollars to for-profit health insurance companies to “encourage” (!) them to participate. Another case of guaranteeing companies that they will not lose.

• Reductions in taxes for employers who provide health insurance to their employees; this is an indirect payment of private health insurance by the government

• A variety of additional existing programs are associated with (and/or directly include) an amazing bureaucracy of programs and grants and grant-writing and more activities that have nothing to do with the actual activity of delivering health care; the following list is all that I have gathered so far. If I learn of more, I will add them. It is not my intent to research all of these, nor defend them being on the list or not. It is my intent to give some tiny indication of the massive opportunity for simplicity and efficiency. I don’t know that all of the programs documented at this web page will be eliminated. It will need to be determined how the services of these programs will be provided in the future.

  • County-specific programs supported by local millage tax assessments
  • Rural Assistance Center
  • Rural Health Clinics
  • Federally Qualified Health Centers
  • Community Health Centers (CHCs)
  • Migrant Health Centers
  • Health Care for the Homeless programs
  • Public Housing Primary Care programs
  • Urban Indian and Tribal Health Centers

We Can Stop the Planned Expansion of Government in Health Care:
Government-Dictated Bureaucratic Health Care

Congress’ plan to expand government related to health care – which will raise our taxes and have more government involvement in our health care. (Single-payer would dramatically cut government bureaucracy, as noted above, and not add any of the items below.)

• Medicaid. Expansion, as necessary, for the above programs. Medicaid has been highlighted as a program that will be expanded.
• Mandated / dictated / forced purchase of health care
  • If you don’t choose, then the government will assign you to a health insurance plan and force you to pay.
  • If you don’t pay the forced premiums, you’ll be fined.
  • If you don’t pay the fine, you could be arrested for tax evasion, which can lead to time in federal prison.
  • Increased use of estate recovery to recover costs; this takes priority over all other claimants and beneficiaries to an estate
  • Note: I will refine this section if and as needed, but it’s my clear understanding of how it works, based on mandated health insurance already being used in Massachusetts since 2006.
• New Programs
  • “Premium Assistance” program for those who have incomes up to $88,200, which is 400% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL)
  • Expansion of government regulators overseeing the operations of over 1300 health insurance companies, related to the expanded regulations to better “control” the health insurance companies’ operations, such as them allowing patients to purchase a health insurance plan even with a pre-existing condition