Obamacare and the Tea Party

I was watching the morning news this morning as I was getting ready for work. There was a segment about Obama's health care reform plan. I missed part of it, but I think it was talking about people who report medical fraud. It showed a very excited Obama talking about the real opportunity of his health care plan passing. It also showed health care plan supporters protesting somewhere.

The next shots were the Tea Party and the person they were showing called the health care plan Obamacare. Wow, that is very witty. This group seems to be all about fear, hate and clever word play. I have not heard any valid arguments from them as to why the health care plan is a bad thing. They are not original at all.

They chose their name to appear to be patriotic, referring to the Boston Tea Party. That protest happened because the colonies were being taxed heavily and were not represented in the British government. To protest this, they sneaked onto the British ships in Boston Harbor and dumped the tea overboard. They were patriots and were protesting something that was affecting everyone in the colonies in a negative way. The British were taxing the colonies in order to support the government.

This new Tea Party group stole their name from these original patriots and are using the name to try to give their cause some credibility. Groups love to latch onto names and words that give their silly cause credibility. Whenever I hear about groups doing this, I instantly become skeptical of their cause. If there was a reason to be concerned, the group would not need to resort to these tactics.

I don't know why people are against health care reform anyway. Health care costs go up considerably every single year, even when the economy is struggling. The insurance companies increase their plan costs or co-pays and don't increase the service or the items they cover in the plan. That seems to be something similar to taxation without representation if you ask me. That is what the Tea Party should really be concerned with.

Anyone who has spent any time at all going to doctor's offices or hospitals knows that our system is broken. People go to the emergency room all the time for colds and other basic sicknesses because they do not have health insurance. This forces all of us to wait for long periods of time in the emergency room to get care when we have real emergencies. It costs all of us money because the government is left to pay the bill for these uninsured people. This is actually costing us more than reform ever would.

The other problem is the doctors know what the insurance plans will and won't pay for. So they will just run test after test or prescribe medicine in efforts to "try" to solve the issue you are visiting them for. They don't really try to diagnose the problem and come up with a treatment. Instead they just try things until they find something that works. For instance, my Dad was having seizures. His doctor just kept experimenting with medications until he found something that worked. The problem was that my Dad had to go to the hospital several times because the medications were causing him to have really bad seizures. So this medical practice cost the insurance company more money than it should have if the doctor would have just done his job the first time.

Doctors also refuse to communicate with each other. So if your primary doctor refers you to a specialist, many times the specialist will have duplicate tests run on you. This happens either because the doctors are not communicating or because the specialist knows that the insurance will pay for the test to be run again, so they just do it. They are taking advantage of the insurance system for their own personal gain.

Don't get me wrong, I think the good doctors earn their money. I don't believe they are over payed at all. Medical school is a big investment and they deserve to make a lot of money. That is not the problem here at all. The real problem is that the insurance system is broken in a way that does us, the patients, a disservice. We deserve more and that is why I support health care reform.