Steve Brill wrote a very extensive article in the March, 2013 issue of Time on Health Care in America. I can’t think of any other industry that rips off Americans as much as the pharmaceutical industry. Other countries negotiate and get greatly reduced prices for their people. Congress has passed laws prohibiting the Medicare and Medicaid from trying to lower prices like the V.A.

The factories (often in foreign countries) make the pills for pennies and then sell it for thousands of percent mark up. Every week brings another news item of a drug that was a dollar a pill and now a hundred dollars or a new Medicine costing $35,000 – $75,000 a year. Ever wonder what a European or Canadian will pay?

The ACA was a good first step and the AHCA kept some of the good, but got rid of some of the things the poor needed and cut expenses for the rich.

The critics of ACA and Medicare say the programs are too costly to the government. The ACA’s insured are sick and/or older but not 65. The younger healthy people don’t sign up to balance the costs.

Many people and think tanks have found our current mish-mash is the reason so many other countries’ citizens are healthier than we are.

By covering the healthy kids, young adults, middle-agers, and seniors, the flat cost to everyone balances the programs income and expenses. It could be adjusted up or down to make it revenue neutral. Additional private insurance could be purchased by each individual at the level of coverage they want. The poor might not be able to afford expensive private coverage and the rich could buy complete coverage.

Two more criteria: our government would not pay any more than other governments, and doctors and hospitals would cost what the local living standard requires.

While Congress toys with our healthcare almost all of us can only hope for the best. The rest of the industrial countries solved the insurance and healthcare for their people years ago. Only one of the many people I have talked to from the U.K., Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Brazil, and Columbia would want our system. Most had our free market cockeyed, hodgepodge medical system before fixing it with a sensible plan.

Americans spend $2.8 trillion on it each year or $1 of every $6 of our GDP. That’s more than the next ten countries combined! What do we get for all that money? We get higher rates of disease, shorter life expectancy, and a rating of 50th in infant mortality. The majority of bankruptcies are caused by the inability to pay medical bills.

Fewer people every year are covered by private insurance through their employers. More people are covered by Medicaid and Medicare and ultimately taxpayers.

Every president since FDR has tried to solve the problem. The ACA was a poor, quick compromise. The recently defeated AHCA plan was big on reducing the taxes for the rich and reducing benefits for the poor.

A fair plan is to lower Medicare to birth and everybody pay $100 per month for what benefits seniors get. Additional insurance can be purchased to cover deductibles. It would solve the healthcare problems and fix the budget shortfall on healthcare.

That will never happen because there’s too much money being made with today’s mesh-mash system! Think that is why the rich live a longer, happier life? Trickle-down economics means a trickle for healthcare!