Many of the Conservative Pundits are talking about how under Obama’s healthcare plan faceless government bureaucrats, whose only concern is seeing that the maximum number of people get some treatment, will interfere with the decisions made by faceless insurance industry bureaucrats whose only concern is spending as little on treatments as possible.
What they most of them fail to mention is how this will affect individual treatment.
It comes down to basic medical research, which is handled through Government grants to the National Institutes of Health and to Universities. The money allocated to research comes from taxpayers so it is independent of the amount of people who get healthcare.
By not having to do research on the diseases that effect 16% of Americans (the 44 million uninsured) but still taking their money, more research dollars per person can go to those who are insured.
By only having to cover 84% of Americans but taking money from all Americans means better research for the diseases that hit that group.
A simple plan to provide better treatment is to allow Health Insurance Companies to exclude more people for pre-existing conditions. This would narrow the focus of research without decreasing the amount money that goes towards medical research.
The ideal pre-existing condition to exclude would be a person’s financial status. By eliminating anyone who made under $250,000 we could get the entire country paying for the research to cover only 5% of Americans (probably less after the last 8 years).
With only 5% of Americans reaping the benefits of medical research that is paid by all Americans, the amount of research money per patient would be phenomenal and they would receive the best treatment in the world.
Of course, some people might complain about their money going to support medical research that they personally will never benefit from, but those people are just being selfish. After all shouldn’t Americans be able to get the best healthcare in the world.
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