When someone else pays, there is no incentive to be a smart consumer.
I certainly know that when my wife started having stroke-like symptoms a few weekends ago that had I not had insurance I would certainly have been doing some comparison shopping before heading out to an emergency room.
There are certainly cases to be made for excess in the insurance system, and other aspects of the bill speak to at least some of those issues. And while I'd certainly appreciate lower healthcare costs, it remains not my primary concern.
Go to an optometrist: if you have insurance, an exam is $250 (someone else is paying), if you don't it's $80 (what the market will bear).
And if you can't afford that $80, then I guess it's just too bad about that glaucoma that you didn't know you had. Fifteen years down the road, your optic nerve stop functioning, and you know you should have chosen to skip a few meals that month. Or we could make sure that everyone can see the doctor. But that doesn't jibe with your free-market ideals.
Now that the government is paying, like any good parent, they now have the right to tell you how to live healthily.
The only additional people government will be paying for are the people who can't afford insurance. Which they're doing now with Medicaid, except usually only as emergencies, not as preventative care. And they've made no such mandates in the last 45 years. So I don't see this happening.
McDonalds will become a target and be forced to change their practices, despite the fact that they make a product that people like and want, and nobody is forced to buy it.
If they're selling poison under the guise of food, then they should change. Other than trans-fat shortenings and maybe HFCS, I don't think that's the case. Regardless, I call your prediction. Won't happen.
you will see an all-out offensive to completely ban tobacco products
Gee. Darn. More poison. Still, won't happen.
You now have your government daddy who will happily force everyone to live healthily.
How, exactly? Hard to refute a prediction that doesn't predict anything.
There will be practical considerations, too, like government specifications on exactly which tests and treatments doctors can prescribe. The doctor will not have the authority to make the right decision.
Because God knows that they are free to prescribe drugs and tests without restriction now. Again, though, why do you think that the government is going to tell insurance companies what products they're allowed to sell? You still seem to be under the impression that the government will be reimbursing healthcare providers, when this bill will likely decrease that practice, as some people are moved from Medicare to the public group plans, which, again, are private insurance.
On the other hand, assume that the 32 million uninsured (or whatever the number is) were just put directly on Medicare, and the doctors were told that they couldn't prescribe some set of tests and treatments. How, exactly, would that be worse than those people not having any reasonable access to health care at all?
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