Which is better, Trumpcare or ObamaCare?

 

Neither, they are pretty much the same thing. At best, Trumpcare is simply diet Obamacare. Pretty much the same thing with a little trimming around the edges.

Before I continue with my tirade I want to make a couple of things clear, my beliefs which are relevant to this discussion are as follows: I hate taxes, I believe the Government sucks at everything but I do want everybody to be covered by health insurance if they want to be.

 

Obamacare

Obamacare sucks, Democrats and other snowflake little lefties can try to argue for it but it will always be a failure and a terrible legacy for Obama to have left behind. Health insurance costs have risen dramatically. Now, it may ensure far more people who may not have had the healthcare otherwise are now insured, the health insurance it offers is terrible. Buyers of insurance have been kicked off their normal insurance plan in favour of a worse, more expensive Obamacare plan which do very little for them. In fact, Obamacare and Medicaid have no measurable effect on life expectancy, meaning not only does it worsen most people’s insurance plans and make them spend more, it also does very little to solve the original problem.

All these concerns aside there’s also a far more important concern. Cost. Obamacare, Medicare, and Medicaid cost billions in subsidies every year. A country with as much debt as the United States should do anything but advocate for more spending, but politicians have trapped the United States in an ever increasing spending spiral.

Trumpcare

There’s not really much to be said for Trumpcare, and less to say against it that hasn’t been mentioned in the above Obamacare section. The one difference between the two I’d like to highlight within the context of the already ballooning debt of the United States is the tax cuts. I hate tax, I believe it is theft from anyone’s hard-earned wages but I understand their necessity in securing the security of a nation state and ensuring the states continue to function. This would usually imply that I’m all for tax cuts, except, in this case, I’m really not. You can’t cut taxes while keeping spending more or less the same. keeping the national debt at its current ridiculous and unprecedented levels is a recipe for a catastrophic disaster. The main goal for any politician from now on should be to reduce spending, reduce the deficit and reduce the national debt. Once the deficit is gone, and once a surplus of funding is created then we can cut taxes. As much as I hate taxes, the debt and deficit are incredibly concerning. Mixing this with tax cuts and no significant spending cuts is digging a hole which the U.S may not be able to climb their way out of.

Solutions:

I believe that everyone has ‘Ideal policies’ which can function in an ideal world and practical ideas which can function in our world today. Obamacare and Trumpcare are one of these ‘Ideal policies’, one that many people believe in but doesn’t actually work or has overall detrimental effects. As I said, I believe the Government sucks at everything. Therefore I believe a government should have as little to do with everyday life as possible. This means that the government, under no circumstance, should be involved in healthcare at all. However, rather depressingly, Democrats and some Republicans have decided this is the way it should be. So, let’s talk about solutions which aren’t the pile of garbage the politicians in America are proposing.

Single payer health care is pretty crappy. This is coming from someone who lives in England and has live in Canada – both have single payer healthcare. One major problem with single payer healthcare is that it takes forever to get medical attention and when you finally get it, its rushed and crappy. The reason for this is not simply because more people have health insurance. The long waits are not a result of increased access, but rather, they’re a product of people going to doctors, or emergency rooms for minor injuries because they don’t have to pay for the service. This creates an incentive for people to get every single thing checked out, no matter how serious. the solution to this? Catastrophic healthcare only.

As already mentioned I hate the idea of the government being involved in the health care system, but I’m a nice guy,  so I’ll compromise. Instead of cutting healthcare altogether, we could rather move to a healthcare system where catastrophic instances like heart attacks or cancer are covered by the government or some sort of subsidised health insurance system. This will reduce costs drastically since catastrophic health problems aren’t common, meaning you won’t have to hand out cash at anywhere near the same rate. Normal checkups at a Doctors office should, however, be paid for by the consumer using the service and not the government. This, to me, seems to be the fairest compromise possible, you can ensure people are still protected from potentially life-ending diseases while keeping it affordable and keeping costs low.

Whether my compromise is as functional and as generous as I believe it is, is up to you. But, it must be accepted that Obamacare, and by extension Trumpcare, are horrible policies which will only exacerbate issues within the American health care system.