So what are the alternatives when your employer tells you they can no longer afford the premiums on your healthcare? How expensive is it to cover yourself and your family if you lose your health insurance at work? The answer is for many, it is so expensive most people can't afford it. It seems that not only do people miss time from work and lose money for missed days but they can't even pay for the medical care they need. Some employers don't have "full-time" workers. They hire people at 30 hours a week, thereby escaping the cost of benefits that are paid to "full-timers".
Why hasn't the government done something about the spiraling cost of healthcare in the United States? There are a few answers to this question, all of them you won't really like. The first is that both the Republicans and Democrats are substantially bankrolled by the American Medical Association, The Pharmaceutical companies, and other medical special interest groups. National healthcare would be bad for their businesses.The astronomical cost of medical care, one price for insurance companies, and another for individuals, would stop. The fees would be standardized, and the cost would be lower. Besides the medical establishment, lawyers and others that make a living from medical malpractice suits would be hard pressed to support a National Healthcare System where lawsuits would be much harder to pursue, or eliminated entirely. There are so many groups that donate to your so-called "representatives" in Washington, that until this country has true campaign reform, you will NEVER see a program of National Healthcare.
The political parties (both of them) cover this topic with smoke and mirrors so that their true bosses can keep benefiting from our medical care system as it is. The politicians tell us that it will raise our taxes and put another cog in the wheel of "big government". Don't believe it for a minute. Actually, the taxes that we pay in our property taxes would actually decrease. Built into all property tax, is health care that the local governments must pay to hospitals that accept indigent people. This means in effect, the county or parish that you live in, pays money to healthcare providers from your property taxes, and that my friends, is coming from your pocket. Drug costs would also lower as the government started negotiating for a good price they would pay for buying in bulk as the main healthcare provider. This is how it is done in most other industrial nations. The premise behind it, is that premiums people pay, offset the actual cost of providing the medical care, much like how the insurance companies operate today. The government could do much better than the insurance companies, because healthcare costs would actually come down as the government becomes the main provider. The medical lobbies don't like this idea, and they make sure that your congressman is well paid for not providing medical insurance to Americans. The insurance lobbies, of course, absolutly hate this idea, even though they claim they lose money on health insurance. Do you want to know how much they pay your government representatives? Go to opensecrets.org and find out for yourselves. I can tell you this, it is a lot of money.