By Robert Pembroke
Almost every week, the progressives in our Saturday morning “breakfast club” want to chat about universal healthcare. As a former owner of a small business, I want to talk about a multiple-payer healthcare system.
With 293 million Americans enrolled in employer- and government-sponsored healthcare plans that are working satisfactorily, why change? This is a question that I am going to pose to the breakfast club members.
The only part of our healthcare system that is out of whack is the group of individuals and families that is covered by ObamaCare. Look at what is happening to those individuals and families who have these plans in Virginia, Maryland and Vermont. These are the first states that have announced pricing for the individual-market.
According to an article in The Washington Post on May 14, “This is what a death spiral looks like.” Virginia has requested a price increase of 64.3 percent for some plans. When you combine all plans, Virginians are facing a 13.4 percent increase. In Maryland, overall price increases are 30 percent, with one insurer requesting an astonishing increase of 93.4 percent. In Vermont, the home of Bernie Sanders, one insurer requested a 7.5 percent increase while another requested a price hike of 10.9 percent.
But you can’t blame this “death spiral” on Trump. And it is a death spiral because lives will be lost because people won’t be able to afford adequate healthcare. The blame rests with Obama and the progressives.
Trump is taking a whack at the high prices of prescription drugs in his brand-new drug policy, but I wouldn’t sell my pharmaceutical stocks just quite yet. His four major prescription proposals look promising, but when you dig into the details, drug companies are still getting a substantial break.
According to a Time magazine article last month titled “President Trump’s Plan to Lower Drug Prices Spares Big Pharma,” “The U.S. spent $1,162 per person on prescription drugs in 2015, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That’s more than twice the $497 per person spent in the United Kingdom, which has a nationalized health care system.”
Trump has two possible courses of action: First, he can get the pharmaceutical companies to charge U.S. citizens less. Or, Trump can get other countries to pay more for their pharmaceuticals. Good luck with this solution.
The Democrats have united around a new strategy. Their unified strategy is to blame Trump for the increased cost of health insurance. Obviously, this is not true because health insurance premiums have risen each year that ObamaCare has been in place.
According to the Washington Post article “Dems in Denial on Why Obamacare Premiums are Going Through the Roof” on May 16, “ObamaCare regulations caused premiums for people buying their own insurance to more than double between 2013 and 2017.”
And keep in mind that the quality of care has gone down.
In order to keep their seats, Republicans need to come up with a new winning strategy. The Washington Post article “A Near-universal Healthcare Plan that Wouldn’t Break the Bank” on May 13 not only proposes a great solution to Americans' healthcare needs, it is also the right thing to do.
Remember, 293 million Americans have an adequate healthcare plan. In order to satisfy the other 30 million citizens’ healthcare needs, the Post article suggests that they be enrolled in Medicare — a simple solution that doesn’t break the bank.
I ran the concept past my progressive friends and, boy, did they howl. Not only did they reject the plan, they could not give a reason why it would not work. When I added a caveat that businesses should not be taxed any more to pay for the plan, they jumped up and pounded on the table and cried, “No, no, no!”
I have now concluded that there isn’t any way that I can change their minds.
Robert Pembroke is the former chairman and CEO of Pembroke’s Inc. in Salt Lake City.