William Larsen

Healthcare: Larsen v. Souder

"Larsen believes the government should get out of health care completely. "Health care is a personal issue; when government gets involved, they shift cost to others," he said. "All we're doing is we're creating two groups of people -- those who are paying for it and those who are getting a free ride."

He does think the government should require people to have catastrophic health insurance, similar to car insurance requirements."

"Souder said developments like the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit program will help drive down costs through the private marketplace. He thinks other steps could be taken to encourage that -- like allowing associations and other groups to pool together for insurance and for insurance policies to be portable from job to job.

He said the Medicare changes dropped drug prices to within 10 or 15 percent of those sold in Canada and doesn't yet support reimportatation. "If that gap doesn't narrow, maybe even by next year ... you'll see us open that up because the pharmaceutical companies are not responding to the market."

Bill Larsen's comment:
The Rx drug program was projected to cost $400 Billion initially. Then after it was passed the CBO increased it to $540 Billion. Two days ago I saw that they now estimate it at $1 Trillion over the first ten years. The March deficit (one-month) was $85.5 Billion. This most likely is a unified budget number, which means they included social security and Medicare taxes and credited interest on the trust funds. The general budget deficit is most likely very close to $100 Billion or $1.2 Trillion annualized.

It would be nice to be able to provide everyone with healthcare any essential an individual needed. However, the fact remains that to do this costs money, your money and affects your family's standard of living. It is immoral and un-American to borrow money, reap the benefits now and give the bill to our children. If we as Americans want some government program we should have the guts to pay for it. If not then that program needs to be repealed.

posted by William Larsen @ 12:10 AM