Thoughts on Healthcare Reform and the Republican Party (from a Moderate).
Healthcare. The ideal solution? Free-market forces and capitalism. Need surgery? Call up five hospitals compare prices, Hospital A may be expensive but they have the best surgeon and a guarantee to resolve post-op complications at no additional fee. Hospital B is less expensive, but has a longer wait to take new patients, etc. So in essence as a consumer you have a choice, and a market that responds to that. Unfortunately, healthcare in America doesn't work like that.

Is free-market healthcare a pipe dream? Just look at plastic surgery where there is no insurance for elective procedures. Doctors and their offices know that, so they deal with consumers directly. You find the best plastic surgeon, you get recommendations from friends/internet, compare prices, visit the office, and make your decision as a consumer. That's how healthcare should work.

So great, lets get rid of insurance companies altogether. Well not so fast, unlike most plastic surgery procedures where you have a choice, you have no choice if you find out unexpectedly that you need dialysis or chemotherapy. So to cover unexpected health risks, there's two options, have so much wealth that it doesn't matter, or buy insurance to cover your risk. So insurance is the answer for the majority of Americans. But here's the rub.

You buy a Ferrari, call up Geico and find out your monthly premium is thru the roof. Well fine, that's your own damn fault for buying an expensive car. But you find out you have cancer and call up looking for private health insurance, is it your own damn fault too when you can't afford the premiums? A large part of America will say 'absolutely', you should have chosen a career in a more stable field, gotten an advance degree, etc. In essence there is no difference between a high-risk car and a person with high-risk care.

As much as I love capitalism and laissez-faire economics, I can't accept that. A human with no choice in their medical condition, should not be left without an option for care, nor should they suffer a demeaning or lessened life because of it.

So I want balance. I want healthcare that allows as much free-market forces in, but smart government regulation to ensure there's a sensible option for those that need it. Definitely not universal healthcare, and certainly not anything remotely socialist.

Is the Affordable Care Act the answer? To me, yes and no. The restrictions placed on insurance companies make sense, which the same companies themselves offered to enact irrespective of the Supreme Court decision. A penalty for not carrying insurance doesn't make me smile, but its not intolerable unless you can explain why it makes economic sense for your typical American not to have insurance. However, the expansion of state-run medicare/medicaid is something that I think could have been addressed separately, left out of the bill altogether, or as recommended by the Supreme Court, refined with further legislation. I personally would like to see an alternative to medicaid/medicare not an expansion of it, for example - can we do things smarter with private vouchers for at-risk Americans that comes at a lesser cost to the government and less burden to our private medical system?

But all this seems like something that as a country we should be able to figure out. Healthcare reform should be a bi-partisan wet dream come true.

So I'm beyond frustrated that I don't know a single Republican position on healthcare reform. I want conservative viewpoints to moderate liberal ideas. Instead all the Republican party gives me is, "Obamacare evil. End of America unless we repeal." Well, if that's the case, the American people should pay the Republican party to go on vacation until they have a super majority in both houses. Oh wait.