Private Health Care Crisis Can Be Saved By More Private Health Care-huh!

In the article, “Think-Tank Provides Answers to Oklahoma's Health Care Woes,”the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (OCPA) released a health care reform study focusing in on needed changes to the health care system in Oklahoma.

The proposal from the OCPA free market thinkers is called “Oklahoma's Comprehensive Health Independence Plan or O-CHIP. It’s more like “Zero”-CHIP," because it actually does less than the current system in place. The think tank points out “our health care system works best when everyone has health insurance or other non-government means to pay for care.” That’s simple, just give everyone health insurance, and get government assistance out. It’s cutting into private health care profits.

Let's see if the next item is an actual concern you had about health care: “dramatically deregulating the health insurance market.” That’s right, insurance companies didn’t have enough freedom to raise rates and decline care to protect their bottom line and share holders payouts.

“O-CHIP seeks to place control and responsibility back onto the entity that best exercises it: the consumers,” says OCPA.” Thank god insurance companies don’t limit us to their own doctors and hospitals or approve or reject certain drugs or health care treatments. That never happens.

Not only does OPCA advocate deregulation, but a little "stick and carrot" social engineering is encouraged: “strengthen families and encourage their stability; reward initiative; deregulate insurance markets; make health insurance affordable; reward Oklahomans who acquire health insurance, penalize those who don't.” Again, simply deregulate insurance markets and wave a magic wand making health care affordable.

Penalty is big with these authoritarian conservatives. “O-CHIP (states that) those without health insurance will pay higher taxes, find it more difficult to borrow money, and lose the right to play the lottery." They are actually serious.

Leaving one to wonder what other draconian incentives they might have in mind when they “Encourage family stability and work: Stop encouraging young women to abandon the fathers of their children and reward the hard working poor who take initiative to better themselves,” is it any wonder people have lost faith in the conservative movement.

I know one thing, there are a lot of people out there just waiting to get sick so they can spend my hard earned money. Thanks to free market think tanks like OPCA, we’re on to these lousy freeloaders.