GREEN BAY - Maybe, if you don’t look at it, it will go away? That seems to be the conservative stand on the Affordable Health Care Act, commonly known as ObamaCare.
In Washington, the right wing in the House has voted 40 times to kill ObamaCare, while the pressing problems of the nation like job creation and immigration go unanswered.
Governor Scott Walker, darling of the national conservative right wing and Tea Party, decided to shun millions of tax dollars the federal government wanted to give back to Wisconsin to help set up health insurance exchanges.
Right here in Brown County, a Republican “non-partisan” Supervisor named Brad Hopp tried to get a resolution passed preventing the county, and its employees, from assisting Brown County residents in accessing health care made available through the Affordable Care Act.
Now the Walker Administration has still not released the insurance rates for the companies who will be on the new health marketplace. We know who the companies are that will join this marketplace and ensure greater security and control for consumers, but not what the plans will cost!
Some sort of price control on health care costs is fundamental to Affordable Care.
For years, one of the main problems with the American way of providing health care has been it’s ever raising cost. That’s why people needed insurance to pay for health care in the first place. It is why many employers cut full time jobs or moved them overseas rather than pay the costs here to insure employees. That’s one of the major reasons they called it the Affordable Care Act in the first place.
According to our former Congressman, Dr. Steve Kagen of Appleton, one of the authors of the Affordable Care Act, the way to control these costs is the open market place. You go to two or three stores and notice that one store is offering the product at the lowest price. You go back to that store to buy it. The other stores have to lower their price to complete. All you have to know is who has the thing you want and the price.
The Big Health Care Industry and their insurance provider partners have been in the business of hiding the true price of specific health care services for years. Have you ever tried to get an itemized bill after a stay in the hospital? Once we know the price, the free market will drive the costs down.
Wisconsinites need the facts on prices. We deserve to know how much the new insurance rates are. If the news is good and we have lower rates like Maryland and New York, we need to know. If Walker is going to try and spin the numbers like Ohio or Indiana then we need transparency! In either case the truth demands to be told.
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Our progressive friends at Citizen Action of Wisconsin have started a Petition to force Walker to release the new Health Insurance Rates he’s hiding. If you wish to sign the petition, click HERE.