If you have read all three pieces of Kim Fletcher’s review of the Affordable Care Act, the first phases of which kick in Oct. 1, then you about as ready as anyone for the future to get here.
We have heard said recently that health care is the question of our age, whatever that means. We agree it is a conundrum.
We know this much; America’s health care system is broken. Individuals pay too much, the state repays too little, insurance companies charge what they can and pay out only what they have too, and the kind and quality of care you can afford varies widely by region and circumstance.
We turned to Fletcher to craft a series of articles bent on answering the questions “What does the ACA mean to me?” After printing all three articles in her series, we still do not know.
To be fair, we are not sure the sources Fletcher relied on really know and they are paid to know. It is their business to know, but such is the state of affairs, what we get are estimations and hypotheses.
We commend Fletcher for doing her dead level best to explain it simply, but the fact is, it is not simple and the ACA as it is about to come into view, is not a solution. It is neither a replacement, nor an overhaul. It is another system on top of an already labyrinthine system.
The whole thing needs to be overhauled in some fashion, from the way health care is disbursed and paid for in this country to the way we each think and act about our individual health.
Until we are seriously ready to do that, we are not going to solve the problem. Unfortunately, given our national track record of governing by crises, we expect it will take a complete system failure, before we get there, if that.
In other words, it might take an even bigger catastrophe than this latest attempt at control to get us to a moment of clarity.
