SCOTUS Schmotus

It's been an interesting day today with the Supreme Court ruling on healthcare...I tried to listen to see if I could hear cheers or boo's outside my office building when the announcement came but alas...I'm way too far away from the courthouse to have heard an audible reaction.  Certainly people here at work have discussed it in passing, but nothing too specific or political. And the world continues to turn despite what all those news commentators had predicted.

Don't get me wrong, it's a very significant decision---not because of a big effect it may have on healthcare (which will continue to be stupidly expensive and completely un-transparent)---but because of the implications and power it gives the Federal government.  I was and continue to be all-for healthcare reform.  The system is messed up.  Medicaid and Medicare are going to completely bankrupt the government, and people with disabilities or pre-existing conditions shouldn't be discriminated against.  I get it.  I'm all for it. Really.

My issue is, this gigantic piece of legislation doesn't do a whole lot to actually fix the problems in the healthcare industry and this act just feels like a huge missed opportunity.  People will continue to be uninsured, get procedures and care and not pay their bills, which will end up being paid for by taxpayers.  Only now, they'll have to pay a penalty  excuse me, "tax" at the end of the year, but here's the thing...the tax seems to be a lot cheaper than paying for insurance all year so where's the motivation?  Not to mention the fact that today's ruling basically says the federal government can mandate you to buy anything it deems important enough through the commerce clause.  Literally.  In all honesty they probably won't (hopefully)...but they could, and that's why this was a big deal.  *Although it's not that different from mandating you to save for retirement, ie Social Security.

And like all legislation the Affordable Care Act isn't all good or all bad.  I think it will be great for old people, or people with pre-existing conditions like diabetes to get insurance.  That will be fantastic.  I just wish it did more to bring transparency and accountability to the industry.  If I want to get my haircut for example, I can call a salon and know much it will cost me ahead of time.  And if they completely botch my cut, I can go back and get it fixed or re-done for free.  With healthcare...you have no idea what things are going to cost ahead of time, and if the doctor doesn't do a good job? You get to pay for the procedure again! It all bodes really well for fraud (picture a hospital ordering all kinds of uneccessary tests on a naive old lady with great insurance just so they can rack up a hefty bill).  Or let's say a nurse doesn't insert an IV correctly into your newborn NICU baby, and the baby then gets a big bubble of fluid under his skin and is in horrible pain for a few hours balling the entire time but the genius nurse just assumes he's crying because he's a newborn baby... YOU get to pay to have that bubble fixed and your baby gets a scar for the rest of his life, and the hospital won't even give you an apology or admit they made a mistake! (yes this actually happened to my sister/nephew).  And it's things like that, that make me really excited for Brody to be an attorney, and it's things like that make attorneys absolutely necessary.  And sadly, it's frivolous lawsuits that have also made malpractice insurance so expensive, which the doctor/hospital then reflect in their costs, which is why health insurance is so expensive.  Wouldn't it be nice if the government or the ACA actually regulated/fixed those problems?  Wouldn't it be nice if a politician actually gave a real answer instead of a fluff soundbite that doesn't give you any information at all?

I don't pretend to know a lot about the nitty gritty of the ACA (I doubt if ANYONE in Congress or even Obama himself has actually read all 2,500-odd pages in it, and let's be honest you know all the Justices made their clerks read and summarize it for them). But again, it just seems like a missed opportunity to really fix this messed up system...and instead it essentially just gave the federal government a LOT more power. 

Let's hope it actually does make things a little better.  And perhaps, and hopefully, this is just a first step in actually fixing healthcare...