Maine Finds a Health Care Fix Elusive

This site is about fitness including the politics of fitness.

Our approach to sick care reform is from a fitness perspective.

Clearly, if your goal is to avoid using the sick care system there is a greater likelihood of succeeding in that effort if you are fit.

Sick care costs can decrease if people were fitter as there will be less need for repairs.

If you think that simply legislating sick care will be the fix, read this article.

Then start a fitness program.

If for no other reason than to protect yourself from them.

"Maine is the Charlie Brown of health care. The state’s legislators have tried for decades to fix its system, but their efforts have always fallen short: health insurance premiums are still among the least affordable in the nation, health care spending per person is among the highest and hospital emergency rooms are among the most crowded. Indeed, many overhauls to the system have done little more than squeeze a balloon — solving one problem while worsening another...

Maine’s history is a cautionary tale for national health reform. The state could never figure out how to slow the spiraling increase in medical costs, hobbling its efforts to offer more people insurance coverage. Many on Capitol Hill have criticized national reform legislation for similarly doing little to tame costs.

To Ms. Snowe, Maine’s past shows that change, while needed, should be incremental because mistakes are common. This is among the reasons she opposes an immediate public insurance option...

To conservatives, Maine proves that government efforts to strictly regulate the nation’s health insurance market are doomed. Many of the reform proposals circulating on Capitol Hill have already been tried in Maine...

To others, Maine’s failures show why some reforms can be tackled only on a national level."

Good luck with that.