Use buying power as leverage against greedy businesses
Today’s Letters to the Editor column had another anti-Affordable Care Act letter basically saying insurance companies that blackmail the government are not responsible for the problems of Obamacare because the ACA was flawed from the beginning.
The letter writer left out the blackmail part. The writer has a point. The ACA left out two of the most important details: that everyone has to pay something for health care, and that the government should use its buying-power muscle to force medical providers to get in line.
Health care is provided now by your station in life: rich, poor, employed, young, old, retired or military. It should be paid for by consumption (sales and service tax) of goods and services by every person and business. This is how it is done in every other first-world country.
The government is the largest purchaser of goods and services in this country, if not the world. That purchasing power can force greedy businesses to comply or collapse. Life-saving Epi-pens’ price is jacked up? Well, then, that company no longer gets business and another provider is used. Doctors do not want to accept Medicare? Then that doctor’s license to practice is revoked. That is how to fix it.
Mike Enos, Fresno
This story was originally published August 25, 2016 at 4:50 PM with the headline "Use buying power as leverage against greedy businesses."