Universal health care a long shot in Illinois

I found out via The Capitol Fax blog this morning that there is a proposal for creating a Canadian style health care system in Illinois. No doubt this would have gone further than the governor's plans to expand health insurance coverage in the state although he seems to have found ways to keep that from happening no matter what he does. Anyway this was proposed by state Rep. Mary Flowers.

Oh and I've posted vids largely critical of the Canadian health care system that I've posted here overtime. You can see all of those vids here. Check out this part of the story a husband is gung-ho for it but his wife on the other hand...

Ron Jackson, 59, a Springfield resident who skimped on medicine and accumulated $25,000 in health-care bills the past five years when he was uninsured, said he would support a single-payer proposal even if he had to pay more in taxes.

“Millions of people suffer without health insurance,” he said. “Anything is better than nothing.”

But his wife, Janice, who works for Springfield Clinic processing claims for Medicaid patients, wants to see lawmakers pursue improvements in the private insurance system.

“There’s too much government already,” she said.

Well unfortunately government wants to assert itself as the solution. When I was in the comments at the Capitol Fax I said work on the problem with the uninsured why impose a system on everyone. Rich Miller thus told me and it makes a lot of sense to me that it's not just the problem with the uninsured, but also those individuals who aren't willing to switch jobs and risk losing their health care coverage. In addition to that there are those who are underinsured, those on the brink of losing coverage for whatever reason, and of course those who have uncovered pre-existing conditions.

Yeah there surely needs to be a debate as to whether or not there needs to be reform of the insurance system for sure. This is why I support some form of health savings account (HSA). The State-Journal Register article that I linked to here mentions that this bill House Bill 331 is designed to "put the control of the health-care system back in the hands of the health-care deliverers rather than health-insurance companies." Sadly I don't think anyone is trying to let people take control of their own healthcare.

I became a supporter of HSAs thanks to this John Stossel vid that I saw a few months ago. Unfortunately in the zeal for universal health insurance there are those who want to even discourage HSAs. I think politicians should stop kidding themselves and everyone else when it comes to solutions to these problems. There is no silver bullet to helping people get access to health care. I wish there was and I sure don't want the system to turn into what I see in those vids that I've seen.