Bill Richardson Health Care Forum

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson’s plan to reform the nation’s health care system is about spending much more than the federal government can afford. And he says it can all be done without raising taxes. Richardson’s statements in this week’s health insurance online forum are truly laughable.

Richardson wants for the government to lower the Medicare age to 55 and to have the Medicare system fully funded by the government. Requiring the Medicare system to be fully funded by the U.S. government would be a huge expense—not to mention adding millions of more Americans to the system by lowering the Medicare age to 55. This is ridiculous.

Richardson’s plan further becomes insensible when he wants to require all Americans to have health insurance by the end of his first term. Does he not realize that requiring Americans to have health insurance isn’t the problem and that the incredibly high cost of insurance is disastrous to personal finances?

In the forum, Richardson did say that he wants to put health insurance companies in check by requiring 85 percent of all health insurance premium payments to go directly to providing care. He claims that the current system has only two-thirds of premiums going to care and the other third of payments going to administrative costs for health insurance companies. But this still doesn’t address the problem of the high cost of health insurance in this country. There must be a way to force the medical industry to tighten their belts like the rest of us and charge less for quality care.