Health care fix? Short-term solution nothing more than a cheap Band-Aid

There's good news today if you are a member of Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina and you have been wondering what you are going to do about the fact that you no longer have a health care plan.

BCBS is going to allow you to pick up the canceled plan for one more year -- at a cost increase of anywhere from 12 to 25 percent.

Now, before you start railing against the greedy insurance companies (although perhaps that is a discussion for another time), remember that these plans were canceled because they do not fit the Obamacare guidelines.

And in a year, they will be obsolete again.

It is understandable that to reinstate plans like this, there would be a cost as the company tries to squeeze another year out of a group of plans that have already been canceled.

Of course there would be an increase. And, a year later, the same problem will rear its ugly head again.

So, this "fix" proposed in the wake of the Obamacare debacle is nothing more than a way to placate those who have been affected through the next election -- and to distract the rest of us from just how bad things really are with the president's health care initiative.

And it should give us pause as we consider what else we are going to allow Washington to "fix" for us.

There really is a bottom line here: Start over.

There is a solution out there that will take care of those who cannot get coverage without bankrupting the entire system.

All we have to do is to force Washington to look for it.

Published in Editorials on November 27, 2013 10:57 AM