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Saturday, March 27. 2010

Name one thing

Name at least one thing you think is right about the Dem healthcare-insurance bill which, I remind you, is far less radical than it could have been. (Yes, I do know that the Dems regard it as one step towards complete nationalization.)
Posted by The Barrister in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 11:10 | Comments (19) | Trackbacks (0)

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Please stop calling this bill health care (I know you added insurance). It really is "Medical Care Control" and that's how I will refer to it from here on.
#1 Greg on 2010-03-27 11:31 (Reply)
Contrary to what seems to be a talking point on our side, the process was democratic, in the sense of our Republic being a representative republic. We voted for a President and Congress last year. They voted for this bill. The President signed it. They more or less stuck to accepted rules of Congress, one of which is "the party in power can stick it right in the minority party's earhole and they can't do jack about it until after the next election."

The mandate would be acceptable to me if it came with actual market reforms that removed barriers to competition. See, e.g. Bork's The Antitrust Paradox. Throw in some insurance portability to de-link insurance from employers, I'd be okay with the mandate under those conditions because cost control + decent benefits + broad coverage is the goal. But the goal of this one seems to be to drive the private insurers out of business and to lard up the federal government with tons of new rules and bureaucrats. So other than the process more or less being followed, I really don't like it.
#2 Jim on 2010-03-27 11:31 (Reply)
'They more or less stuck to accepted rules of Congress...' BWAHAHAHA!

'...one of which is "the party in power can stick it right in the minority party's earhole and they can't do jack about it until after the next election."' And I will fondly recall that statement come Jan. 2011. And Jan. 2013.
#2.1 RNB on 2010-03-27 15:56 (Reply)
The individual mandate is not acceptable on any terms. Not if it could be subsidized at 98 cents on the dollar in a genuine free market. It is a blatant power grab aimed at our individual liberty and must be stopped.
They ain't nothin' good that I've heard about in the bill, but that's the very absolute maximum worst thing of all.
#2.2 Geoff Brown on 2010-03-27 17:17 (Reply)
I agree, no need for the mandate. If set-up properly the insurance pools should be big enough to handle.

We need to get away from 'health insurance' as both an insurance plan AND a routine payment mgt system to being truly insurance against large unexpected costs.

Standard Doctor/Dentist visits should be paid out of pocket and depending on individual needs and risk aversion purchase insurance/deductable to cover the larger unexpected events.

We need to get back to the mentality that medical treatment is a worthy expense that we should be willing to fund out of our family budget within limits...insurance covers the costs that go beyond those limits.
#2.2.1 phil g on 2010-03-28 09:25 (Reply)
I am scared by it. Life is already uncertain enough, and with this "healthcare reform" thrown in, it is truly frightening. I could accept it a bit easier if they had included the couple of things Jim mentioned. I want to be able to buy health insurance like I buy car insurance; pick the things I feel necessary to cover and buy it from anywhere in the USA!

What I absolutely hate about this bill is the massive increase of IRS agents checking monthly into our lives! It's very intimidating, right? And if this bill is so great, why is congress exempt? Oh, the irony.
#3 Julie on 2010-03-27 11:58 (Reply)
A personal anecdote: My 26 year-old stepdaughter, healthy overall but with no insurance, had to use the emergency room twice to deal two occasions of tonsular abcess, not a chronic condition. We decide to get her an insurance policy -- she had to prove she had not been in the emergency room in the past six months before we could get anything for her.

I am 100% against ObamaCare, but there was something wrong with that.
#4 D on 2010-03-27 12:00 (Reply)
quote: "she had to prove she had not been in the emergency room in the past six months before we could get anything for her. "

So D, if your stepdaughter had been uninsured in two drunk driving automobile accidents, then found in trying to avoid jail for being uninsured, she had to go to the high risk state insurance pool or could not drive, this would be unfair also?


You get so emotional thinking 'health insurance' is a right (I'll go out on a limb here and say the backstory in what you didn't say is "affordable" health insurance...but I digress), the 'right' to buy 'insurance' whenever you want to and the insurance company is not allowed to evaluate the risk.

INSURANCE of any type is a financial product offered by a company in business to make money. They (generally) offer that product on a sliding scale of "low risk = low premium, higher risk = higher premium" and compete with other businesses offering similar products.

I'll go even farther in my backstory speculation.... you wanted to get your stepdaughter an insurance coverage similar to what your employer offered and found out private health insurance without deep pockets to cover the costs is really, really expensive.

You want the best for you stepdaughter, good for you. You want the best for her at an affordable price. This is a noble goal and one you should pursue. But I read in your post that you want these two things in a risk field that has proven those goals mutually exclusive (best@low price) and then are shocked to find it is unobtainium.

p.s. I am a self employed small business owner. I HAVE the cadillac plan.... I pay for it all out of my own pocket (well, me and VISA) Vision care? Check. Dental? Check? No deductible? Check. Immunizations? Check. You name it, I have it all until I go bankrupt, because I pay for it all. My medical costs last year (2009) were nearly $10,000 , almost $7,000 of that was a high deductible catastrophic insurance policy for two people. The balance came out of the fund I have to provide for all the rest.... just like Americans did before unionization demanded somebody else pay for that. The else I found out in my case, is me!
#4.1 JoeC on 2010-03-28 09:54 (Reply)
I forgot that I was supposed to put down something I liked about this bill. I'm thinking...........

Oh, I know. The passage of this bill will piss off most Americans and there will be a huge change come November!

Yeah, that's the only good thing out of this bill.
#5 Julie on 2010-03-27 12:01 (Reply)
I only hope that you're right. If he's reelected, we're done. Heck. we might be done now.
#5.1 ac chickadee on 2010-03-27 13:13 (Reply)
+1 on that Julie.
#5.2 BlogDog (Link) on 2010-03-28 10:51 (Reply)
The other comments have covered the outrage. It's all about power and control.The Amnesty Train is leaving the station.
#6 RickTn on 2010-03-27 12:31 (Reply)
Dittos to both of Julie's posts, especially the last one! If we can't find a way to reverse this travesty then we longer deserve to be called a free people.
#7 greenmtnpunter on 2010-03-27 13:20 (Reply)
One thing thing they got right by mistake. They didn't specify any mechanism to enforce the mandate.
#8 JimK on 2010-03-27 14:16 (Reply)
Um, it will create a lot of jobs?

Oh, wait, those are government jobs. Over a hundred new agencies/commissions/etc. Oh well, I suppose they can be funded out of Rangel's back taxes.
#9 John A on 2010-03-27 14:38 (Reply)
This whole thing wouldn't gall me so much if it had indeed been representative. I live in the Indiana 8th district - Brad Ellsworth is my elected official to Congress [I no longer can call him my representative with feeling exceedingly nauseated.] Local polls showed that the district overwhelmingly opposed the legislation but he voted for it anyway. The betrayal is deep and ugly. Nothing 'good' about the bill could compensate for that.

If there's a silver lining, it's that now more folks realize that Congress is truly contemptuous of us. Midterm elections should be very interesting.
#10 weaver on 2010-03-27 19:15 (Reply)
1. The financial incentives for hospitals to lower their infection rates.

2. The new emphasis on comparative effectiveness studies.

3. The tax on "cadillac" health care plans. The truth is, all employer provided health insurance should be regarded as taxable income -- that would have prevented a lot of the cost-spiral of the last 40 years -- but at a bare minimum we should not subsidize extremely lavish health care benefits.

There, three good things. And I believe I have sufficiently established my bona fides as an opponent of this legislation that you will not denounce me as a partisan.
#11 TigerHawk (Link) on 2010-03-27 20:08 (Reply)
You can't fool me, Christopher Chambers, you do a poor TigerHawk impersonation ;-)
#11.1 Wally on 2010-03-27 20:49 (Reply)
Agree with #3...this has definitely caused market distortions. These have grown into not really insurance, but payment management systems where the true cost of services was almost totally disconnected from the consumer.

Would have much preferred to see a more pragmatic approach to the medical cost problem so we could better gauge which changes worked.

This bill has so much stuff in it that it will be tough to tell what worked and what made things worse.
#11.2 phil g on 2010-03-28 09:31 (Reply)

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