What the Pundits Are Missing About ObamaCare
Newspaper columns, cable talking-head shows, and blogs are filled with recriminations from the left and a certain amount of gloating from the right: how did Obama manage to lose the health care debate? (That in and of itself isn’t a good thing for Obama while the debate is going on. His effort to achieve a government-run health care plan isn’t dead — not yet.) The arguments fall into two general categories, both of which get it slightly wrong.
From the supporters of ObamaCare, we hear that the cardinal error was getting all concerned about health care costs. John Cohn of the New Republic is typical:
Had he spent more time reminding voters that reform would provide them with the security they now lack — security from financial ruin and medical catastrophe, the type private insurance too rarely provides — he probably would have been better off. …
The trouble for Obama is that, in getting serious about cost, he gave critics lots of fat, juicy targets. Obama proposed to tie payments to quality; Betsy McCaughey said he would be giving doctors money for pulling the plug on grandma. Obama proposed to put a board of experts, using clinical evidence, to set Medicare payment rates; Sarah Palin interpreted that as creating a “death panel” that would declare the sick and disabled unworthy of treatment. The great irony is that by trying earnestly to craft a plan that could control costs, as well as expand coverage, Obama has provoked a political backlash that will make cost control harder in the future. He’s tried to tackle health care like a grown-up and, at the moment, he’s suffering for it politically.
But, as Cohn points out, it’s a little hard to avoid talking about cost when the public sees $9 trillion in debt spanning over the next decade. Perhaps Obama shouldn’t have gone hog wild on the stimulus or should have passed a responsible budget rather than the $3.5 trillion monstrosity, but once he did all that he really didn’t have a choice but to try to address the cost issue.
And there is nothing wrong with talking about cost; it is the type of cost reduction which government-centric health care entails which is the problem. Once Obama decided to go with the standard fare liberal health care model, he was locked into the main cost-saving scheme which just about every other nationalized health care system around the world must employ: rationing. He could have looked to increased private sector competition to lower insurance costs. He could have taken a whack at unnecessary procedures and high medical malpractice costs by working on tort reform. But neither of these holds much interest for Democrats. So he was therefore driven into the sort of cost-saving which has proved to be an anathema to most Americans.
The error therefore was not in talking about cost-cutting. It was in running up the deficit first and hawking a government-run system which necessitates rationing.
The other sort of post-mortem analysis of ObamaCare focuses on process errors made by Obama and the Democrats. Andrea Tantaros lists the mistakes: message schizophrenia, hubris, playground tactics (“The left discounted the initial concern and anger of its constituents and insulted them by calling them ‘angry mobs’ and ‘evil.’”), poor planning (they didn’t anticipate much “pushback”) and ignoring the lessons of HillaryCare.
Ross Douthat takes the same approach:
The White House’s messages have been mixed — fiscal hawkery one day, moralism the next. The administration has allowed distractions like the Skip Gates affair to crowd out his agenda. It has overlearned the lessons of the Clinton-care debacle and given Congress too much leeway. It has underlearned the lessons of the Bush-era Social Security debacle and gone to war before there’s an actual piece of legislation on the table.
These observers are right, insofar as their analysis goes. Obama’s team has been extraordinarily incompetent and Obama himself has not helped his cause by overexposure, lame analogies (e.g., red pill/blue bill, the Post office[!]), and hostility toward dissent from ordinary citizens.
But again, the real issue here is the plan itself and, more importantly, the assumptions underlying it.
Obama simply miscalculated the American electorate’s willingness to throw out a health care system that insures over 80% of us, has led the world in technological innovation, and provides a good measure of autonomy for individuals to choose their doctors and treatment options. He had a terrible time selling ObamaCare because it was a terrible idea. It turns out Americans don’t want to replace an imperfect but very good health care system with a lowest-common denominator, government-run system that has given worse care and led to greater dissatisfaction than private insurance when tried in other countries.
In the end it comes down to the substance of ObamaCare. Liberal pundits would rather talk about tactics because it deflects attention from the failings of their long-cherished dream of nationalized health care. Conservative activists don’t mind talking about the incompetence of The One. But ideas really matter and awful ideas like ObamaCare are, it turns out, quite hard to enact into law once the public wakes up to what is afoot.
I will have to acknowledge that John Cohn’s assertion that (obama)…”He’s tried to tackle health care like a grown-up” is a fresh fig leaf. I believe that is the first time in the millions of words publicly brayed about the backlighted one that anyone has accused him of trying to do ANYTHING “like a grown-up”. It even sounds silly on the surface.
I wonder if Cohn considered self-editing and choosing some other phrase that might not draw attention to the obvious flaw–that this POTUS does NOTHING “like a grown-up”.
Ms. Rubin says, “…ideas really matter”.
Well! Now you’ve just and made it hard for the libs to play with everyone else. I thought we had to “level the playing field” so everyone can participate and there would be no winners. Asking them to function as though ideas really matter is just too much! (….they’re m…e..l…ting……)
I believe journalism lives. Just not in the mainstream media.
The number one reason the Obama health care proposals are going nowhere is because they are illogical. They simply do not make any sense. The historical record of government-managed peacetime institutions is laughable to say the least. They are unable to even minimally compete with the private sector. This is especially true when the employees of these bureaucracies number in the thousands, if not millions. It is utterly irrational to place more responsibilities onto their shoulders. Cost overruns are inevitable. Severe rationing will most definitely be the result.
Barack Obama and the Democrats have no wish to take on the attorneys. This attitude is utterly ridiculous. There is no such thing as significantly improving healthcare in the United States until the trial lawyers are slapped down. Americans must also be able to purchase insurance across state line. The politicians must cease with their “mandates” and allow the insurance companies to devise their own plans to offer the general public. We must be able to pick and choose, cafeteria style, what coverage best suits our needs. Lastly, we must get used to high deductibles. Any bills under $2,000 (or even higher) should be paid out of one’s own pocket. Health insurance should cover only near catastrophic events. Does your auto insurer cover your oil changes, tune-ups, and car washes?
I have to disagree. This health care debacle is the direct consequence of Obama’s political inexperience, personal immaturity, and worst of all, Obama’s total lack of leadership. The Obama White House should have had it’s own health reform plan thought out and presented as a fait accompli to the Congress and the Senate. Instead they gave the keys to the asylum to the inmates, led by Pelosi and Reed, and gave them carte blanche to put together a complicated, expensive, and practically unfathomable piece of legislation. Thus the American leader Barack Obama himself can’t even figure out what is in the reform bill much less explain it to the American public in simple straightforward English. This has been Obama’s strength while campaigning and his weakness while governing, he could always present the picture in broad strokes, but those demonic details always haunted him. And unlike the Chicago Machine gangsters Obama has surrounded himself with in the White House, and unlike the mainstream American media, the larger American public will not be pushed aside. Americans will continue to demand to know whether the price of Obama’s health care reform is going to be their health care in which case the price is too high.
Once upon a time in America a Presidents word was his bond.
If he told the American people he planned to do something, we knew it would happen.
We knew he had consulted with his advisers, cabinet members, read books on the subject and even talked it over with his wife and his God.
Now we have a president that is so insecure he has placed CZARS in positions of power.
The advisers no longer advise they command.
I knew when Obama went on vacation something big would happen.
His Justice Dept. CZAR informed us that it would investigate the CIA.
OH NO!
Bambie had nothing to do with this dirty little job- He was on vacation.
This average American feels like they no longer has a President,
its too big a job for Obama.
He now tells/shows us how important a CZAR should be.
Well I have a CZAR also-
Its called an internet computer.
All I have to do is push a few keystrokes and I know more about the CIA than Eric Holder.
Now Mr. Obama wants to control what buttons I can or can not push.
To my liberal hopenchange computer users-
When Bambie picks his new internet CZAR and Mr. internet CZAR tells you not to use the internet because of National Security and your screen goes blank,
hope you enjoy playing Solitaire or Hearts or some of the other things you do in the dark-
How can they get it right when they don’t even know what the problem is?
The Left is focused on the people that fall thru the cracks and don’t get health care when they need it. The right is focused on the cost.
The real issue is a simple supply and demand problem.
There are more people demanding heath care then there are people supplying health care. That causes some people to do without because they cannot afford health care. They cannot afford it because the demand exceeding the supply has forced the cost up. Involving the government will not prevent people falling thru the cracks.
The simple solution is to increase the supply. We should be debating the best ways to do that instead of quibbling over triage, which is what the current debate is about. Is health care to be allocated by the free market, or a bureaucracy?
The Europeans are the ones that like to fight over who gets the bigger slice of cake. Who gets the pie and who gets the crumbs. Americans bake a bigger cake or larger pie. So how do we increase the amount AND quality of health care available?
Answer that I’ll I give you the wet suit I used to wear to Kennedy rallies.
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
–Barry Goldwater.
The only real reform would consist of putting more control in the hands of consumers not the government. While Obamacare may not literally have “death panels,” there is no way to reign in costs without rationing care. We can’t give insurance to 50 million more people with the same medical facilities and personnel without government limits on care. Doctors and nurses aren’t going to start working 24/7. When they find themselves working for Obama, they may even decide that retirement or another line of work is in order. As to quality, look at the cure rates in the U.S. compared to nationalized health care countries. Even without “death panels,” nationalized health care will condemn to death many who would survive under out present system. The 5-year survival rate for men diagnosed with prostate cancer in America is 100%; it’s 77% in the U.K. Canada is better than the U.K., but not equal to the U.S., and this is type of comparison holds up for colon and other types of cancer. To control availability and cost, we will also limit innovation. Informed Americans are starting to wake up to the fact that, even if Obama were telling the truth about his plan being “deficit neutral” (the CBO says it’s not), that still wouldn’t make it “mortality neutral.”
Obama doesn’t have an earnest bone in his body.
The man is an incompetent perpetual liar with enough charisma to make fools out of the liberal left and shamelessly embarrass the black race for many generations to come.
As such; against a dysfunctional, essentially useless GOP Obama won the election and has managed in six short months to maneuver our nation into the position of having to choose between being hanged or shot dead.
That, not all of the details and gobbledygook written about the stupid healthcare reform proposal in this article and thousands like it is why the public, including his pundits are beginning to turn on Obama.
He; Obama may have succeeded in doing what even September 11th, 2001 couldn’t do. With more than just a little bit of damage wake our country up; hopefully in time to save it from itself.
If not, the thought of what’s probably coming next should put the Fear of God into every man, woman and child on Earth.
I believe that “health reform” is failing because the public, those whom would be most affected, has actually begun to read the bill. Once you actually read it, then you realize how truly f**ked up a bill it really is. It will do none of the things proponents claim. It won’t cut costs, it won’t lead to affordable health care for all. It will exempt Congress, all federal employees, the executive branch and unions from it’s provisions. I will lead to defacto rationing. It will lead to tripling the debt over the next 10 years. It will lead to the collapse of the insurance industry (1/5th of the economy). It will lead to a huge expansion of federal government power and control over yet another sector of the economy (as if the auto industry, and banking industry weren’t way more than enough). It will lead to less choice in treatment options.
That’s why the bill has so much opposition. I would support it if all federal employees, as well as Congress and the Executive branch were covered by it’s provisions. But we all know that will never ever happen.
And finally, do you think that if Ted Kennedy were covered by the same kind of health insurance that congress is trying to foist on the rest of us, that insurance would have provided him with the more than $2,000,000.00 in treatments that he/his family spent in the attempt to cure his brain cancer? I think not, not unless you follow Geo. Orwell’s Animal Farm, wherein some pigs is more equal than other pigs.
Obama had to give the plan to the Dems in Congress simply because he’s not a very deep thinker once you get past “the Central Committee Czar rules”. That’s not to say he’s shallow, merely incompetent. And he doesn’t really lie or state misinformation or is deceitful – he’s just doing what used car salesmen have done for years which is simply Telling Obama’s.
He’s just puffs a lot, does puff pieces on his teleprompter and has the substance of fog at sunrise in Seattle.
Ann141: Dead on. The people running this administration are children. The worst of the sixties self-love and “screw-the-future”…I want it now mentality.
As the trillions quickly add up they are restoring a moribund GOP to health. Not that they deserve it.
Jennifer,
You are right on target with this analysis. It isn’t how it was marketed, it’s the obvious flaws in the legislation that were exposed that reversed it’s momentum and turned a suddenly informed public against it.
The liberals don’t want to acknowledge what a poorly concieved and drafted bill HB 3200 is. It’s terms put the lie to what it says it will accomplish. The CBO says it won’t save money and in fact will cost money. Other analysis shows that some 80+ million now privately insured will lose the coverage they have and be forced into the government option. It also raids Medicare of 500 billion dollars just as a tidal wave of baby boomers retire. Those terminal faults are just some of the preliminary problems with the bill.
The people who drafted this legislation reveal themselves as possessing insufficient knowledge of the issue to put out a bill that might attract bipartisan support. They are less than knowledgable and less than trustworthy. The American people, without any help from the MSM, have figured out how defective HB 3200 is.
Those bent on a Marxist solution to solving healthcares problems can’t stand reality, but there it is. Your legislation has lost support from the majority of Americans on substance, not marketing. Calling it the Kennedy bill won’t change that fact.
If the Socialists want to have a health care bill they can keep this one and ram it through. They have total control of the government; what are they fraid of?
Arrogance and incompetence are hard to disguise after so many months, even Liberal Socialists are seeing the cracks in the armor. Running the government like a second rate Communist Republic in South America begins to alienate Americans who thought Hope and Change signified something else entirely.
Sending out Congressmen, who had not read the bill, to defend the bill in debate against Americans who were well versed in the bill was a disaster. For Obama to have been ignorant of the bill’s finer points exposed his incompetence so well that even the most dim witted Americans realized he was merely winging it on someone else’s ideas.
Americans are now disillusioned with this adminstration and is not likely to trust anything Obama and his finger pointers are trying to sell.
Obama has a liberal marxist agenda in play on many fronts. His goal is not to help the American people. Health care, health insurance, global warming, immigration reform are not issues to be solved but opportunities to build political power, amass new budgets to finance brown shirt organizations, and intimidate the captains of American industry and free enterprise. Healthcare reform is non-problem in reality. Yes we can use some reform in the area of state mandates, more competition and eliminating pre-existing conditions. However it is really and opportunity to build a huge government program, huge new employee and union workers, huge dependecies, a means to intimidate and control citizens by denying care, and thus more power and control in the state. The last thing on his sorry mind is to help the American people. He and his many czars are basic marxists on the move. The sooner we just accept this, the sooner we can start to resist more effectively and throw these bums out.
Tommy Gunn
The danger in all of this is that Obama has absolutely no clue about what his plans will do to rural healthcare.
Rural healthcare is not driven by huge numbers of payouts. It is driven by fair and equitable reimbursement. With Medicare at 80% and with Medicaid at even less, how does Obama expect rural hospitals to make up for his proposed cuts. JCAHO, the hospital accreditation organization, can not give rural hospitals a free pass because of funding limitations. Meanwhile, malpractice insurance doesn’t have a rural rate giving doctors in rural communities a break.
What does this mean?
Bottom line:
This country will lose at least a minimum of 1200 rural hospitals under Obama. The number could be much higher. Any rural hospital under 100 beds, as a capacity, might be forced to close their doors.
And what will happen to these communities and their local economies?
School funding? Property values? Other business revenue?
Obama is incompetent for even pondering the BS he is trying to ram down our throats!
7. John: You got it just right!
It’s really all a matter of tactics. It was quickly obvious that vast bulk of Republicans and their supporters (critical or otherwise) settled right away into bitter, sore loser mode and were intent on disrupting things by spreading rumors and disinformation, labeling everything with dopey, insulting labels, and in general stomping their feet and screaming “No!” regardless of whatever Obama did or say.
So I really think Obama and his people should have first done some groundwork to nullify this tactic and exploit the Republican’s core weakness — lack of any good ideas — by first laying out clearly and unarguably the current status quo of the U.S. health care system and where it was heading both in quality and cost. That would have shown very clearly that there was a need for some sort of serious fix. He could then have shown what happened when Reagan tried reforming health care in the 80′s by giving more control back to the states and instituting free market options — many hospitals and clinics ended up closing, many of the mentally ill ended up being on the streets, and costs ended really ended up sky rocketing.
Once the public dialogue is about the scope of the problem and what worked and didn’t work in the past, Obama should have then offered up his plan to fix things, and called out the opposition to come up with their own solution if they didn’t like it. That would then have likely framed things as: 1) There is a serious and growing problem; 2) Obama and his people have an intricate but thought out plan; 3) If the Republican don’t like it, then they should either put up their own plan, work with Obama, or just STFU.
In a perfect world, plans would be evaluated strictly on merit, and such tactical maneuvering would never be needed, but….
People should ask themselves:
Do I want my health plan/insurance to cover preventive medicine?
How much can I afford to pay?
Can I pick my own doctor?
Should the plan have a lifetime cap?
Are doctors free to recommend specialists and prescribe any medication?
Am I covered in all 50 States?
Why changing jobs should impact coverage??
Why pre-existing conditions are discriminated?
Why can’t people understand that single-payer will make the system self-sufficient?
Can the medical services compensation be fairly negotiated?
Can lawsuits against medical errors be capped at a reasonable amount?
Can dental services be included?
Well Tweet, Tweet Jennifer. This article sounds like you’re busy baking cakes for the church bazaar rather than getting down and dirty.
We are in the fight of our lives! Obama wins this and we can kiss our country goodbye-he loses and we get to fight another day.
Get tough-we need good journalists writing good stuff!
But, #19, you’re not describing “tactical maneuvering” at all–you’re describing a process of thoughtfully explaining in the people what you plan to do, how and why–and giving your opponents and the citizenry an attempt to question, debate and investigate on their own. But then, Obama couldn’t have insisted that we get a bill signed by August–he would have had to say, let’s take a year, or two, whatever is necessary, to make it right. It seems to me highly implausible that Obama rejected that apporach because he thought his plan was good enough and immune to serious criticism already. In which case, what other reasons might there be for the rush?
#8 BC:
“It was quickly obvious that vast bulk of Republicans and their supporters (critical or otherwise) settled right away into bitter, sore loser mode and were intent on disrupting things by spreading rumors and disinformation, labeling everything with dopey, insulting labels, and in general stomping their feet and screaming “No!” regardless of whatever Obama did or say.”
BC, how do you begin to reconcile your statement with the facts that (1) there are life-long Democrats protesting KennedyCare at Town Halls, (2) the administration has yet to get one financial and unemployment figure correct, (3) the stimulus is an ineffective “pork laden” payback by Democrats, and (4) Obama, despite his campaign rhetoric, has blamed the Republicans for the collective failure of Democrats and Republicans for the financial crisis?
Your comment is laden with partisanship, which is exactly why we are getting nowhere in the health care, recession, and stimulus debates. Of course, let’s not forget that the Democrats have deliberately and completely excluded the Republicans from the debate in the false belief that Obama has a mandate, when it is clear he won the election by luring independents to vote for him? Independents, I might add, that are clearly upset with Obama’s blatant partisanship and are experiencing unprecedented “buyers remorse.”
Mark
John at 7,
So true, so true. The zero sum socialist view point vs the dynamic of wealth creation and its logarythmic effect on problem solving.
I have said it before and will say it again, if the Dems had a true understanding of how revenue is created they would embrace capitalism, unleash it, and then divert the exponential growth in tax revenue to their liberal “do good” programs. How would Republicans compete?
Luckily, the Dems are so focused on punishment and zero sum economics that they can’t concieve of how to make an economy expand. They are completely stuck on the demonstrably failed experiment of Socialist problem solving and continuing to apply it’s failed techniques to todays challenges.
When people don’t buy in liberals treat it as a marketing problem. They think HB3200 didn’t survive public scrutiny because the proper tactics weren’t employed. They pretend the obvious structural problems with the legislation don’t exist or are a Sarah Palin conspiracy. That’s why they are losing so badly.
The pundits (leftists) are getting ObamaCare wrong because their information is derived from a closed circle of fellow leftists who disdain people who live in fly-over country. It reminds me of the anecdote about the woman from the upper east side of Manhatten who was asked about her reaction to the 1984 election results that saw Ronald Reagan carry 49 states. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “Everyone I know voted for Mondale.”
We read Hillary’s bill, we didn’t like it.
We read Obama’s bill, we didn’t like it. (plus they called us names)
The bottom line is ‘We Don’t Trust them’!
Why do people accept the premise that what the Democrats are trying to do is ‘reform’ when it is obvious that their idea of reform is that they control it? That is not reform. It is a takeover attempt.
We already have 100% access to medical care – plus some when you include illegal aliens. The only ‘problem’ is that not everyone has their medical costs subsidized by insurance.
I reform were really the goal, they would be targeting the unnecessary things that make medical care cost more than it must.
But lawyers control the Democrat party, so that is never gonna happen with Obama/Peolsi/Reid.
Nor will dropping bad laws, like prohibitions on buying insurance across state lines happen. That would be tantamount to politicians admitting they can do wrong.
What the Democrats are proposing is a thoroughly dishonest sham.
“The first step on the path to wisdom is to call things by their proper name” — Chinese proverb
Again, It is not reform. It is malicious deceit and deception.
bad tactics = big messes
bad ideas = big messes
bad tactics + bad ideas = really big messes
BC – (19)
Lay out the number of new doctors, nurses, hospital beds and the associated equipment, and the tort reform you propose and health care costs could go down by 20-30% over the next decade. Refuse to address the supply and tort reform and it doesn’t matter whether the government takes it over or not you’re going to have people who don’t get the care they need. Obama only addresses how he wants to decide which of the surfs goes without treatment, not a thing about what additional capacity is needed or what tort reform is needed. His supporters say they didn’t want to “fight” lawyers when it was going to be a battle anyway. So, Obama admits he doesn’t mind shoving crap down the throats of the masses as long as he doesn’t make his largest donors angry, but…
There have been republican proposals but you calmly insist there are none. There have been four reform proposals since 2002, as well as bills to help the existing system, several from the same Republican Senator who is intimately familiar with healthcare. In all of those cases the democrats worked very hard to keep them from coming to the floor or to a vote. In an ideal world, you would know this but … it wasn’t on the agenda for today or yesterday or back when they were introduced, so you don’t care about them and don’t care if they were superior to the non-bill your hero introduced or not. You can claim anything you like for 1000 pages of, “shall be determined by XYZ”, because there is no way to know what it is actually going to mean in practice. It’s the NoPlan Plan but typical democrat BS with typical democrat hype about it. Tell us again how illegal aliens won’t be covered why don’t you, that at least makes you look loyal instead of just stupid.
Have a really nice day for 9 hours, then lock yourself in a closet to ensure you don’t absorb part of the day more deserving people require.
Why are there avowed communists advising this Mugabe style president?
Will the lame stream media ever ask this simple question?
President Obama campaigns against Americans with the power grab on the health care front; however, the Socialist Democrats–along with President Obama–believe that most Americans are just plain stupid. The Democrats have underestimated we the people & we have found President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, & Senator Harry Reid among the other Leftists wanting. We the people are informed on the bills, yet our legislatures comes unarmed with silly talking points easily shredded to pieces by us as shown in various town halls around the country–excluding President Obama’s staged town halls of course since he prefers unicorns & rainbows instead of the real world. The blow back has not been tamped down over time, but thanks to President Obama’s union thugs, the Purple Shirts of the SEIU, & the mindless ACORN Obamabots, President Obama has made certain the Tea Party movement has grown exponentially. Nancy Pelosi has called us Nazi’s & astroturf.
What has President Obama & the Democrats accomplished? They have unwittingly awakened the Sleeping Giant of Freedom & Liberty. The real Uncle Sam is almost everyone in the town halls clamoring for the clueless, power hungry politicians to kill the health care bills. We’re a grand old flag, the high flying flag…in the home of the peace & the brave. The liberal Communists have forgotten the ideals on which America has been built, but they will learn the hard way. The Socialists, Fascists, Communists, Marxists thugs will not win. Why? We’re America that’s why.
When confronted with the light of truth, like vampires exposed to sunlight, the Socialists will cower in the shadows or be reduced to dust as the truth will out; Socialists cannot handle the absolute truth about their existence.
PS:
With the health care bills debacle as President Obama shamelessly lies about the bills’ contents since he has not read any of the bills himself on top of the absolute failure of Porkulus & Obama’s terrible self-indulgent budget, we the people no longer trust President Obama; he will have a difficult time passing CAp & Trade, Card Check, & any other power grab bill with more “emergency” nonsense. President Obama is politically impotent thanks to his own Marxist nature has been revealed for all to see. Thankfully, he is incompetent & not a leader in any respect. President Obama is a divisive community organizer without any support even from the Democrats. He’s all alone with the other 19% wacko Left.
Rashputin,
All excellent points at #29, but BC, Vivo, Moho, Jharp and Now and Then, don’t care about facts. They care about relativism, the Marxist dialectic and winning.
Don’t think that these individuals are interested in a discussion, they aren’t. They think anyone who has facts and an opposing point of view is stupid or as one of them has said in the very recent past that you “should shut the f**& up”. That is the level of debate they are capable of.They feed on responses, it serves the dialectic.
Don’t bother with the trolls, let them stew in their own misery and misconception. Their words reveal them to be unhappy, frustrated, individuals who prefer the destruction of what others have as opposed to the construction of something positive for themselves.
The Obamanation has already quadrupled the debt he inherited from Bush in fact thats the ONLY thing he has been successful in doing. He has already run up more debt the 43 previous Presidents COMBINED and that is before the Health Care boondoggle happens. This guy is an unmitigated disaster the Dollar exchange rate is in nose dive and people all over the world are laughing at the Dem ‘libtards’ eulogising a drunken woman killing COWARD and praising him as some sort of hero. It just shows what your values are if you think a drunken COWARD like Ted Kennedy is a hero. Whats more Barrack (you can call me HUSSEIN now cos I won) Obama is a Mohammedan LYING document HIDING BOGUS POTUS.
To Rashputin: Apparently you and many other conservatives/right wingers are under the impression that a “plan” consists of just throwing out an unresearched sound bite or two, like “Tort Reform!”, and then going back to mow the lawn or head over to Walmart. While this might make for a lively discussion over beers, that’s not a serious way to solve a complicated problem, and trying to base policy on something like that without a lick of homework is more than likely to make things worse — witness how Reagan’s very ill considered attempts at health care reform only ended up closing community hospitals and local clinics, as well as really ramping up health care costs.
Perhaps you should be the one to lock yourself in a closet to consider whether you really want to keep being part of the problem, or to move onto somewhat more solution-oriented endeavors.
Obama proved to us that his stimulus bill was nothing but a payoff to the crooked dems and their pimps. He put us on notice with that piece of work.
It is clear that FatTeddyCare (ObamaCare to the faithful) is simply more of the same randomness without any effort to identify/rank the problems with the current system and provide concrete steps to resolve them. He just wants us to turn over to his former ACORN members now death panel adminstrators rge US health care system.
For starters, any new system MUST include tort reform and cover both members of Congress and ALL covered federal job holders, “If it ain’t good enough for my Congressman AND my mailman, it ain’t good enough for me!”
Remember, anything the Kenyan offers, first and foremost, contains payback for one or more of his pimps.
Costs vs. Security
Costs vs. Security
One thing you never hear Obama talk about, much less promote — Freedom.
How about a reform plan that increases freedom, rather than takes it away, that increases opportunity, rather than reduce it? How about the government – which itself is one big death panel in most areas it touches – just get the hell out of the way?
The Obama Health Care Bill is only superficially about health care; it is really about an infrastructural change in government power. That change is to establish a centralist statist control and reduce the individual’s control over their economic and political well-being.
I suggest that the health care ‘crisis’ is more myth than fact. The 45 million uninsured that Obama et al keep referring to, using emotional appeals to get their bill passed – is a fallacious number. Obama’s crew suggests this number consists of those who can’t afford health care, ignoring that at least half is made up of people who can afford it, and pay-by-use rather than overpaying via insurance. And of course, this number also includes the illegal aliens who use hospital emergency services for their general daily medical needs.
The reality is, as many have pointed out, that the majority are satisfied with private personal payment for general services and private insurance for more serious needs.
Some things need to be tweaked, such as taking the insurance across states and jobs.
What about tort reform? Obama’s Gang won’t touch it. But that’s naive – for it is a prime reason for high insurance costs.
AND – if you move to a public health care system, which must necessarily reduce the number and quality of services, and don’t deal with tort reform, you are going to end up with massive legal battles. Why? Because with less care, less quality care, mistakes and omissions are going to be frequent..as they are in other countries with public health care.
But again, the real reason for this health care plan, which shows up in its unintelligible outline, contradictions and future exponential costs, is to introduce a statist, central government infrastructure of control.
Ms. Rubin:
“In the end it comes down to the substance of ObamaCare. Liberal pundits would rather talk about tactics because it deflects attention from the failings of their long-cherished dream of nationalized health care.”
Another good piece from you.
As a sidebar, I’ve noticed that the alleged number of people “without health insurance/without access to health insurance”
(the lines are blurred, intentionally, no doubt), has been steadily creeping upward and now stands at a reported 47 million people.
I suspect that the pro-nationalized health care folks have done this to increase the snese of urgency and to galvanize their supporters for their agenda.
But this tactic has back-fired badly on them because undecided folks have looked at the economics of providing health care for this alleged nearly 50 million people and divined, perfectly reasonably, that it will ruin them financially.
The elderly’s response vis-a-vis ObamaCare’s impact on Medicare is the proof in the pudding of this.
They know that that much money has to come from SOMEWHERE, and have a pretty good idea exactly where it will come from.
And they’re balking at it.
I go along with the notion that we scrap this bill and start over. If we could discuss all of the ideas that have originated due to this abomination of a health bill we might actually solve the problem. And if we heard from the people who actually work in their respective fields, we might hear some good advice instead of only hearing from the “Heads” like AMA, SEIU, PhRma and the like. If the people could see a debate on different ideas they would understand why and where the process was headed. Things like tort reform, no borders for ins. companies, portability, pre-existing cond. pool, tax deductability for everyone are just a few that we could hear debated and form our own conclusions. After the debates were finished we would know that we might disagree with some of the items but we, at least, would agree with some and understand why we disagree with others. I thought this is what Congress was supposed to do!
Reagan had it right on healthcare. Most people even democrats understand this!
Chip @ 16 makes some excellent points on rural hospitals and healthcare–but then Obama cares little for rural folks who cling to their guns and Bibles.
Samizat @ 16 also scores with his reference to Medicare cuts in the face of impending “boomer” retirements–but then again, Obama would rather elderly retirees choose pain meds (death option) over real medicine (life).
BC @ 19 is overly optimistic regarding “The One’s” political savvy and experience….while thoroughly underestimating the general public’s ability to smell a perfume-doused rat.
Rashputin @ 29 also gets it, with his reference to tort reform and the fact the Dimocrats are sold out to the trial lawyers.
Jennifer,
You missed an important consideration for many true Conservatives when it comes to Obamacare and that is that it is simply unconstitutional. While it is worthwhile debating the particulars of the bill in order to expose the level of control the Democrats/Progressives/Socialists are seeking over We the People, the entire debate should rest upon the Constitutionality of the proposal.
The Constitution is quite clear in listing the enumerated powers of the federal government and in giving powers not explicitly enumerated to the states and people.
The Founders intended for the states to be, in Louis Brandeis’ words, the laboratories of democracy, free to experiment with policy. Federalism was meant to be another check on tyranny by allowing citizens to emigrate to new states if their own state’s laws became oppressive or their taxes too heavy. This migration threat serves the purpose of forcing states to remain somewhat competitive for the most productive businesses and citizens. Under a centralized government there is no escape and that is what our would be masters in the Democrat party are after. So, if Leftists want to experiment, and fail, with government run health care they should do so where they are allowed to, at the state level. And let’s hope they keep in mind their failures in blue MA and HI.
The solution is and always has been a four step regulation change:
1. Decouple heath insurance from employment. Make all heath care and health insurance related expenses tax deductible. Encourage businesses by keeping the tax benefit of the business providing a voucher and group status if it so choose to make some sort of health insurance or health payment voucher a part of an employee’s compensation. It would be more helpful to make the insurance payment part of the payment a tax credit, not just an income reduction.
2. Decouple Insurance from state regulations and allow nation wide policy groupings. Allow any interested groups to form insurance risk pools. Churches, benevolent societies, civic organizations and the like should all be allowed and encouraged to form health care groups. Make any group benefits contract fees tax deductible. I would personally love to have a Knights of Columbus National Health plan to turn to, there I would be sure that I wasn’t paying for services that I believe to be fundamentally wrong. Allow such organizations to build menu plans that will provide the type of coverage desired by the purchaser of the insurance.
3. Pass Transparency regulations for both health care providers and health insurance companies. All costs are published and known. All formulas for how compensations and repayments are published and known (no secret proprietary red-lining, zip code computations, or other gimmicks allowed…) If an insurance company will pay 20,000 for an appendectomy in New Jersey, it must publish that and how it came to that figure must be provided.
4. Tort Reform. Massive systemic tort reform is absolutely necessary before any change will “stick”. The costs that doctors pay for malpractice insurance are a huge portion of what they have to charge the patient. BTW, in the transparency requirements, it would be a good thing to hand the patient a bill that tells them how much they just paid for the doctor’s malpractice and liability insurance. (which is also weird to me because then a huge chunk of that cost gets paid by the insurance companies… it seems like tons of bureaucratic insanity to me… that once again increases costs.)
Once those four things are addressed, and the free market is in play (with reasonable regulations and modest help for those who have difficulty paying for insurance) The costs would begin to come down. Healthcare would become a private contract, once again… and government could butt out of what is definitely not any of its business.
r/John – TMF
“Obama simply miscalculated the American electorate’s willingness to throw out a health care system that insures over 80% of us”
The rabbid hatred and lies on this site are truly disgusting. Even today, after all the misinformation, yelling and name calling, the split between supporters and people against reform is 51% to 46% according to ABC, NBC and the WSJ.
There have been four reform proposals since 2002… In all of those cases the democrats worked very hard to keep them from coming to the floor or to a vote. So the Republicans, while in control of the House, Senate and the White House, couldn’t get a good and important bill, that would solve the health care problem, passed? There can only be 3 reasons: it’s not important because it would make very little difference (“Studies place the direct and indirect costs of malpractice between 5% and 10% of total U.S. medical costs”), Republicans are evil and like it when people suffer without healthcare or Democrats are evil and have magical powers to stop Republicans from passing bill that would help the American people.
As an aside: “The Zhan and Miller study supported the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) 1999 report conclusion, which found that medical errors caused up to 98,000 deaths annually and should be considered a national epidemic.” and “A recent study by Healthgrades found that an average of 195,000 hospital deaths in each of the years 2000, 2001 and 2002 in the U.S. were due to potentially preventable medical errors.”
As with the rabid resistance to healthcare reform and socially driven changes to tort reform (like the Accident Compensation Corporation in New Zeland) it all comes down to the greedy appetites of the insurance companies and their executives. Medical care for profit, from the average patient’s point of view, is a nonsensical proposition.
“A review of public records, as well as rejection letters sent to individuals, shows that California (non-community-rating insurance system state) carriers turn people away or charge them higher premiums for conditions that range from the catastrophic to the common. Cancer, epilepsy and AIDS make the list, along with breast implants, ear infections, varicose veins and sleep apnea.”
“It’s all about what you mean by “healthcare reform” if you mean reform to get better healthcare to more people, then the democrats largely have it right. If by reform you mean providing healthcare insurers a better business, then the republicans are your boys.”
“Insurers compete by doing their best to deny coverage to anyone who might actually need medical care. From a “free market”, capitalist and share holder point of view this makes perfect sense.”
Being FORCED into ANYTHING sux monkey balls.
P.S. FYI: Monkey Balls is a Nintendo Game.
LMAO
Minus the ‘s’.
BC:
Lets face it, you are just to smart for all up simple minded Conservatives and birthers. Natter on fool.
9. Playing For Keeps:
“Obama doesn’t have an earnest bone in his body.”
So, he’s NOT a committed socialist. So, he’s NOT determined to destroy the American way of life. Good.
Eric at 43,
It is nice to see another commentator taking the constitutional analysis approach. I belive HB3200 can’t survive strict scrutiny analysis as it violates the 4th and 14th Amendments (Griswold and it’s progeny} It also potentially violates the Commerce Clause.
I have read zero comments from the left regarding this angle. They apparently haven’t read Schecter and the decisions that knocked out many of Roosevelt’s new deal programs as well as Griswold.
The facts and the Constitution are inconvenient impediments to the lefties wishes. Once again,nice job pointing out the constitutional angle.
Government run is the stop point for trust and competency. Government should be the referee and not the player. When the referee is the player in the game he can make and bend the rules anyway he wants. He can lose and call it winning. He can sacrifice the opposing teams and penalize them for being dead in a public place. Government is way out of bounds in proposing that they form their own business plan. Cops, yes, military, yes, doctors and insurance agents and car manufactors, no! The American people can follow that analogy even if they can not foresee pooled resources for medically treating illegals and tax penalities for non participation.
#44 John-TMF:
That all seems perfectly reasonable to me.
I’d throw out another reasonable, but racdical proposal:
5-Make it illegal for civil servants to belong to a Union.
The AFSCME, (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees), is the #2 OpenSecrets.org’s “Heavy Hitter” over a twenty year period for political donations.
As you can see from the table at this link, 12 of the top 20 “Heavy Hitters” are unions, and outfits like Teamsters and SEIU also have large amounts of bureaucrats in their bargaining units.
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php
These private political concerns stand to gain the most from influencing public policy to nationalize one-sixth of the US economy.
Thus, “Obamacare” can be seen as nothing more than a “Jobs for Bureaucrats” program.
Cui Bono?
You may also gain a great insight into why our Education system is the way it is by noting that the two national teacher’s unions are ALSO “Heavy Hitters”, at #7 and #15, respecively.
If you work for the government, you work for the People, and you should not belong to a private labor syndicate.
cichawoda – could you provide some factual evidence for your conclusion that this site contains ‘rabid hatred and lies’? Could you explain why your define resistance to Obama’s Bill as ‘rabid’?
Are you saying that criticism and dissent is not allowed? Are you saying that citizens are not allowed the choice between a private and public health care insurance system?
Your supposition that all the problems of the current health care system are due to ‘greedy insurance companies’ is without factual evidence. After all, your paragraph about medical errors has nothing to do with the insurance companies.
Are you aware that a public health care system moves from serving the needs of the patients, to serving the needs of the enormous, bloated bureaucracy that develops to ‘maintain’ this system?
That’s the situation in Canada, where most of the money goes to the bureaucracy rather than to nurses, hospitals, equipment, supplies. That’s why there is rationing in Canada, why many services are denied (cutting surgeries, cutting care, cutting seniors programs) why tests take months, why basic and up-dated equipment is missing in so many hospitals, and why Canadians rely on going to the US for treatment.
For example, “In 1948, Great Britain’s National Health Service employed 350,000 staff members and managed 480,000 hospital beds. By 1991, it had 800,000 staff but only 260,000 beds.”
And remember, this public system, which denies you any choice of doctor, treatment, and often denies you care, is extremely costly.
43. Eric:
“The Constitution is quite clear in listing the enumerated powers of the federal government and in giving powers not explicitly enumerated to the states and people.”
So, I assume, you would be also for bank, insurance, corporate, etc. regulation on a state by state basis? If the corporations can operate at a national level the government has to also or we can just change the constitution to read “We the corporations…”
If we could get business to accept the state by state regulation and control we could just leave the Feds with the military – I have no problem with that. In the end the country would break up but I live in California and to tell you the truth I am sick and tired of supporting the beggar, flyover states.
We return to another exciting adventure of Boys in the Basement (Part VII) . . .
Vivo sifted seeds from the herbal formula that would provide the day’s nourishment as new trolls BeeCee and EnTee looked on with approval. BeeCee’s appearance reminded vivo of a Great Dane, especially so when he allowed his foot long tongue to dangle unconsciously from his left jowl. EnTee resembled something akin to a stray cat recently emerged from a car that had gone through an automated wash with the windows down. Both eyed the dried shrooms laying on the table hoping vivo would offer. “Gopher it,” said vivo with a psychedelic gleam in his eye. The trio kicked back to enjoy the rush.
“It’s start’n to get weird,” said vivo. “Do either of you dudes see something standing in the corner?” But it was no hallucination. A figure emerged from the shadows.
“Uncle Karl!” the three shouted in unison. The great philosopher himself dressed in a wool cap of red, green, black and gold had arrived in person.
“Up on your perches, my little trolls,” he said with a smile. The three leaped to their appointed positions barking like trained seals.
“Repeat after me,” said the hologram, “astro-turf, hater, insurance companies.” The three complied in chorus. “Rich, greedy, republican,” he continued.
Deep in the bowls of the OEOB a technician tapped busily on his keyboard. “You’re making it too obvious,” said the man next to him.
“Not so,” said the other, “listen to this.”
“Werkers kontroll means of prodookshun,” said the Marx hologram doing an impersonation of Walter Konig. The two technicians could barely contain their mirth as the trio of trolls responded in kind. “Wheere are nuclear wessels?” it continued.
“I can haz bacon?” asked vivo.
“Watch this,” said the technician as the Marx hologram flicked a treat into vivo’s open maw.
“That is totally awesome,” said the other. “What is it?”
“It’s a new program from the Soros labs called cyber-bacon. You see, a trained troll can’t tell reality from his basement world.”
“Seems like a lot of effort to program three ordinary trolls,” said the other.
“Don’t worry, in a week go switch to an automated system on endless loop. They’ll never know the difference.”
To be continued . . .
54. ETAB:
“cichawoda – could you provide some factual evidence for your conclusion that this site contains ‘rabid hatred and lies’? Could you explain why your define resistance to Obama’s Bill as ‘rabid’?”
“Obama is a Mohammedan LYING document HIDING BOGUS POTUS”
“Why are there avowed communists advising this Mugabe style president”
“unlike the Chicago Machine gangsters Obama has surrounded himself with in the White House”
“The people running this administration are children”
“What the Democrats are proposing is a thoroughly dishonest sham.”
“Running the government like a second rate Communist Republic in South America”
This is just from this discussion and each one from a different post. I love a good argument when it is based in mutual respect, substantiated facts and civility – you can’t have a Democracy with out that.
“After all, your paragraph about medical errors has nothing to do with the insurance companies.” – that was aimed at one of the posts saying that tort reform would solve all the healthcare problems.
“bloated bureaucracy that develops to ‘maintain’ this system”
Are the bureaucracies of Medicare and the VA healthcare system bloated compared to the administrative costs of the for profit insurers (underwriting and dividends included)?
“In 1999, health administration costs totaled at least $294.3 billion in the United States, or $1,059 per capita, as compared with $307 per capita in Canada.” – New England Journal of Medicine
“And remember, this public system, which denies you any choice of doctor, treatment, and often denies you care, is extremely costly.”
Well I don’t know where you get your information from but, in the last 40 years, I have spent over 15 years living in several European countries including 5 years in Scotland and England. All I can say, because I need to eat my breakfast now, is that you are either ignorant or lying. Of all my friends that are living in Europe and Canada I don’t know of one that would want to swap systems with us.
# 15 tommy gunn
Agreed. Ms Rubin makes some very good points, but, in the end, it is Obama’s larger marxist scheme that matters. It’s not that he and his ilk misconceived the bill; it was conceived precisely to further his goal of weakening the free market and our country–our liberty, our freedoms, our Constitution–for the benefit of the elites in power.
Whoever thinks he and his cronies have the good of the “people” in mind is either naive or stupid.
# 15 tommy gunn;
Absolutely. Best comment.
5. Ken Besig:
I have to disagree. This health care debacle is the direct consequence of Obama’s political inexperience, personal immaturity, and worst of all, Obama’s total lack of leadership.
——————————
I think you nailed it, Ken. It’s also the epitaph for all his future “initiatives” and the rest of his presidency.
All this talk of Obama underestimating the ‘dissent from ordinary citizens’ is rubbish. Town Hall meetings are now carefully orchestrated boorish yelling opportunities for true believers in the minority party – the Republicans, hardly the ‘ordinary’ citizen. The ordinary citizens, and by that I mean the majority of the electorate, want what Canada, the UK, France, Germany. Holland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark… all really civilized countries take for granted – universal health care. All those countries are ranked as more desirable places to live, work, and be ill. Most of them have much better standards of living, and they mock us for having a a health system that provides outcomes that rate just above Cuba (23rd). Oh irony pilers on irony!
… and it is finally sinking in that the House and Senate should just push through the reform bill, with the public option and simply ignore the whinging of the lobby paid senators and their ilk (and all the noisy, sometimes insane bluster of packed’ Town Halls), and vote as the larger electorate expected the Congress to vote – for universal health care
Cichawoda – to my understanding, the constitution, section 8, defines fiscal matters (taxes, duties borrowing money, commerce and trade regulations both with foreign and ‘among the several States”, coinage etc) as a federal and not a state responsibility.
The terms of ‘bank, insurance, corporate’ do not have similar meanings and are, moreover, ambiguous. But since a ‘bank’ deals with the financial, then it is under federal jurisdiction (see also Section 10 which denies coinage of money etc to States). Both insurance and other corporations are a private enterprise and do not fall under the federal rule except for common regulations.
What is unconstitutional is for the federal government to install a federal health care system – as per the 10th amendment. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The reason for this is because, unlike the system of commerce regulations, a health care system is not simply one of common regulations but is a governing infrastructure – that sets up a financial structure, an operating structure, a bureaucratic structure..and takes all of this out of the control of the people.
There’s another issue. The process itself was not serious. They tried to Rahm the most major piece of legislation in 50 years through congress with 1000+ pages of pig-in-a-poke that the congressmen freely admitted that they have no intention of reading, just like they did the porkulus. But the porkulus was at least an ostensible emergency, and there was a (very weak) argument made that urgency requires haste.
Not so with this. There’s no hurry, there’s no urgency, and everyone knows that. So the “you gotta do it quick before the sky falls” thing rings disingenuous. And when the public thinks that they’re trying to pull a fast one, they dig in.
I’ll bet Rahm doesn’t seduce many women with that approach, either. These guys don’t know how to do slick. That was that guy in the ’90s that had that figured out. And even he couldn’t seduce the American public into this blow job.
Eric @43…”You missed an important consideration for many true Conservatives when it comes to Obamacare and that is that it is simply unconstitutional.” Yes. Yes.
#55:
“In the end the country would break up but I live in California and to tell you the truth I am sick and tired of supporting the beggar, flyover states.”
Really?
From Mad Max III:
“Embargo ON! This place…FINISHED!”
and:
“Her wonky! So sad! Her con-FUSED! Me ‘splain:
This MY vehicle…you…PEDESTRIAN!”
Generate your own electricity. Get your own water, grow your own food, and produce your own gas and oil.
Build in an earthquake zone and all your buildings fell down?
Tough…move your town!
(That’s waht a lot of river communities along the Mississippi got told during the 4 or 5 “Floods of the Century” back in the 1990′s).
Yeah…we’ll see who supports who.
#6: “Once upon a time in America a Presidents word was his bond.”
Bush II: WMDs
Clinton: “I did not have sex with that woman.”
Bush I: “Read my lips….”
Reagan: Iran-Contra
Etc., etc., etc.
# 45 cichawoda:
“Medical care for profit, from the average patient’s point of view, is a nonsensical proposition.”
No, it’s not. I’m an average patient, and you don’t get to talk for me. Anything, including health care, should be open to the negotiations that take place in a free, profit-driven market.
As a former slave of a communist state, I know all about the hatred of capitalist “profit” and what it entails: it’s still about “profit” and power, but only for a select few, the political class.
My country, just like Cuba, had separate health care–separate hospitals, separate “polyclinics,” separate access to medicines, separate everything–for the caste in power and for the “masses.” When the best care could not be provided for the caste in the country, a flight to Vienna or Paris or the U.S. would be arranged speedily.
Ma’am, I know it’s a worn-out cliche, but it’s sincere: Emigrate to Cuba. Please. See what non-profit driven, “free” health care means for the masses. In case you are completely naive about economics, there’s no such thing as “free” anything. See what a worker or a professional makes a month.
Everybody is paid by the Governement. A physician makes about $300/month, a worker in the tobacco factories about $100–and they are happy to be able to work for a living. Women often prefer to prostitute themselves for foreign tourists in their exclusive hotels and beaches.
“Free” health care my ass.
uhm… health care costs – and how to get them back under control – are the ONLY issue we should be discussing right now. But no one wants to talk about bringing them back under control. Everyone has been duped into trying to figure how to force insurance to “cover” them. It’s insanity on such a large scale, no one recognizes it.
This is a market problem, not a governance problem. The insurance companies control prices of health care. They control virtually all transactions for health care. And they control virtually all access to health care. In less nuanced times we called this what it was: A MONOPOLY. The feds need to break this monopoly and allow the market to bring costs back into equilibrium. No one wants to consider this approach. Why?
The irony inherent in having an anti-American, inexperienced corporatist at the helm of our government is that he tried to leverage skyrocketing costs – using the ever-popular politics of fear – to sell a socialist confidence scam that NO ONE with more than half a functioning brain and/or a cursory knowledge of history would ever fall for. Not with the government’s record.
Medicare is bankrupt. It steals more U.S. Taxpayer money each year from the general fund and soaks up every increase in Social Security COLAs in order to stay afloat. By 2012 it will only be sustainable through deficit spending because it won’t be able to steal enough from the general fund to maintain operation.
Not only that, but the corrupt Medicare system must employ extortion to keep retirees in the plan! Has anyone on either side of this so-called “debate” ever once made an issue of the fact that a retiree will LOSE their Social Security benefits if they opt OUT of paying Medicare premiums to go with a competing plan? With all the talk about “competition”, why does DHHS policy deny a retiree the right to use a competing system? Does no one realize that this is exactly what will happen with a government-run “public option”? Did everyone just wake up stupid on January 21, 2009?
Social Security is bankrupt. “Cash for Clunkers” is bankrupt. Hell, the federal government is presently running a deficit that makes it effectively bankrupt, and it will be actually bankrupt the moment other countries decide to stop buying U.S. paper. What evidence exists that the federal government has a snowball’s chance in Hades of running a self-sustaining insurance operation?
None.
We need a clean sweep on BOTH sides of the aisle in Congress. We need representatives who will change tax laws to encourage behavior that does NOT encourage health care costs to skyrocket.
Ask yourself why commodities in other industries remain relatively affordable. What’s different about those and routine health care? Only one thing: we abuse insurance to pay for it. There is no “risk” in paying for routine health care. It’s a cost of living. Insurance is for MANAGING RISK.
Paying for health care through group policies – as we have been increasingly doing since the early 80s – only encourages costs to increase. And increase they have, as a result. Health care is the ONLY market where we see this phenomenon because it’s the ONLY market where we use such an insane mechanism to pay for it.
We already “spread the wealth around” by spreading the costs of routine health care around – through the misuse of comprehensive insurance policies. Three guesses why BHO wants to seize THAT functioning operation.
Health care costs are the ONLY issue. Bring the cost of routine health care BACK down to the affordable level of other routine costs of living and the health care “crisis” goes away all on its own. Beyond that, high-deductible, low-premium policies can be used to manage any real risk posed by catastrophic illness or injury. Tell Congress to do it now and stop trying to seize control over every aspect of our lives and our liberties. Do it now or we elect representatives who will.
A “post-mortem” is rather premature when the baby has not yet been conceived. Given the current makeup of the congress, it is highly unlikely that we will enter the next election cycle without having a major piece of health care reform passed. Single-payer is obviously not going to happen, but it is similarly laughable to declare the reform dead when there is a clear mandate and majority for significant changes to the health care system in this country.
Fiscal hawkery and moralism are not the strange bedfellows you make them out to be. In the case of health care, covering everyone makes sense fiscally, morally and politically. Public plans cover 45% of health care costs already – making these plans or similar plans available to the 15% of the population currently uninsured would be a good step towards real health reform, and a boon to productivity to boot.
The GOP message has been quite clear, but has also been mostly nonsense. As this has played out over the recess, it is becoming more and more obvious that there is no will to compromise on the right. Promises to vote against bills that have not yet been drafted are just one example. ‘Death panel’ commentary is another facet of this gibberish fringe, along with persistent ‘birther’ allusions.
After letting the astroturfers kill time all summer, the real activists will be hitting the ground shortly to lobby their congress when they are actually in session – and there will be no relief for this congress until comprehensive health reform has been signed into law. The left has invested far too much to let this opportunity remain unexploited.
ObamaCare is dead? Long live ObamaCare.
Peace.
DS
23. Mark Epstein:
You are correct. If everybody parks their agenda at the curb, improving the worlds best health care system would be a snap. America has the talent and can find the money, all we need is the will.
I watched a Republican on the morning talk shows who wasn’t worried. He said if the Demonrats jam this Health care package down the throats of US citizens, in 2011 he will be chairman of the committee that handles that sort of stuff and they will just repeal the bill. He said any Blue Dog that voted for it was committing political suicide.
The Socalists are making a serious mistake when they describe this whole kurffle as a marketing problem. What they haven’t figured out yet is that the TV remote has reduced the power of traditional advertising by about 80%.
The Ad boys know that and are scared. Between Tivo and the remote, being force fed trashy ads is now an option. One most people pass on.
67. biblio44:
#6: “Once upon a time in America a Presidents word was his bond.”
Lets start with Reagan,
it drives liberals nuts-
remember he later apologized for something he knew nothing about.
They were released the day he became president..
more latter..
63. ETAB:
“Cichawoda – to my understanding, the constitution, section 8…”
Not really a solid constitutional point. To follow this strictly, without consideration for the “promote the general Welfare” preamble, that Medicare, Social Security, most trade treaties, federal education system, etc are unconstitutional. That leaves the Federal Government with so little that I would deem sending my tax dollars to DC a waist of time.
If one of the main reasons for holding this country together is not to “promote the general Welfare… to ourselves and our Posterity…” than I would gladly have my state break of as a separate country and leave the backwoods, beggar, flyover states to fend for themselves.
# 45 cichawoda:
One more thing: If you do manage to emigrate to Cuba, expect a long time of interrogations by the Secret Police in a basement somewhere, in a dillapidated building in Havana or in shack in the countryside, on suspicion of being a CIA spy or a counter-revolutionary.
If released, expect to have a “tail” for the rest of your life.
If you have health problems and want good treatment, “they” will first force you to sign up as an informer on other U.S. “cichawodians” on the island or abroad before you get it.
Given the way you seem to think, it looks likely you’d be taking the deal. Afterall, nobody is making a real capitalist profit, does it.
68. Cristina:
“Anything, including health care, should be open to the negotiations that take place in a free, profit-driven market.”
Lets pretend I am an insurance company. Two people come to me to get health care insurance.
Tom – who is in his 20s, well educated, good paying job, exercises, has had dental care all his life, has good genes (family health history) etc.
Cristina – in her late 40s, little education, minimum wage job, sedentary lifestyle, 3rd world dental care, unknowable family health history etc.
Taking into consideration my shareholders whom should I insure and whom should I dump to the equivalent of “undocumented income” lenders?
Capitalism works great for making widgets – when it comes to anything that involves moral issues it is by definition a failure. Oh and please do not confuse Capitalism with Democracy or Communism with Totalitarianism. We can argue but let us stick to comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges.
@70. David S: – A “post-mortem” is rather premature when the baby has not yet been conceived.
Correct. And similarly, a postnatal assessment, measurement of a kid’s IQ, predicting how the kid’s going to support itself and what the kid will be making 20 years from now are not only premature, but abject nonsense “when the baby has not yet been conceived”.
But of course no leftist moral adolescent would consider that fully-strained metaphor a sufficient reason to look for alternatives.
74. Cristina:
“One more thing: If you do manage to emigrate to Cuba”
That’s all sweet and very anecdotal but here is a comment from somebody who is from Cuba, has lost much in the revolution, hates Castro and his political repression but has this to say about their healthcare system :
“Let’s not forget the Cuban healthcare system – renown in Latin America and the developing world. I have a doc friend who went to med school there, who is now a research doctor in the uniformed PHS.”
If you want to get a better education it is easy to get into Cuba as long as you can pass the entry exam. I can also make a bet that you are an economic and not a political emigre from what ever 3rd world country you came from.
Let’s face it, the reason Obama’s health care program is failing is that even his total control of the lapdog media can’t hide that Obamacare is a scheme to buy votes with taxpayer money. The Democratic propaganda machine failed because they gave away their credibility to get the One in the White House and no one who is not an “intellectual” or a parasite believes anything they produce any more.
cichawoda – that comment, from one person, doesn’t appear until #34, and is hardly indicative of the majority tone of this site. For you to cherry-pick this one out, and define the totality as ‘rabid hatred and lies’ is unreasonable.
The other comments are ‘fair opinion’; if someone wants to compare Obama’s ideology to Marxism, communism, Chicago-style politics-all ofthat is a fair comment. To state that there are ‘avowed communists’ advising Obama is a fact not a lie.
The great majority of comments on this thread are serious, fair and show deep concern about Obama’s agenda.
The fact remains, that in a public system, most of the money goes to the bureaucracy. Your ‘per capita’ comparison between Canada/US is invali because it ignores that the Canadian receives less care for their money – not the same care.
To call me ignorant or lying is precisely the type of verbiage and ‘lack of mutual respct’ that you originally condemned in others. Why are you behaving like those whom you disdain?
As for your anecdotal reports from your friends, they have no scientific validity, as I’m sure you know. The facts are different – (please refer also to the UK example of a bloated bureaucracy)- and the facts are that Canadian health care is insufficient for its peoples’ needs and that many go without adequate care – or, if they can afford it – go to the US for treatment.
Albert – your comments about the ‘programmed’ nature of the Town Halls are just your opinions and without evidence. The same – for your comments that ‘most people’ want a public health care system (I advise you to check out the polls; go to Rasmussen polls)-Did you know that 80% are satisfied with their insurance? And it’s the same with your conclusion about ‘better standard of living’. Try to insert some data along with your opinions.
Cristina – yes, you are right. A socialist system sets up a two-class structure – the elite and the masses. It removes the middle class and denies freedom: of speech, of economic markets..etc.
goy – nice comments, thanks.Yes, Medicare is not only bankrupt but won’t let you get out of the system – rather like Canada’s system. And yes, you are right; the Obama system will effectively deny individuals the freedom to choose – and – it won’t be able to meet needs, because the bureaucracy will expand to absorb all funding.
Right – use health care insurance for risk-illness, and not for daily care. As David Thomson has pointed out, we use car insurance for risk not for oil changes. There is a great deal to recommend that regular care ought to be paid directly by the patient; it’s actually cheaper than the insurance and cheaper than the socialist (Canadian/UK) taxes required for health care.
David S – the 15% of the population uninsured is a false number; you are ignoring those who do not want insurance because it’s cheaper to pay direct; and illegal aliens. I also object to your name-calling of regular citizens as ‘astroturf’ and your suggestion that ONLY because the ‘left has invested’ in health care..that it ought to be passed.
Your sign-off of ‘peace’ is an aggressive action, quite frankly, for it acts as a ‘stop sign’ trying to prevent someone from disagreeing with you. I disagree and I’m not interested in sanctimonious ‘peace’ but in sincere debate – which can include acrimonious emotion.
#28 Bad ideas + bad tactics = Stupid & Aggressive, a losing combination, but also an extremely dangerous combination.
Thankfully, the opposition has found their voice…an we now have an alternative media to ensure the voice is not smothered.
33 – Samizdat
You’re right, they’re willfully ignorant. They respond when there’s something on their little briefing paper that is similar to what you said, and if you hit them with something that isn’t the just quit responding. They’re the absolute mirror of what trained seals are, they either recognize the trigger or they sit there looking silly.
These people are even so dense that they don’t realize that many if not most of them are disposable to the elitists they’re cheerleading for and that should healthcare as they propose it (undefined and to be determined by someone at some time in after passage) be enacted that they’ll be among those without the treatment they need and sitting in a filthy hallway enjoying their painkillers as they waste away.
Has a single one of these idiots realized that their pet cause of a few years back, AIDS, is an exact match for the kind of care Obama himself needs to be eliminated? No more expensive or experimental treatment for HIV folks, just being HIV positive would put you on the list of those to not waste treatment dollars on. What about the recurring hepatitis that is so common and so expensive to treat among in crowd? That, too, is an exact match for the type of recurring disease Obama himself says we should halt treatment for. It’s not just keeping the old folks from getting a hip like his granny did, it’s about getting rid of all those who live “lives unworthy of life” the same as it was wherever Eugenics has been implemented.
Let the numbskulls keep on living like it’s all one big role playing game. They’re on the verge of getting the sticky end of the stick either way it goes. If their side “wins” they’re disposable and in fact undesirable to keep around. If their side “loses” they’ll be in the can with their fearless leader for being losers who he no longer needs. Above and beyond this single issue, they don’t even realize what they’re toying around with when they start backing the overthrow of the Constitution and the nationalization of industry. They honestly believe that no one on earth takes an oath any more seriously than they themselves do.
Again, you’re right; the best thing to do is ignore them and not even try to awaken them from their sleepwalking. They more than deserve what they get.
Regards
#61 Albert:
All this talk of Obama underestimating the ‘dissent from ordinary citizens’ is rubbish. Town Hall meetings are now carefully orchestrated boorish yelling opportunities for true believers in the minority party – the Republicans, hardly the ‘ordinary’ citizen. The ordinary citizens, and by that I mean the majority of the electorate, want what Canada, the UK, France, Germany. Holland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark… all really civilized countries take for granted – universal health care. All those countries are ranked as more desirable places to live, work, and be ill.
If one iota of what you wrote was true, our inflated “uninsured” numbers wouldn’t be including 12+ million illegal aliens, because they would have found a way to make their way to the utopias you describe. However, here’s a dose of “reality” for you: No one — let me repeat this for you — NO ONE in the UK or Canada likes their nationalized health care UNLESS they can afford supplemental insurance that moves them to the front of the line. The Norwegian countries are saddled with a 50%+ income tax rate on everyone (not just the rich) and the Scandinavian countries you cited have the highest suicide rates in Europe. Sounds like life there is just peaches and cream.
Now, let’s examine your “opinion” that ordinary dissent is rubbish by way of a question: Who do you think has purchased enough firearms since Obama’s election to outfit the Chinese Army twice over? Poor, uneducated rednecks? You better take a look at firearms prices if you believe anyone other than the middle class is purchasing the weapons that have been sold. Thus far, the Town Halls have been civil to what could very well explode into a civil war.
Stop regurgitating tired MSM lies and step-back long enough to look at the big picture. It’s not pretty.
Mark
# 77 Cichawoda:
1. You lose the bet. I came here as a political refugee, before 1989.
2. I came here from Romania. If that’s a 3rd world country, so is Cuba. You said so.
3. I know what I speak of. I was born into the “privileged class” back home. It’s you who relies on anedoctes, not me.
4. “Entrance exam…” Sure, that’s the European system, but in the commie state, you had to submit a dossier first to attest your were of a sound, proletarian origin, no bourgeois connections or relatives abroad, otherwise guess what???
Plus kids in the huge, agricultural countryside never had a chance at a proper education. The “Party” didn’t give a damn about them. It only cared for the “workers” in the urban areas conforming with the industrialization goals of marxist-leninist doctrines, many of them uprooted from villages with the promise of a better life. Check out any history records of what that life meant.
5. What is “uniformed PHS”?
6. I consider people who think like you, with absolutely no direct or intuitive knowledge of what a communist dictatorship is, a direct enemy of mine, as an American citizen.
What are the pundits missing? That it’s gonna pass.
Cristina: thank you for your comments!
It may be the best thing if it does pass. When people have to start living Obama’s government run health care nightmare the backlash will be real, considerable, and unstoppable.
What did ADM Yamamoto supposedly say after Pearl Harbor? “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
Good job Obama, good job.
The way I see it, this administration forgot that the vast majority of Americans can read. They dumped the stimulus bill in the middle of the night (after promising that we would all have a chance to read it before it was voted upon) and voted on that same legislation in the early morning hours. NO ONE had read that bill. Once the details became clear, and the massive pork and irrational overspending included was revealed, people were incensed.
When HR3200 was released for public consumption BEFORE the vote, people hunkered down and READ THE BILL. Sadly for the left, neither Obama nor democratics bothered to do the same. Why are regular folks so vociferous in their opposition to this bill? Exactly because they DID read it. When you see your representatives at town hall meetings who are completely clueless about legislation they are trying desperately to sell you, you know there is a major problem with what is being proposed. As Pelosi, Obama and Reid left the bill to be written by aids and special interest groups, such as the pharmacy companies, they are now having to reap what they have sown through their own laziness. They also have no clue about what is actually proposed in black and white in their own bill.
HR3200 specifically EXCLUDES unions, teachers, government employees and other special interest groups from having to participate. And while those groups are free to maintain their healthcare, the average American will be taxed 2.5% of their income as a PENALTY for declining government healthcare. Contrary to what some may think, most Americans are NOT part of a union, nor are they teachers, government employees or part of a special interest group. In fact, small businesses account for somewhere around 75% of all jobs in this country. As those same small businesses will now also be taxed to death for this bill, more jobs will be lost due to the restrictions and mandates imposed by HR3200.
Those who are froathing at the mouth at the idea that people who are against government take over of healthcare are only part of the mythical “right wing conspiracy” have failed to pay attention. MANY folks who are speaking out at the town halls are freely identifying themselves as registered democrats and independents who would have never before indulged in even the idea of voting outside of the democratic party. Rasmussen indicates today that 57% of the electorate is in favor of voting out the ENTIRE CONGRESS.
Obama is losing support for all of his programs due to his own arrogance. He should have taken the time to have an aide explain to him what appears in HR3200. All he has managed to do with his refusal to respect those who disagree with this proposed legislation is to a) harden the resolve of those who already opposed the measure and b) broaden the opposition to include vast numbers across the political spectrum. One of his spokespersons stated the other day that Obama is very comfortable with the idea that he is a one term president. I hope so, because unless he finds a way to redeem himself with independents and those who have passionately come out to oppose this legislation, he will continue to lose support at record rates.
As for the trolls here, I find them comical. Their talking points as distributed by Rahm are useless to them. Admittedly, the public used to be uninformed about major legislation, allowing themselves to be spoon-fed news by the main stream media. PT Barnum would recognize what is happening here. People have realized that the media is not doing their job. They have turned to alternative media in droves and are researching for themselves. And they ARE informed. Watch the town halls for yourselves, trolls. Questioner after questioner appears with a copy of HR3200 in their hands. They have printed out the bill and have read it for themselves. Trust in big media has vanished (except for those who cannot release their blind loyalty to the demcratic party. But those are the same people who can never say ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘you might have a point’)
I fervently hope that the current proposals die a miserable death this fall. Until and unless congress takes the time to actually debate this issue intelligently and in an informed manner, it should die. Tort reform, opening up insurance across state lines, etc should be a part of this debate. It’s just too bad for Obama that he took out his own tonsils before he tried the antibiotic of dialogue.
Next to an old, faded paper sign that says, “Illigitimus Non Carborundum” is a new sign:
To make a mistake is human,
To really foul things up takes Obama.
PS: Thanks Christina!
THe New England Journal of Medicine, and the AMA both point out that the Canadian system is more efficient, in the sense that it costs less for better outcomes. If a Canadian is in a situation where better facilities are available, or a better treatment is available in another country (US, UK, etc), they can avail themselves of that treatment with all or part of the cost paid for by the health plan. Wait times, when averaged over all categories of treatment, are better in Canada than the US (New England Journal of Medicine). No one I know from Europe or Canada would ever trade their health plans, with whatever problems they have, for the ridiculous, capricious system that is the US system. No one goes broke getting health care in Canada, and the outcomes are generally better (Time Magazine), whereas bankruptcy and arbitrary refusal of any appropriate treatment by an insurance company are a commonplace in the US. Keep the present system; we’ll simply become even more of a laughing stock as bankruptcies increase, and every single treatment outcome statistic further declines. What an absolute hoot that there are still people who say the American system is the best in the world; we deserve what we get.
@82
Talk about tired talking points; Hungary has the highest suicide rate, Denmark is rated by others, and rates itself as the happiest country in the world (Time Magazine, Newsweek, The Economist, . You know Denmark, one of those “Norwegian” countries (giggling) that has universal health care and that you think pays over 50% in taxes – utter nonsense. YOU should stop regurgitating claims made during the Eisenhower era that were all shown to be wrong.
83. Cristina:
“who think like you, with absolutely no direct or intuitive knowledge of what a communist dictatorship”
So, child, you and most likely your family where part of the “apparatchik” class and had to leave after Ceauşescu was overthrown in December of 1989 – or did you see the ax coming and, like rats, jumped the boat before that. You where OK with the system that stole from and mistreated it’s people till it stopped feeding you. I know that the State department sometimes gives political asylum to high up Eastern Block officials when they are forced to flee Democratic change – it’s not the same as being a real political refugee.
You should have looked to people like Grigore Răceanu, Petru Dugulescu, László Tőkés real Romanian patriots.
As for myself – I was kicked out in ’81 after martial law was declared because of my 10 year involvement in organizing workers to rise against people like you and your family.
It is amusing to see that most former Eastern block apparatchiks that have come to this country or have stayed and survived in the new regimes embrace the conservative, ultra capitalist views in their new realities. Here like there these are the people who are only in it for themselves.
58. Cristina:
“it is Obama’s larger Marxist scheme that matters.”
Coming from a privileged Marxist family what particular statements of our current president strike you as Marxist, Stalinist or Ceauşescuist?
Which of these countries: Canada, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, New Zealand or Switzerland would you consider to have a Marxist/Leninist economic model?
No one goes broke getting health care in Canada, and the outcomes are generally better (Time Magazine), whereas bankruptcy and arbitrary refusal of any appropriate treatment by an insurance company are a commonplace in the US.
Not true. Assuming the Canadian numbers quoted in this paper on American bankruptcies DIRECTLY attributable to health care debts, the numbers are about even.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/25/2/w74?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=dranove&andorexacttitle=and&andorexacttitleabs=and&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT
“David Himmelstein and colleagues recently contended that medical problems contribute to 54.5 percent of personal bankruptcies and threaten the solvency of solidly middle-class Americans. They propose comprehensive national health insurance as a solution. A reexamination of their data suggests that medical bills are a contributing factor in just 17 percent of personal bankruptcies and that those affected tend to have incomes closer to poverty level than to middle class. Moreover, for national health insurance to have an impact, it would have to define “medical” expenses in a much broader way than is now typical of either private or government-funded plans.”
37. Bender:
Costs vs. Security
Costs vs. Security
Are we talking about the Iraq war again? If so we should listen to Republicans for an honest, informed and transparent opinion that has the best interests of the American public in mind
Albert – your statement that in Canada, ‘if better facilities are available’ or ‘better treatment’ in another country than Canada, that the Canadian can go, with all or part paid by the Canadian health care system – is absolute rubbish. Totally untrue.
I’m Canadian. There is no way that a Canadian can, on his own, go to the US for treatment and have it paid for by Canada. He pays – completely on his own. No reimbursement.
If treatment is available in Canada, and even if it takes months and months for that treatment, and even if he considers it’s not as up-to-date as in he US…tough. If he chooses to go to the US, it’s from his own pocket. If treatment is unavailable in Canada..and he wants it, he pays for it..on his own.
The only time a Canadian might get reimbursement would be if he was in hospital, ready for an operation, and the equipment broke down..IF he lived close to the US, they might fly him there. Or, simply reschedule the operation to a later month.
You say that no-one goes broke getting health care, but what you don’t understand is that in many cases, adequate health care is not available. Got that? Not available. If you want an eye exam every year – heh – you’ll be refused. If you want it anyway, then you pay for it; you are ‘allotted’ one only every two years. Same with other tests. You can’t simply ask for tests; you’ll be refused. You can’t even pay for them!
As for your anecdotal report from ‘no-one I know’ – anecdotal reports are statistically irrelevant.I can equally give you anecdotes of many, many people who have gone to the US for basic health care treatment. Why? Because of refusal up here; because of long wait times; because the treatment wasn’t available. OK?
Danes do pay almost 50% in taxes, and what you don’t understand is that taxation is complex. Besides income, there’ll be VAT taxes etc..which all add up to a substantial government hand in your purse.
Or, there are no doctors. Many people have no doctors; there aren’t enough of them.
Wait times? Months. And months. And no, the outcomes are NOT generally better; the US positive outcomes are the highest in the world according to the Commonwealth Fund, which ranked the US best in ‘right care’ for a condition and for preventative care. That’s why so many people travel to the US for treatment; they don’t go to Canada or Hungary.
# 89 Albert
No they don’t go broke they die, which is worse? I would rather be broke and living than dead with money!
51. Samizdat:
The entire bill violates the 10th Amendment.
55. Cichawoda:
You’re trying to compare apples to oranges here. The government has the authority under the Commerce clause to regulate interstate commerce. The 50 states also already have state level regulation of all the businesses you listed.
But regulation is far different from actually operating a medical health insurance system. So your post was both nonsensical and demonstrated your Constitutional ignorance.
I wouldn’t support Obamacare if it were proposed by the GOP either.
Who would have ever predicted Big Pharma, and the anti-capitalist Dems to partner up on health care?
Expect wall to wall ads come September, cleverly crafted by Axelrods former firm, and paid for, you guessed it, by Big Pharma.
91
I don’t know about Stalinist, but the Left in most of those countries operates very much in the mode of Gramsci’s Marxist revisionism.
Nice try attempting to put up already discredited versions of Marxism as the only ones on offer. We all know that Marxism, much like any plague, has the capacity to mutate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Marxism
73. Cichawoda:
LOL! YES Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid ARE unconstitutional and the SCOTUS during FDR’s reign did in fact find Social Security, and much of the New Deal, unconstitutional but FDR threatened to pack the SC with his cronies so the SC reversed itself. I’d love to stop being FORCED to participate in SS and Medicare and take care of myself. And my state, AR, has a budget surplus unlike your state of CA that is bleeding businesses and productive citizens because of its experiments with extreme Liberal governance. You can keep it.
Yes sending your tax dollars to Washington is a waist(sic) of time.
And finally, Jefferson explained the ‘General Welfare’ statement of the Constitution on numerous occasions and said on one of those “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.” – Thomas Jefferson, 1798
For more quotes on this misappropriated Constitutional language see http://www.darkcanyon.net/How%20General%20The%20General%20Welfare%20Clause.htm
I have maintained for a long time that Obama is basically lazy and that he avoids the hard work of the Office by reveling in the public adulation of the Presidency, that is the speeches, the pressers, the interviews, etc. He delegates the drafting and construction of the various bills to Pelosi and Ried which means that all of the lobbyists who weren’t to have a say in his administration, draft the bills to suit their clients. I note that none of his fans who characterize one of the pending bills as “reform” address the issue that these bills were written by lobbyists and are designed and intended to reward constituencies and not to cure the healthcare issues. However the bills originated, Obama has no apparent ability to forge a consensus even within his own party and continually scolds and insults those who disagree with him. He sets up strawmen and attacks them thinking that the public will buy into the demonization of his opponents. He refuses to take any responsibility for his errors, blaming everything on the prior administration which in retrospect, got a whole lot right. He is absolutely silent on the “necessary” war in Afghanistan as that situation deteriorates. His Middle Eastern policy (if you can call it a policy) is crumbling and instead of addressing it head on, he hides his head in the sand. He attacks the Republicans as impedimentary when the Democrats control the entire government. He simply cannot accept that the millions of Americans who refuse to buy his Brooklyn Bridge are citizens who are entitled to their opinions and who are sincere. He enlists his union thugs to disrupt legitimate protest. But when it comes down to the hard tasks of formulating policy, of putting together teams to get it done right, of building support for policies that have a chance to get through Congress, he is an abject failure. There is nobody minding the store. The Presidency to this man is flying around in expensive airplanes, living a lavish lifestyle fitting of a national ruler, pontificating on all of us inferiors, and allowing both domestic and foreign policy to descend into chaos. The man is inexperienced, lacks executive maturity and is too lazy to get up to speed. It is a sorry sight indeed.
62. Albert:
Albert – there’s the troubling, for Leftists, thing called the Constitution standing in your way. You see, the federal government does NOT have the authority to establish what you advocate. There’s no way around it.
Haha, what? (#92)
Is that a joke?
What POTUS and his crew failed to realize is that the public actually listens to what he and they say. When seniors heard they are going to have to make sacrifices they clearly understood what was meant. When people heard that this is a shared national effort, it didn’t take an MBA from Harvord to know that meant sacrifice. Americans are not all empty bubble-heads waiting for the elected and msm to fill their heads with info. We listen, digest, share among ourselves and come to our own conclusions. We may be registered with a particular party but we do not consider ourselves loyal to any. Mostly, we are middle of the road, law-abiding, commonsense folks who absolutely hate being lied to and THAT is what the Democrats have been doing with a lot of these bills. We folks get it! It’s about the money honey and we’re becoming selective shoppers. Don’t cover it, hide it’s flaws and then expect us to buy it. We know HMO language when we read it and the House version of Obamacare was a HMO dream policy. Obama and the Dems and Repubs have collected billions from HMOS who watched jobs disappear overseas. Now, the HMOs are trying to reap the harvest of seeds sewn. What better way than writing the policy and then making everyone join. The folks saw that, it’s just all those big thinkers who have either ignored it or wouldn’t recognize an HMO plot when it hits them in the face. Oh, btw, there’s a reason the HMOs and SEIU are partners in Obamacare. This whole thing is a great big DUH! to us regular folks. All you intelligencia are either nuts or just wasting oxygen. We get it and………we vote.
Cichawoda: You were the one who insisted that a ‘good argument’ is based on ‘mutual respect’, facts and ‘civility’, yet you’ve moved rapidly into taunts and name-calling of others in this thread. Why?
As for evidence of communist or socialist governmental mode – and that is not identical with the ideology or theory of Marxism-Leninism (please differentiate between a structure and a theory-of-structure) – Canada most definitely has a socialist health care system. So does the UK. But Canada is moving, behind the scenes into allowing private care, and already, many doctors now charge for their services!
As for Obama and his socialism, I consider it obvious, in his support for a central, statist control of health care.I’m sure you’ve read the bill -and you’ll see how it moves people out of having even the option of private care..into the public mode.
I don’t, however, consider that Obama is himself, an idealogue. He is, in my view, a pathological narcissist; his focus is on himself and his ability to control people. He controls by misinformation, emotional manipulation..and, if you dissent from him, accusations of bias.
The real idealogues are what I term the BackRoom Gang, consisting of hard left people like Soros, Pelosi, Reid..and the many others who have been brought into the fold, who are far left and even outspoken communist idealogues. They are settig up the typical socialist structure, which is two-class.An elite ruling over the mass. No free middle class.
They use Obama as the Salesman; Obama is a shallow and ill-read and historically ignorant person; his ‘gift’ is to charm and wheel and deal. That’s all.
And as others have pointed out, this socialist statist agenda is unconstitutional.
Albert, Cichawoda, and other Lefties – even if the health care “reform” bills in Congress had the full support of all 100 senators and all 435 Representatives it would STILL be unconstitutional and I would STILL oppose it. The Congress can’t do whatever it likes simply because what it likes has majority support. If we can’t abide by the Constitution then we need to amend it or just throw it out.
Christine:rock on !! Glad to have you here in the States!! Chichawoda: I take it you are the latest troll to enter the fray. You seem fresh and ready to argue for the fearful,I mean fearless leader. I guess soros could see he wasnt getting his money’s worth from jharp, vivo and company anymore. . .I will watch to see if you have any original ideas not taken from the daily demo talking points. I have 10 friends that emigrated here from Canada. ALL of them say the health care system up there sucks.
100. Eric:
“your state of CA that is bleeding businesses and productive citizens because of its experiments with extreme Liberal governance.”
#1 AR is a beggar state – it takes in more Federal money than it delivers to the treasury in Federal taxes.
#2 Go into any highschool classroom and ask the 10 people with the highest grades and SAT scores if they would rather stay in AK or move to CA. I bet you at least 7 out of 10 would choose CA.
#3 I lived in Littlerock for a year – you know what they say – “thank God for Mississippi.”
Well ETA, just chop up your health card, and lobby hard for US style health care in the Canada. You’ll, I expect , have as much success as we have selling US cars. Whatever the Danes have, happiness, excellent health cate, will be a whole lot easier to export than either US health care or cars because they’ve got it right. There are some essential services that the market place does not distribute fairly, and health care is one of them. Everyone I’ve met respects Danes and their society, and can fully appreciate why they are ‘happy’. Canada ranks pretty highly as well. We must draw from different samples of Canadians ranking health care here and there. The ones I know suggest that trying to change their system is just not going to happen, given the experiences they read about here. Oh..my cousin, who lives in Canada gets an eye exam, free every year paid for by OHIP (their Ontario Health Plan).
106. ETAB:
“taunts and name-calling of others in this thread. Why?” — Hu?
“evidence of communist or socialist governmental mode” — it seems like you’re making this up. Is that like he is not gay but he walks like one?
So are you also against statist interference by government on behalf of corporations and financial institutions? — it has been going on since the foundation of this country.
107. Eric:
“If we can’t abide by the Constitution then we need to amend it or just throw it out.” — you mean like when we went to war with Iraq and passed the Patriot Act?
SteveG:
Yes, we will be inundated with propaganda trying to convince the population that government run health care will be the panacea we need and it won’t cost us a thing! However, the pharma companies and the lobbyists won’t be paying for those ads. It has already been stated that the advertising firm hired by this administration is being paid with taxpayer money. You can be sure that the money contributed by pharma, unions, et al will be going straight into the campaign coffers.
chichawoda:
While you call for civilized debate, you immediately attack your fellow countrymate with personal and ungrounded attacks. Doing so only weakens your argument. I have always been taught that once your opponent goes to the personal attack, you have won the debate as they have run out of ideas and have resorted to grade school techniques. It is possible to disagree without behaving like a child. Personally, once the poster moves to the scorched earth policy, I stop paying attention as they have shown they are not knowledgable enough to simply continue the discussion
“#2 Go into any highschool classroom and ask the 10 people with the highest grades and SAT scores if they would rather stay in AK or move to CA. I bet you at least 7 out of 10 would choose CA.”
The odds are that eight out of ten would pick the less ideal Arkansas over California—if they clearly understood the economics underpinning their decision! California is admittedly a beautiful place to live, but it’s also royally screwed. These problems will not disappear in the near future. In most cases, one is probably well advised to avoid living there for the next five to ten years.
…oh yes, further on going abroad for health care ETA…I never meant to suggest that a Canadian can just go anywhere they want for health care. Arrangements can be made to go abroad to the medically, and economically best location, if there is medical consensus that they cannot receive the appropriate care in Canada. I don’t care where you live, that is a fair paraphrase of the Health Act in Canada. II know of nothing similar in US insurance plans.
# 73 Cichawoda:
I missed your answer to ETAB.
You surely are of the Obama school of Constitutional interpretation–which is, simply put, piss on the Constitution. Undermine it every way you can. It was thought up by dead, privileged white males. No wise Latinas or Cichawodas there to safeguard the rights of all folks.
I ain’t of that school. I lost too much of my life to political, self-serving opportunists, benevolent idiots and fear-stricken cowards to buy Obama’s sham.
To me “promoting the general Welfare” doesn’t mean forcing people to adopt Government’s version of “Welfare,” except under extreme circumstances like war or catastrophe. I happen to be well schooled in Constitutional matters. To those dead white males, “promoting” general welfare meant protecting people’s rights and freedom from an encroaching government, limiting government, not ramming its version of welfare down the citizens’ throats. The debates surrounding the Constitution in Philly were all about that, essentially. Those awful, lecherous, privileged and slave-owning white males –the most brilliant people, collectively, that ever walked this earth–tried to prevent what is happening today. That is, that a Cichawoda in power knows what’s best for me and my family and tries to make me conform. Anybody with a brain that has read the transcripts of the Philly Convention and the Federalist/Anti-Federalist papers knows that the absolute, high stakes were liberty and justice, not a new form of subjection/tyranny of those bien-pensants who think themselves above the peasantry and know what’s best for them.
Heck no.
109. Anonymous:
Irrelevant to my post and response to Chicawoda.
@96
umm… if you are refused treatment by the insurance company, you’ll likely suffer more, and more likely die than will any Canadian with the same malady, and going bankrupt means you can no longer continue treatment which means you are not cured, and maybe dead
39. Bilgeman:
“As a sidebar, I’ve noticed that the alleged number of people “without health insurance/without access to health insurance”
(the lines are blurred, intentionally, no doubt), has been steadily creeping upward and now stands at a reported 47 million people.”
Steadily creeping upward? Now what in the world could be responsible for that? I’m just as stumped as stumped can be.
That’s pretty stumped. Actually that’s completely stumped, at least as far as being stumped is concerned. I’ll have to thin on that for a. . . . wait! . . . . Could it be that . . . . yes! Yes! Of course! Whew! No longer stumped at all here. Completely unstumped. Clear as crustal on the reason behind the burgeoning number of uninsured people in America. That was close. Sure glad I thought about it for . . . a second.
Obama is over. Soundly so, over, kaput, konec, finito, adios – and this is a great thing, and it is also great that his nosedive took just a few months to reach the point of no return.
As of today, the Health care reform is somewhere in the rear mirror, the dems disperately wishing that everything is forgotten.
Yet the Obama pile up relentlessly grows – the Lockerbie scandal of which he had prior knowledge (if not initiating it), then the absurdity of pressing Israel in a corner, then the major idiocy of harassing the CIA is, then the just recent MAJOR BLUNDER of dumping all Eastern European countries in the Russians’ fold, then… then…
It’s really strange, Obama acts as if following the advice of someone who has designed a precise plan for ruining his career.
I don’t know what reverend Wright (God damn’ America!) had in mind when he evoked the chickens coming home to roost, but apparently the man was anticipating some Obama’s nightmares.
Love it – and we’re only 7 months in this presidency – hah!
111. Cichawoda:
What part of the Constitution did the bipartisan (257-171) Patriot Act violate?
Unlike health care the nations defense is an actual enumerated power and duty of the federal government.
RE 56. ~Paules:
From The Desk Of Misanthropicus, Important Hollywood Agent:
~Paules: You piece is kind of ok, but I can’t sell it. Bill Maher won’t do it. Neither Jon Stewart. Jeanine Garoffalo – fogetaboutit. Margret Cho, same.
I like your style, can’t you come with something hot about W or Sarah Palin, or some right-wing nuts? That sells, man, look Matt Damon just got… you know what I mean.
108. Rick:
“Christine:rock on !!” — she just addmited to being a commie leach (apparatchik) back in her home country and left because she or her family were opposed to Democratic change — and you high five that?
“I have 10 friends that emigrated here from Canada.”
In 2005, the majority (85%) of Canadians were very or somewhat satisfied with the health care services they received in 2005.
more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/canada.asp
Are you sure you even have 10 friends?
Health Care Expenditures (percent of GDP) (1)
United States 13.4%
Canada 10.0
Finland 9.1
Sweden 8.6
Germany 8.4
Netherlands 8.4
Norway 7.6
Japan 6.8
United Kingdom 6.6
Denmark 6.5
Percent of people who believe their health care system needs fundamental change:
United States 60%
Sweden 58
United Kingdom 52
Japan 47
Netherlands 46
France 42
Canada 38
33. Samizdat:
“. . . but BC, Vivo, . . . and , … don’t care about facts.”
Nobody could handle my factual questions on this thread. So you go and ramble as an exercise in semantics because that’s all you can do. It’s good that I can speed-read and scan and go to better things.
Albert @110: Sorry, your cousin is misleading you. In Ontario, OHIP covers an eye exam every two years. (Up until 5 years ago it was one a year.)
And FYI, there is now pressure being brought to bear on the government to cover up to three rounds of invitro fertilization treatments at $10,000 per round. Rationing care for all to cover a luxury for a small subset.
Why is it that, in my experience, those who get all apoplectic about their devotion to the American Constitution think that Bush’s and Cheney’s clear violations of that Constitution (the CIA seems to think so, as well as most Americans, Cheney’s cheerleader rude daughter notwithstanding) were okay, were justifiable? I know this is a similar point to yours, Cichawoda, but the point cannot be emphasized enough
108. Rick:
“I have 10 friends that emigrated here from Canada. ALL of them say the health care system up there sucks.”
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/letters/story/1005151.html
You gotta assume that people know things. Don’t go barreling through life like you’re at some town hall meeting – spewing a bunch of emotional angst disguised as an informed opinion.
albert – anecdotal reports aren’t evidence. That includes your ‘everyone I’ve met’ and your cousin reports.
In Canada, under OHIP, once a year eye exams are only paid if you are uner 20 or over 65. Other than that, it’s every two years. And it’s not ‘free’. Ever heard of taxes? And it is untrue that Canadian Health Care will pay for a service elsewhere- and that includes if it is unavailable in Canada. It is an extremely and I mean extremely rare situation when that happens – and the operation has to be deemed vital. a hospital operation where the equipment broke down.
Canada is moving more and more to private medical care, and, of course, also uses insurance for various treatments.
It is also illogical to claim that ‘the Danes have happiness’. I would hope that you realize that happiness is a subjective state and not a purchasable commodity and most certainly, cannot be defined as a universal characteristic of any nation.
I also don’t understand, albert, how refusal of treatment by an insurance company is any different to refusal of treatment within a public health care system. The result is the same: refusal of treatment.
Cichawoda – are you unaware of the taunts and name-calling you’ve been using against, eg, Cristina? What about telling me that I’m ‘either ignorant or lying’? So much for you vaunted declaration of ‘mutual respect’.
You don’t seem to understand the difference between federal laws that pertain to and regulate, eg, the value of money and operation of financial institutions..in all the US States. Or federal laws that regulate various agricultural production,highways, housing etc…AND..inserting a federal structure, a new federal structure, that RUNS and not merely regulates health care provisons in all the states.
The difference is between a regulation (a set of common rules) and an operating infrastructure that RUNS a system. It is unconstitutional for the federal govt to ADD a new govering infrastructure to its already enumerated list..that is in the Constitution.
Cristina -thanks for your excellent comments. And for your remarks on the writing of the Constitution. I’m reading David McCullough’s ‘John Adams’ for the third time. An impressive era.
And see also, Karl Popper’s ‘The Open Society and Its Enemies’. Obama and the Democrats are most certainly enemies of an open, free society.
108. Rick:
“Christine:rock on !!” — she just addmited to being a commie leach (apparatchik) back in her home country and left because she or her family were opposed to Democratic change — and you high five that?
“I have 10 friends that emigrated here from Canada.”
In 2005, the majority (85%) of Canadians were very or somewhat satisfied with the health care services they received in 2005.
more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/canada.asp
Are you sure you even have 10 friends?
Health Care Expenditures (percent of GDP) (1)
United States 13.4%
Canada 10.0
Finland 9.1
Sweden 8.6
Germany 8.4
Netherlands 8.4
Norway 7.6
Japan 6.8
United Kingdom 6.6
Denmark 6.5
Percent of people who believe their health care system needs fundamental change:
United States 60%
Sweden 58
United Kingdom 52
Japan 47
Netherlands 46
France 42
Canada 38
What the REPUBLICANS are missing about Obamacare . . . and every other kind of care.
cherck out the video:
“Texas Republican Pete Olson’s Health Care Propaganda Fail” at the wonderful
http://crooksandliars.com/
Conservatives’ lack of grasp is head and shoulders above their passion.
Call Obama “President wee wee”. Can any of you historians out there tell me if any President has ever used baby talk in a public speech before? Is Obama the very first?
The reason Obama is failing as President is because he’s not up to the job. He is not smart or experienced or even hard working. He’s not learning how to be President, however slowly, he’s going through the motions now just like when he voted present as a Senator.
America now has the weakest President in my lifetime and our enemies are starting to figure that out. No good will come of this for President wee wee or for America.
@93
I agree the article you refer to is an interesting one, but the Texas Law Review figures regarding medically related bankruptcies in Canada seems a bit dodgey. SatsCan figures suggest that Canadian bankruptcies that involve medical cost considerations were less than 1%. Perhaps the disagreement of numbers revolves around what is defined as ‘medically related’
87. Kim J: The way I see it, this administration forgot that the vast majority of Americans can read.
I can’t blame them, considering a majority of voters elected Obama.
102. Disturber: I have maintained for a long time that Obama is basically lazy and that he avoids the hard work of the Office by reveling in the public adulation of the Presidency.
Agree 100%. Which leaves the question, is Obama’s laziness actually better for us? I’d hate it if he rolled up his sleeves and put some effort into his anti-Americanism.
Percent of people who believe their health care system needs fundamental change:
United States 60%
That is a meaningless statistic. I as a Conservative believe we need some reform. I just disagree completely with the Democrat’s version of it.
125. Albert:
Yawn, as I asked Chic…, what part of the Constitution was violated? Specifics please. Whereas I can explicitly tell you that Obamacare and any version of it is in fact unconstitutional you cannot do the same regarding your claims vis a` vis Bush and Cheney. You simply cannot.
128: Chica
Health Care Expenditures (percent of GDP) (1)
United States 13.4%
Again, another meaningless statistic. Americans demand and receive high cost diagnostics not available in other countries due to limited supplies and rationing. It is statistically provable that Americans for example have more MRI machines per capita and use them! This costs money. We also have provable higher rates of cancer survival from our better access to high technology.
Other countries are also not burdened with an overly litigious culture which, drives up the per capita expenditure on health care costs.
Not even a “nice try” for you.
105. tightloops: What POTUS and his crew failed to realize is that the public actually listens to what he and they say.
Can’t blame POTUS and crew for getting that wrong. After all, he got elected despite everything he said.
I imagine the disillusionment the “moderates” and not-so-left liberals are experiencing over Obama is mutual. He’s probably wondering why they’ve changed.
115. Cristina:
Trust an ex apparatchik to misinterpret what I wrote. I don’t disagree that a strict interpretation of the constitution could deem many of the government programs, treates and actions unconstitutional. But for me, if “promote the general Welfare… to ourselves and our Posterity…” in the preamble is not a prime motivator for our laws – I’d rather seced and start over.
Maybe we need another ammendment – or do you disagree with thous too?
The basic problem is the 2 party system. Both parties are in the pockets of large corporations. Don’t believe me? Back in the Eastern block it was easy to tell which officials where corrupt and in deep with the people in control. All you had to do is follow the money. The disparity between them and the average guy was your indication of how powerful they were. It works the same here. You want to know who the apparatchiks are = follow the money.
133. Cichawoda:
I suppose you completely ignored my previous response to your comment regarding the “promote the general welfare…” part of the preamble.
“Commentators virtually agree on the answer Madison proposed and defended in Federalist 41, namely, that the general welfare clause is neither a statement of ends nor a substantive grant of power. It is a mere “synonym” for the enumeration of particular powers, which are limited and wholly define its content.”
If you and your ilk don’t like the Constitution the Founders in their wisdom put in place a process to change it. Get busy.
# 101 Eric:
Spot on! Social Security and the rest of governmental programs are unconstitutional.
My folks back home, in Romania, used to the idea of Government “taking care” of them, when I explained Social Security, said: “Wow! How wonderful!” I tried to explain that I would have liked to do what I think is best for me with those moneys withheld from every paycheck. It didn’t register. The concept of liberty, free enterprise and self-reliance do not exist in the average population’s minds.
The sad irony is that one of my folks used his cluncker of a car, after his regular job, as a cabbie, which was, supposedly, illegal. Nobody was allowed to have two jobs. He was an enterprising sort of guy who went around the system to make more money in a city where public transportation was broken. He’d pull up in front of the North Railway Station, where people were waiting in huge lines for a bus or a trolley to show up, and he was sure to find many customers. Night after night. I had no idea at that time; it was verboten to speak about it–for “status” and respectability reasons, not for legal ones. The commies tolerated and underwrote and profitted from black market economies to insure their own survival. It’s a known fact that commie countries would not have lasted as long as they did without a large part of the population participating in the underground economy, which was a free-market, unregulated economy.
But hey, I have no quarrel with my crypto-capitalist uncle who’s now made his nest for life in the underground economy and still thinks Government should rule everything–maybe so that people like him could get around it? He was a master of getting around. Like Marx and Engels said, class consciousness always lags behind reality.
#118 Now and Then:
“Steadily creeping upward? Now what in the world could be responsible for that? I’m just as stumped as stumped can be.
That’s pretty stumped. Actually that’s completely stumped, at least as far as being stumped is concerned. I’ll have to thin on that for a. . . . wait! . . . . Could it be that . . . . yes! Yes! Of course! Whew! No longer stumped at all here. Completely unstumped. Clear as crustal on the reason behind the burgeoning number of uninsured people in America. That was close. Sure glad I thought about it for . . . a second.”
Good for you, let’s see if I can take you further into the Gordian Knot…
I wonder how many of what are called “Americans” are not Americans at all, but are illegal aliens who happen to live here.
Are their numbers being included in this tally?
That would strip ,what?, 20 million from that number at one blow.
And for extra un-self-stumpifying credit, I’d like you think about the success story that about 202 million Americans actually HAVE health insurance.
Now, if the numbers were reversed, and only 47 million had it, I might grant some reason for the unseemly haste with which this has been attempted to be shoved through.
Of course, the real reason for this haste is that union bosses know good and well that this party is over in 2010.
That’s why Obama and the O-bots have been going at the Treasury like a bunch of teens raiding their parents’ liquor cabinet.
So from the Unions’ POV, it’s best to “stock up” on new and unnecessary bureaucrat jobs, (which yield new and very necessary union dues and PAC contributions, as well as the other lesser-known forms of “skim” that that crowd grows fat from), before the adults return and stop this nonsense in it’s tracks.
By that point, the new Deparment of Health Care will be well and firmly established,(see how fast Homeland Security has grown), and we’ll never, ever get rid of the thing.
“Nothing on this planet is more permanent than a government buraucracy.”
-from The Sayings of Chairman Bilgeman, 1st Edition
On the General Welfare, Madison and Jefferson
“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.” – James Madison, Letter to Edmund Pendleton, January 21, 1792 _Madison_ 1865, I, page 546
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence (OBAMACARE – mine), the money of their constitutents.” – James Madison, 1794
“With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” – James Madison, Letter to James Robertson, April 20, 1831 _Madison_ 1865, IV, pages 171-172
“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.” – Thomas Jefferson
arhoolety, Obama is NOT lazy. He is in it for the moolah…….personal enrichment is the goal. He is now, as he likes to remind us, a man of wealth albeit small compared to his ultimate goals. Amazing! In the span of less than half a decade he has gone from being a less than 30 grand a year community organizer to a multi-milionaire. Once POTUS, he didn’t bend that deep for the Saudi King for nothing!!!!! He’s following the lead of Bill Clinton and G.W Bush. He and many of his Chicago “boys” are reminiscent of The Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver who ultimately matured into the garden variety capitalistic pig. They are selling out all Americans for the big bucks from the HMOs, unions, pharmas, banks and other special interests like hedge funder Soros. Good grief, you folks have to be very young, most of you have no clue about American politics. It just that this President has hit the ground running hard and in six months has literally lined the pockets of big corporations with trillions of taxpayer dollars. Not one of you libs or cons is calling for an audit demanding an accounting for money spent. You’re all debating ideology while the rich get richer, your pockets get picked and you’re taxed even more via inflation. I can’t wait till you all grow up!
131
I won’t vouch for the Texas Law Review, but the fact that it was cited by Himmelstein, who favors the Canadian system, would possibly suggest that the methodology used to derive those numbers was actually favorable to low-balling the number of bankruptcies caused by medical costs in Canada. If there was a credible report showing 1% of bankruptcies caused by medical costs, Himmelstein would have cited it.
137
But for me, if “promote the general Welfare… to ourselves and our Posterity…” in the preamble is not a prime motivator for our laws – I’d rather seced and start over.
Please, for the love of God, secede. I won’t stop you. Then you can screw up your own country instead of screwing up the one I live in.
# 122 anonymous:
“… she just addmited to being a commie leach (apparatchik) back in her home country and left because she or her family were opposed to Democratic change — and you high five that?”
# 137 Cichawoda:
“Trust an ex apparatchik to misinterpret what I wrote…”
Are you guys part of an e-mail group of thought/reading-handicapped, low-IQ list?
Just asking.
Best laugh I had in years.
@122
Thanks Anonymous. I’ve been looking all over for that rejoinder to that notoriously suspect letter, a rejoinder that provides a fair summary of the truth about the Canadian system, a system they like, and are the least likely of any industrialized country to want to change.
Cichawoda made a typical liberal claim: “Capitalism works great for making widgets – when it comes to anything that involves moral issues it is by definition a failure.”
This view is based on ignorance – after all, “capitalism” means freedom to choose. There is no morality without the freedom to choose.
As for the medical care, I’ve written a short list of ideas that could have cut medical costs, and all liberals I know were solidly against them. You can read it here:
http://hyphenatedamericans.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-slash-medical-costs-in-6-easy.html
How many are truly uninsured?
Let’s put some real numbers on the table. From the US Census Bureau: “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the US: 2007″
http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdf
Figure 1: Average household income: $50,000
Figure 6: Uninsured US residents: 45.7 million (15.3% of the population)
Table 6: household income of the 45.7 million uninsured:
$75,000: 9.1 million
“Not a citizen”: 9.7 million
Unfortunately, the Census Bureau does not distinguish legal vs. illegal non-citizens.
An estimate by the non-partisan National Institute for Healthcare Management puts the number of illegals included here at 5.6 million (http://www.nihcm.org/pdf/NIHCM-Uninsured-Final.pdf )
This same NIHM also estimates that of the uninsured, 12 million are eligible for existing programs (e.g. Medicare/Medicaid/SCHIP) but simply haven’t enrolled.
Subtracting the estimated illegal aliens plus those who already qualify for programs, the number of uninsured drops to 28 million. Eliminating those making over $75,000 (who in theory could pay for insurance) would drop the number further, to 19 million. I won’t bother subtracting the 8.5 million making between $50-75,000, who may or may not live in high cost-of-living states like CA or NY, where obtaining health insurance could still be difficult, despite earning an above-average income.
19 million is less than half the original number of uninsured. And though these people do need help, one can’t help but wonder if that justifies spending $1-2 trillion over the next 10 years (which would be roughly $52,000 – $104,000 per “truly” uninsured person).
Table 6 should read:
Less than $25,000: 13.5 million
$25,000 to $49,999: 14.5 million
$50,000 to $74,999: 8.5 million
More than $75,000: 9.1 million
Even if Obeyme doesn’t win this, we will still be in for the fight of our lives. We have another 40 months of trying to fend off crap and trade and probably much more of his fascist agenda.
We still have the Fed Reserve, the Patriot Act and possible forced labor in his civilian military.
I have never seen people so angry, but I have also never seen people so scared.
I am personally getting ready to learn how to be a survivalist and stocking up on a years worth of food.
God Help Us
105. tightloops: What POTUS and his crew failed to realize is that the public actually listens to what he and they say.
Can’t blame POTUS and crew for getting that wrong. After all, he got elected despite everything he said.
I imagine the disillusionment the “moderates” and not-so-left liberals are experiencing over Obama is mutual. He’s probably wondering why they’ve changed.
Can the government do a better job than the private sector in providing health insurance?
As of now, U.S. government programs (Medicare/Medicaid/SCHIP/VA) already account for over 45% of health care expenditures, directly covering 28% of the population (83 million).
Is the government any more efficient that private insurers? Medicare’s administrative costs per person are actually higher than private insurance. (As a percentage they may seem lower, but that’s because Medicare recipients spend more than non-Medicare enrollees: http://www.heritage.org/research/healthcare/wm2505.cfm )
Government programs exert price controls, regulating their prices by law. This gives the sense of keeping costs lower, by underpaying providers. Medicare, for example, pays doctors 20-30% less than private insurers. But the flip side to this is less access to care. As providers are paid less, fewer wish to see these patients. A 2008 report by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent federal panel that advises Congress on Medicare, said that 29% of the Medicare beneficiaries it surveyed who were looking for a primary care doctor had a problem finding one to treat them. A 2008 survey by the Texas Medical Association found that 42% of the state’s doctors (including 62% of primary care docs) would not take new Medicare patients.
Would changing the current system help us be more efficient, and “bend the curve” on costs? The Congressional Budget Office already came out to say the current proposals will NOT cut costs, and may actually increase them.
If socialized medicine is so efficient, explain to me this quote (from http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care ):
“From 2000 to 2005, per capita health-care spending in Canada grew by 33 percent, in France by 37 percent, in the U.K. by 47 percent—all comparable to the 40 percent growth experienced by the U.S. in that period.” As the author noted, “Cost control by way of bureaucratic price controls has its limits.”
Eric:
““I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence (OBAMACARE – mine), the money of their constitutents.” – James Madison, 1794″
As we say among us, former or present commie leeches and ex-apparat-chicks, in true internationalist spirit, “Chapeau, mon ami!” I don’t know how that traslates into swahili or Russian or wise-Latina-from-Brooklyn speak.
I’d like to believe de Tocqueville would say to you “Rock on!” for he much loved American ingenuity.
Madison et comp. understood the insidious but malevolent power of those who rule out of pretended benevolence toward the have-nots while they only seek their own power.
All of the current proposals will fail.
Why? They are designed to shift healthcare costs from the private to the public sector. They address WHO pays, not WHY we pay so much (or how to make it cheaper). Instead of fixing the flaw in the American system, they prolong it with government financing.
Why do we pay so much? Our pay-per-service system promotes providing more (not necessarily better) services. It foments creating new treatments/drugs that are more costly but only marginally better than previous ones. Add to this the high rate of litigation, and you’ll see why physicians/hospitals are more than eager to provide more, if not better care.
Why is there no check to the growth in medicine supply? Because for the most part, those receiving it don’t mind. There is a disconnect between who receives treatment, and who actually pays for it. Imagine if your car insurance were like your health insurance (i.e. paid everything related to our car, including gas/oil/routine services). Would you care what the price of gas was if it was “already paid for”? Would you bother finding the cheapest place in town for an oil change? As for tires, you’d look for the best (most expensive) ones your insurance would pay!
An increasing supply of services/treatments (for financial or legal reasons) coupled with a public unhindered by cost concerns (and every reason to believe more is better) makes for no incentive to save, and every incentive to spend.
Add to this a real rise in healthcare expenses, due to the fact that we are on average older and fatter (and more prone to diabetes, heart disease, etc.), and you have a recipe for skyrocketing medical bills.
The answer is not pouring more tax dollars into the bottomless pit.
To drive costs down, consumers must become cost conscious, which will only happen when they’re responsible for the day-to-day costs of healthcare. But they’ll have few choices if the healthcare industry doesn’t first become more competitive/transparent I’m not sure how we’ll get there, but here’s some suggestions:
1) Establish cost/coverage transparency in the healthcare industry.
2) Insurance companies compete across state lines and become non-profit (less impetus to trick/cheat the public to pad the bottom line).
Then:
1) Establish all insurance as low-premium/high deductible. You’d save on premiums (and still be covered in case a major illness strikes), but routine medical expenses would be paid out of pocket (meaning you’d be more cost-conscious, and providers more competitive). The government could provide incentives for consumers to create Health Savings Accounts to fund their out-of-pocket expenses.
2) Compulsory insurance for all US residents (no more 25 year olds believing they’re invincible, only to find out in an accident that they’re not).
Finally: Tort reform. This is key to reduce the costs of defensive medicine.
The underclass would likely still require some form of assistance from the government. But perhaps instead of the current system, the government could provide catastrophic coverage only. For day-to-day costs, government could provide vouchers to fund the underclass’ HSA’s? Government is also needed to regulate healthcare standards, as well as shady insurance practices, like policy rescinding. Personally I’d also raise sin taxes, and add a snack tax. Those who engage in self-destructive behavior (e.g. smoking, overeating junk food) disproportionately use the healthcare system, often at government expense. Consider this a way to get them to chip in a little extra into the communal pot.
It still wouldn’t be cheap. But then again, you can’t get world-class healthcare on a dime. And though expensive, I’m sure it would still be cheaper and more effective than what’s being proposed right now…
So, 140 Bilgeman, Do you also address fenceposts? If so, do you have more success with fenceposts than you have apparently achieved with the particularly inert stump with which you’ve been conversing?
# 137 Cichawoda:
“115. Cristina: Trust an ex apparatchik to misinterpret what I wrote. I don’t disagree that a strict interpretation of the constitution could deem many of the government programs, treates and actions unconstitutional. But for me, if “promote the general Welfare… to ourselves and our Posterity…” in the preamble is not a prime motivator for our laws – I’d rather seced and start over. Maybe we need another ammendment – or do you disagree with thous too?”
My beloved cat instantly agreed with you once she read “treats” in your message instead of “treaties.” She knows the “treats” I give her are extras, the little benefits earned in exchange for a secure life and some philosophical and linguistic advice.
She’d like more treats, like any human being, for less work. Like you, she thinks I’m a crancky, demanding ex-appart-chick who makes her, the victim-cat, work extra-hours googling and interpreting strange words and worlds on the ‘net while she’d rather sleep ’til the moon is bright and she can chase spiders in corners.
No kidding, she gets depressed after a session of Gramsci, Foucault and Agamben on the ‘net who all deny that she knows and feels what she does. She’s got “false consciousness.” So she won’t purr, which is a violation of our work contract.
So, Cichawoda, my cat would like to start a union of oppressed, stretched-thin intellectual workers with you. What say you?
Miaow!
# 137 Cichawoda:
Oops, my kitty just alerted me to your desire to “seced” from something and your proposition of a new “ammendment” to something. She’s worried that such poverty of spelling may lead to ambiguities and misunderstandings in the search for world peace.
Boy, has she won her treats for the night. They are called “Temptations” and they come in salmon flavor today.
Miaow!
At its core, Obamacare is just a bad bill. Obama tried to learn from Hillary’s debacle in 1993 and gave writing the bill to Congress, which listens only to big contributors. Big industry contributors like Big Pharma and the insurance industry turned turned this bill into an industry gift: millions more policies and pills with little serious cost control and precious little in the way of how to pay for it. The American people know this can’t be made deficit neutral without raising taxes or cutting Medicare. Individual mandate to purchase insurance under threat of IRS penalties? Good luck with that. We can’t get more than 85% of Floridians who drive to purchase auto insurance and all state efforts to mandate health insurance retaining the private insurance market while subsidizing the poor have failed, due to cost overruns: Illinois, Washington, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts twice. There is no pilot project anywhere in the world with success using the proposed model of private insurers with subsidies for the poor. The fundamental problem is that for insurance to work, it must share the risk as broadly as possible and in healthcare, that means a lot of people who think they don’t need or can’t afford insurance and would rather gamble must be in the mix. If you allow for-profit insurance to be sold, those healthy folks who can buy at lower rates (more profit for insurers) get out of the risk pool and if you are attempting to cover everyone, the risk pool gets worse for the uninsured and sick. The cover the uninsured problem works best if all are in the pool together and insurance goes back to its original purpose: spreading the risk at a profit only on a small management fee tacked on. If there are multiple insurers and multiple rules, particularly with profit more important than health, you end up with a mess, with high administrative costs like we have, and profiteers attempting to avoid the sick. The best way to spread the risk and reduce the administrative costs is to have government supervise a single payer plan like improved Medicare for All, but that requires trust in government, which we do not have, with a considerable amount of experience suggesting trust in government is on shaky ground. So we are stuck, even though the current situation is lousy and we are spending more than twice as much per person on healthcare as every other country, with unimpressive results.
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The one thing I have yet to see the proponents even attempt to explain while telling us all how horrible insurance companies are, is why the bill forces everyone to buy an insurance policy from them or be taxed by the IRS. I suppose that private insurance is only horrible if the government doesn’t demand that you have it, right?
So much about voluntary participation in the public option. It’s really IRS enforced participation unless you buy something they swear is awful and terrible. Nice choice.
Regards
#157 ITF:
“So, 140 Bilgeman, Do you also address fenceposts? If so, do you have more success with fenceposts than you have apparently achieved with the particularly inert stump with which you’ve been conversing?”
Can’t say that I have, but the more pleasant aspects of conversing with a fencepost are greatly offset by the funny looks people give me for doing so.
Of course, trying to reason with a moonbat statist in full “Animal Farm”-like eye glaze, should ALSO be grounds for public concern, when you step back and think about it.
The republicrats and demopublicans still talk as if they can tinker with the existing system and still come away with a success.
When will the republicrats wake up and start talking about freedom and not entitlements?
Their “compromise” with demopublicans on this issue will only result in us being shoved off the cliff at a slower rate. Their “alternative reforms” are a death by a thousand papercuts instead of a quick slit to the jugular but the end result is the same.
When will they wake up and grow a pair to fight for freedom and liberty?
#149 & 150 Chileno:
Thanks for doing the legwork on that.
I remember years ago when the Children’s Defense Fund, run by well-known moonbat governmental parasite, Marion Wright Edelman tried pulling a fast on in the gun control debate by claiming that:
“X number of children ages 12-21 die from gun violence…”
Naturally, the MSM happily ladled this “turd in the stew-pot” right on out into the soup-kitchen bowls us bums in the public were supposed to eat from.
And all too many of my fellow unfortunates slurped it right down and clamored for more.
Some got rather miffed when I pointed out that “children” over the age of 18 are more properly known as “adults”.
I’ve never trusted numbers from the Left ever since.
#139 Cristina:
“The commies tolerated and underwrote and profitted from black market economies to insure their own survival.”
And what do you want to wager that some of those Commie officials were silent partners of the cab-drivers?
Would explain why the trains were always “breaking down”, wouldn’t it?
“No kidding, she gets depressed after a session of Gramsci, Foucault and Agamben on the ‘net who all deny that she knows and feels what she does.”
PLEASE don’t bring this up…do you realize how many pets in this country go through life without proper veterinary health care?
@156. Chileno: – All of the current proposals will fail.
Precisely. Any plan that doesn’t seek to bring routine health care costs back into equilibrium with other routine costs of living is doomed to fail.
Chil’, you and I disagree, if memory serves, on root causes here, but your list of recommendations and mine are almost note-for-note. I think that’s interesting. Different causes, similar solutions. If you wade past the Newsweak rant here, I think the rest will sound very familiar.
If I might…
- Add to this a real rise in healthcare expenses, due to the fact that we are on average older and fatter (and more prone to diabetes, heart disease, etc.), …
There’s more to this. Check the changes in guidelines for BMI, hypertension, blood sugar level, cholesterol (!) and ‘depression’ (esp. among adolescents and teens) over the past 15 years. Every single one of these has been tightened and every single one has an array of new drugs recommended for treatment. We even have new designations like “pre-diabetic” (!?) and “preventative” cholesterol regimens (for those who aren’t above the so-called “norms”).
This laundry list of excuses to write prescriptions needs more scrutiny by an outside, objective entity that doesn’t have built-in conflicts of interest like the AMA/Pharmaceutical Industry tag-team. While the average person is living longer, a significant amount of the increased perceived ‘illness’ is really just a change in the AMA’s shifted goalposts, each of which just so happens to result in massive touchdowns in the form of new prescriptions. This means billion$ for the Pharmas and million$ paid to AMA organizations and members to staff drug studies, etc. Follow the money – just like the global warming grant hoax.
- 1) Establish cost/coverage transparency in the healthcare industry.
All the cost transparency in the world isn’t going to matter as long as the consumer’s behavior is driven by the “insurance will cover it” mindset. Only one solution for that. You get to it later.
– 2) Insurance companies compete across state lines and become non-profit (less impetus to trick/cheat the public to pad the bottom line).
While fine in theory, this isn’t really necessary if we move to high-deductible/low-premium plans. Pushing for it will take away from efforts that would be more effective, IMHO.
- 1) Establish all insurance as low-premium/high deductible. You’d save on premiums (and still be covered in case a major illness strikes), but routine medical expenses would be paid out of pocket (meaning you’d be more cost-conscious, and providers more competitive). The government could provide incentives for consumers to create Health Savings Accounts to fund their out-of-pocket expenses.
Yes. Yes, and yes, yes, yes! This means, however, that tax law changes or some other motivator will be required to eliminate our addiction to comprehensive insurance. I believe this can be done in conjunction with decoupling employment from health insurance, which we should be working for as well.
- 2) Compulsory insurance for all US residents (no more 25 year olds believing they’re invincible, only to find out in an accident that they’re not).
Sorry. No. The government has no business dictating to me how to manage my risk. If I experience catastrophic illness or injury, it’s my responsibility to deal with that how I choose. If the feds are going to pass EMTALA-type regulations, well then THEY are the ones who need to figure out how to fund the requirements. Forcing people to purchase a product will only artificially increase the price of that product (as the last 3 years in Taxachusetts have shown).
- Finally: Tort reform. This is key to reduce the costs of defensive medicine.
I go hot and cold on this. In the near term, though, it’s a biggie, and I understand that Texas has embarked on a path that is actually working. Rather than pattern a federal system after a bankrupt one (Medicare) or a broken one (Massachusetts), why not actually work for the patient/consumer/taxpayer for a change and do something patterned after a system that’s working (Texas) that will actually encourage routine health care costs to move back into equilibrium? I guess that’s just too foreign a concept for our alleged “representative”, eh?
” …do something patterned after a system that’s working (Texas) that will actually encourage routine health care costs to move back into equilibrium? I guess that’s just too foreign a concept for our alleged “representative”, eh?”
Doing so would mean you could make some statistical comparisons, the last thing the Fed would want. If you just pull a plan out of the old brown winkie, you can allow a few tens of thousand die before they would have without the plan, save a billion and a half, the proudly announce to the public that you’ve saved a billion. That way no politician ever has to deal with an unfunded mandate in their personal life that might distract them from our good. It’s like the money allocated to the levees in New Orleans, it didn’t much get spent on levees, but it all went for the good of the people.
good points
Regards
goy wrote
The liberals are not interested in reforming healthcare. They are looking to create another entitlement to increase their voting base.
40% of working Americans don’t pay any taxes. Tax increases are always a liberal solution because this 40% is uneffected. But cut taxes? This 40% is also uneffected and can’t directly reap the benefits, so it’s posed as something only for the rich…something they sould be against. It’s more class warfare.
The 46 million uninsured are receiving healthcare for free. Anyone can go to a doctor or hospial and receive treatment, regardless if they can pay or not. Even if paying for illegals isn’t part of the current reform, we’re still going to pay for them. Real reform would make insurance more affordable, but how are you going to convince 46 million people to buy something they don’t need for healthcare? It needs to reach more peope through employer based plans, which means costs must be reduced so small businesses can afford it.
We’ll never be able to get everyone insured, but we should be able to reduce the cost.
167. Jim C: “The 46 million uninsured are receiving healthcare for free. Anyone can go to a doctor or hospial and receive treatment, regardless if they can pay or not.”
You are not correct. Anyone can go to an emergency room, where they can get emergency care. Someone with cancer or any other debilitating chronic health problem without health care will not be able to get any treatment at an emergency room. And they will get billed for it, it’s not free.
Not only this, but if you do somehow get the money to afford a health care plan, the odds are that the insurance company will not accept you as a member because you have a pre-existing chronic illness which will be expensive for them to cover.
So if you’re a young child or an elderly person with a chronic illness and no health coverage, you are basically a dead man walking.
169. Gustav: – …if you do somehow get the money to afford a health care plan, the odds are that the insurance company will not accept you …
It’s fascinating how almost no one is capable of separating the concepts of health care and health care insurance.
Here’s a thought: instead of constantly whining about how unfair insurance companies are, why not just come up with some ideas to bring the routine health care price bubble back down to earth? Encourage people pay for routine health care directly, instead of stupidly paying for it through group insurance?
Do you pay for food, gas, housing, a car, heat, electricity, water or any OTHER routine cost of living using an insurance policy? No? Really? And while they’re all more expensive than we’d like them to be, are the prices for THOSE routine costs of living skyrocketing the way health care is? No? Really? Any idea why? Think about it.
Insurance is the problem. It prevents the consumer from putting downward pressure on prices, the way we do in every other market. Eliminate comprehensive health insurance, and you eliminate the primary mechanism behind skyrocketing costs: the “insurance will cover it” mindset.
Insurance is a tool for mitigating financial risk. There is no “risk” in routine costs of living like routine health care – you KNOW you will incur them at some point. Real risk – like the risk of catastrophic illness or injury – can be dealt with right now with a high-deductible, low-premium (HD/LP) policy.
Pass Texas-style tort reform, get employers OUT of the business of supplying health insurance and limit insurance to HD/LP policies, and you’ll see costs come down as people go back to paying for health care directly, and the prices move back into equilibrium with what the market will bear RATHER THAN how much the insurance monopoly decides to pay. Remember, rising costs only work in their favor: they raise rates to cover them while at the same time their level of cash flow increases. Think that might have something to do with why health care costs are skyrocketing? You betcha.
“So if you’re a young child or an elderly person with a chronic illness and no health coverage, you are basically a dead man walking.”
Obama says those folks will have to make do with only pain killers, so what’s going to be any different other than the goverment taking 60% or so of the money paid in for administering the plan?
171. Anonymous “Obama says those folks will have to make do with only pain killers”
….BUT….with one exception…one special, special, SPECIAL group of people will NEVER face that limitation:
Anyone who has ever served in Congress or other national office will ALWAYS (LIFETIME!!) have their complete range of care options, courtesy of a PRIVATE health insurance plan that is PAID FOR BY OUR TAX DOLLARS.
That’s what the left calls providing universal care. What “universal care” really means is that all of us have no choice but to pay all the expenses for all of them.
171. Anonymous “Obama says those folks will have to make do with only pain killers”
….BUT….with one exception…one special, special, SPECIAL group of people will NEVER face that limitation:
Anyone who has ever served in Congress or other national office will ALWAYS (LIFETIME!!) have their complete range of care options, courtesy of a PRIVATE health insurance plan that is PAID FOR BY OUR TAX DOLLARS.
That’s what the left calls providing universal care. What “universal care” really means is that all of us have no choice but to pay all the expenses for all of them. And we can take pain pills.
#170 goy:
“Do you pay for food, gas, housing, a car, heat, electricity, water or any OTHER routine cost of living using an insurance policy? No?”
Hang on, goy, the guy’s only been in office for 8 months…
“And while they’re all more expensive than we’d like them to be, are the prices for THOSE routine costs of living skyrocketing the way health care is? No? Really? Any idea why? Think about it.”
Uhhhh, because Cap and Trade hasn’t yet kicked in?
“Insurance is the problem. It prevents the consumer from putting downward pressure on prices, the way we do in every other market. Eliminate comprehensive health insurance, and you eliminate the primary mechanism behind skyrocketing costs: the “insurance will cover it” mindset.”
You’re making a lot of sense here. You don’t fill out an insurance claim for an oil change, do you?
Please bear in mind my bit about Civil Servants belonging to unions above.
As long as there’s a permanent class of advocates to increase the size of ANY government program, we are going to be fighting this same battle in many different guises.
Wow, so many opinions & such vitriol. Yet the public read the HR 3200 proposed, & rejected it. The GOP did not organize the protesters. They wish they were THAT effective! The health insurance industry did not organize them. The truth is, average Americans saw promises of revenue neutral & knew it was bunk. Why pay over $25,000 a year per person for the uninsured when it costs less to insure ourselves? The $1.2 or $1.5 trillion work out to far too much for far too few people. And up to 12 million of those are illegal aliens. Are we to pay for them too? Why? When do we stop paying for anyone w/ a hand out who has already flouted our laws?
The current proposals are NOT reform, they are creation of a new system. Reform(s) would fix the problems we have so the best health care delivery system in the world could keep at it!
Independents are driving this issue & if Democrats force this through, independents will respond accordingly, as they did w/ Republicans who forced things through they did not like!
You want “REAL” reform? I mean REAL reform!
Then establish a commission & stock it w/ experts & average people, w/ no party in control of the majority, & let them develop a new concept for health care delivery in America where the free market delivers the product &/or services, as it should. Give them a year to 18 months & allow public review as they go along. THAT would be a bipartisan agreement that actually addresses ALL of the concerns from Both sides of the debate.
Ram it through & the response will be to eliminate those who ignored the people. The people are who is speaking, despite the age old tactic of trying to lay blame on someone rather than deal w/ the facts! By saying the protests are un-American or astro turf, our elected leaders are saying our voices do not count.
And you cannot tell the people to shut up, all you do is reinforce the notions Obama is a socialist. Bush was attacked for his Patriot Act work. Why should Obama get a pass?
@166 goy
Interesting indeed, that we have reached similar conclusions! See? I wasn’t a socialist after all!
As I recall, you placed much of the blame for rising health costs on the insurance companies. To me, they are accomplices to the crime, but not the major players. Like any other business, they’re simply the middlemen who provide what the public wants (after taking their cut…). To me the real problem is a healthcare industry overeager to provide and charge for services (some of questionable benefit), coupled with a cost-blind population all too willing to accept them. You allude to this in part, when you mention how “tighter” guidelines (e.g. “pre-diabetes” and “pre-hypertension”) generate more doctor visits and charges. And given how the healthcare industry spends about $6 billion a year on advertising, promoting certain drugs/treatments, many patients arrive at the office demanding said treatments. Hell, if I’d seen it on the TV and thought I could benefit from it -while passing the bill to someone else- why not??
Insurance company profits have gone up dramatically, but are still marginal compared to the amount of services provided (see http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124947013703607453.html ). Besides, profits wouldn’t go up so quickly if the government allowed greater out-of-state competition among insurance companies.
Here’s a quote from an article I highly recommend you check out (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care ): “For fun, let’s imagine confiscating all the profits of all the famously greedy health-insurance companies. That would pay for four days of health care for all Americans. Let’s add in the profits of the 10 biggest rapacious U.S. drug companies. Another 7 days.”
Here’s another one you’ll like: “For every two doctors in the U.S., there is now one health-insurance employee—more than 470,000 in total. In 2006, it cost almost $500 per person just to administer health insurance. Much of this enormous cost would simply disappear if we paid routine and predictable health-care expenditures the way we pay for everything else—by ourselves.”
We’ll have to disagree on the need for compulsory catastrophic insurance. I do believe people should pay for their mistakes. But unfortunately, there are those unable or unwilling to do so. If a penniless 25 year old (either by fate or by choice) is diagnosed with cancer, or suffers major trauma in an accident -who will pay? It’s true that forcing everyone to get catastrophic insurance could raise prices. But if we had greater out-of-state competition, this shouldn’t be such a big issue. Many states mandate auto insurance, and yet prices have not gone through the roof, in part precisely because there is so much competition.
In any case, we may disagree on some of the details, but both agree the runaway costs of medicine in America will not be solved by the current proposals. Only a radical change in how we address medical expenditures -and who pays for them- can do that.
I do worry that putting routine health expenditures in the hands of the people will mean some will skimp on their care in order to save. They could eventually end up in the ER anyway, when their conditions became “catastrophic.” Still, at least this way most everyone would be responsible for the decisions they made, not some insurance or government bureaucrat.
In any case, it’s great to greet you in more amicable terms, goy!
174. Bilgeman: – Uhhhh, because Cap and Trade hasn’t yet kicked in?
Good one!!
Although based on recent experience with Obamascare, cap-and-tax is likely to kick BHO’s teeth in.
#177 goy:
“Although based on recent experience with Obamascare, cap-and-tax is likely to kick BHO’s teeth in.”
Oh, gee, I hope not…
I hear his dental care plan sucks.
@176. Chileno: – As I recall, you placed much of the blame for rising health costs on the insurance companies. To me, they are accomplices to the crime, but not the major players.
I’ll happily settle on that. Here’s why: insurance is a tool for mitigating financial risk. Just as you say, consumers misuse insurance, employing it to pay for a routine cost of living – routine health care – that entails no risk whatsoever. Everyone incurs (or should incur) routine health care expenses as a standard cost of living. Insurance companies are more than happy to act as the accomplice in this crime, since it’s profitable and meets this addle-headed consumer demand. There’s a huge demand for cocaine, and a supplier for that market as well. Just sayin’.
The outcome of this crime using basic Econ 101 rationale is easy to predict, however, and that prediction is validated, in spades, by the skyrocketing costs we’ve witnessed as different forms of comprehensive insurance brokerages have interposed themselves between provider and consumer.
In terms of the insurance companies’ profit margins, remember that some of the most successful businesses are built not on high margins, but on enormous cash flow. Credit card companies and comprehensive health insurance companies fall into this latter category. This is why the health insurance sector will always have a conflict of interests when it comes to rising costs – they can simply raise premium rates to compensate and then enjoy the benefits of the increased cash flow.
The point one can’t dispute, however, is that the proxy monopoly formed by the insurance sector – which is not readily recognized because it’s unlike any monopoly we’ve seen in the past – spends lots of money in advertising and federal lobbying to ensure that the consumer remains cost-blind, and utterly dependent on their product to do something the would more rationally do for themselves. So they’re not simply a passive actor in all this. They’re going to apply the considerable leverage they have to maintain the status quo – that’s where they’re culpable.
- We’ll have to disagree on the need for compulsory catastrophic insurance. I do believe people should pay for their mistakes.
Well, if your rationale for this is that someone has made a “mistake” by contracting a catastrophic illness, or by being involved in a catastrophic accident not covered by auto insurance, then yes, we absolutely disagree.
There’s a big difference between accepting calculable risk and making a costly mistake. IMHO, the government has no business deciding for me where that line should be drawn. And as far as increasing costs goes, Massachusetts has already demonstrated that statutory health care entitlements and compulsory insurance forced premiums to increase at rates considerably higher than the national average.
Properly applied taxation could encourage behavior that would discourage health care cost increases. Government isn’t willing to do that simply because increasing costs work to their benefit as well – especially for socialists who want to exploit that skyrocketing cost as an excuse for seizing control of the industry.
179. goy:
“I’ll happily settle on that. Here’s why: insurance is a tool for mitigating financial risk.”
Yes, indeedy. And you’re welcome. (Expect an invoice.)
@179 goy
“So they’re not simply a passive actor in all this. They’re going to apply the considerable leverage they have to maintain the status quo – that’s where they’re culpable.”
Fair enough, I’ll agree to that.
“Well, if your rationale for this is that someone has made a “mistake” by contracting a catastrophic illness, or by being involved in a catastrophic accident not covered by auto insurance…”
I guess I misarticulated my point. I was referring to people who consciously place themselves in harm’s way (e.g. smoke, drink/eat in excess, drive recklessly). People have right to engage in these behaviors (with certain restrictions). If they enjoy the right of living dangerously, they should also assume the responsibility of paying the price for the high level of risk they were willing to tolerate (i.e. pay for their “mistake”). But all too often, once they get sick they expect others to foot the bill. True, some may not. But my experience is that those are a minority. I work in healthcare, in an economically depressed region. I often see morbidly obese diabetics -many who still smoke- come in for amputations, bypass surgeries, dialysis, etc. all at government expense. I feel sorry for the miserable state they’re in. Yet at the same time it angers me to think how they must’ve ignored years of medical advice to eat better, lose weight, and stop smoking, because they preferred the joys of overeating/smoking. And now I (through my taxes) have to pay for the mess they’ve made with their bodies.
In terms of unanticipated catastrophic illness/accidents, I’d agree that the government has no business deciding one’s own level of tolerance, IF one is willing to pay the price. But again, all too often, an individual decides he has a high tolerance for risk (e.g. gets no insurance) and when disaster strikes, he looks for ways in which the government or the hospital can offset his costs. If they were rich enough to “pay their way,” sure, the government should not have to tell them what to do, but that’s often not the case. That’s why I believe it’s not unreasonable to expect that, if the government (with my money) finds itself bailing people out from their illness/accident/self-destructive behavior, it should have some say in where the risk tolerance line is drawn.
“Properly applied taxation could encourage behavior that would discourage health care cost increases…” Though imperfect, that’s one of the reasons why I favored higher cigarette/snack taxes!
I know, sin taxes wouldn’t change the fundamental flaws in the system, but they would discourage risky behavior, and ultimately curb our healthcare demand.
Hmm… Promoting a tax? Didn’t you say (regarding higher sin taxes), “…this approach just puts more money into the hands of Congress…. I don’t know about you, but I’m for taking every dollar OUT of these career criminals’ hands that we can possibly manage.” Just a thought..
From the NYT
…Long-term care constitutes a difficult and expensive challenge in any health system. But the American patchwork, full of cracks through which people fall, has a special problem with medical expenses of all kinds bankrupting couples.
A study reported in The American Journal of Medicine this month found that 62 percent of American bankruptcies are linked to medical bills. These medical bankruptcies had increased nearly 50 percent in just six years. Astonishingly, 78 percent of these people actually had health insurance, but the gaps and inadequacies left them unprotected when they were hit by devastating bills.
M. still helps her husband and, quietly, continues to live with him and care for him. But she worries that the authorities will come after her if they realize that they divorced not because of irreconcilable differences but because of irreconcilable medical bills. There were awkward questions from friends who saw the divorce announcement in the newspaper.
“It’s just crazy,” she said. “It twists people like pretzels.”
The existing system doesn’t just break up families, it also costs lives. A 2004 study by the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, found that lack of health insurance causes 18,000 unnecessary deaths a year. That’s one person slipping through the cracks and dying every half an hour.
In short, it’s a good bet that our existing dysfunctional health system knocks off far more people than an army of “death panels” could — even if they existed, worked 24/7 and got around in a fleet of black helicopters.
So, for those of you inclined to believe the worst about President Obama, think it through. Suppose he is indeed a secret, foreign-born Muslim agent who is scheming to undermine American family values while killing off as many grandmothers as possible.
If all that were true, why on earth would he be trying so hard to reform our health care system? We already know how to prod families into divorce and take a life unnecessarily every 30 minutes — all we need to do is reject reform and stick with exactly what we have.
…and for the ;tenthers’
he Constitution gives Congress the power “‘to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,’ thus empowering the federal government to levy taxes and leverage these revenues to benefit the American people.
@182. Chileno: – Fair enough, I’ll agree to that.
I thought you would, since you seem like a reasonable sort.
- I guess I misarticulated my point.
I figured that was likely, but unlike the lefty trolls who hang out here, I’m not comfortable assuming – let alone redefining – the meaning of what other people write.
Clearly, we are long past the point of having proved that FDR’s socialist policies were (are) not workable over the long term. Individual freedom requires individual responsibility – at every level.
EMTALA requires that critical care must be provided, as I’m sure you’re quite familiar. If government were considering actual reform of the health care system – instead of largely looking for a way to increase federal revenue and a basis on which to ram through associated limitations on liberty – they’d address that aspect of EMTALA and provide a mechanism to recoup expenses for critical health care mandated by the government, but which is ultimately caused due to one’s own conscious choices.
Personally, I believe we should consider taking 95% of what employers pay for insurance, and giving it to employees as an instant raise (tax exempt for the first 5 years after passage of the law that would make this a tax advantage to employers). This would be used to direct-pay for routine health care while costs are settling back into equilibrium AND to fund their own high-deductible/low-premium health care policy. The remaining 5% would go toward the cost of EMATALA-driven health care expenses – inversely proportional, of course, to any tax advantages an institution is already enjoying (tax freeloaders like Yale / New Haven Hospital spring to mind).
In addition to pushing up the cost, as demonstrated in Mass., mandatory insurance punishes the responsible in order to lessen the economic impact of the irresponsible. Auto insurance is really no different. There’s no moral justification for it, only an economic one, supported largely by the insurance lobby, the ambulance-chaser lobby, politicians and leftists who think government should think for us.
- Hmm… Promoting a tax?
Overall, what I proposed was a combination of specifically-applied taxes AND specifically-applied tax relief. Initially, the federal revenue generated would work to the benefit of government. And in an enlightened world, that increased revenue would provide a financial basis for the creation of, say, a network of low-cost health clinics or, preferably, low-cost business loans for private enterprises who want to provide them. Over time, the behavior triggering the taxes would decrease because people would opt out of the activities that drive up the cost of routine health care, i.e., those activities where the tax would be most strongly applied.
@185 Goy
“EMTALA requires that critical care must be provided”
Indeed, it boils down to a government assurance that, regardless of your capacity to pay, you will get treated. For the underclass unable to pay, and the unscrupulous unwilling to pay, that’s essentially free government insurance. True, EMTALA only covers acute care. But when left untreated, chronic illness (e.g. diabetes) becomes acute illness (e.g. renal failure, gangrene, heart attacks).
In an EMTALA-free world, where people were actually responsible for their own acts, and made to pay for their high threshold of risk tolerance – I’d likely be in agreement with you. Unfortunately, EMTALA/Medicaid/Medicare are entitlements so ingrained in the public’s mind that no politician would dare dismantle them. It would be political suicide. I understand the true freedoms you propose. But so long as a “free” healthcare choice exists (i.e. government, i.e. my expense), many will not take responsibility for their acts.
What about those who are unaware or who deny that they are sick, like the alcoholics? How do they consciously gauge their level of risk tolerance? There’s too many people out there who just don’t know or don’t want to know what their risk is, and continue to engage in self-destructive behavior, until it all comes crashing down. “I just didn’t know,” is what they’ll say. Will the government let them die? Would I? So I must respectfully disagree on this point.
“I believe we should consider taking 95% of what employers pay for insurance, and giving it to employees as an instant raise” Interesting proposal, I’d agree. But you’re still funding EMTALA with the leftover 5%. Some would take the 95% home and spend it on what pleasures them, fully expecting the leftover 5% to pay for whatever illness comes their way.
I think we’re not going to convince each other on this point, and are starting to run around in circles! Anyway, it’s been cool, goy. We’ll keep talking, if not here, on some other thread, hopefully as comrades in the fight against the evil trolls that lurk in this site!
186. Chileno: – But when left untreated, chronic illness (e.g. diabetes) becomes acute illness (e.g. renal failure, gangrene, heart attacks).
Precisely the reason that Job One is to bring down the cost of routine care, rather than endlessly looking for ways to “cover it” while allowing it to continue skyrocketing. That requires breaking up the insurance companies’ monopoly control of prices and going back to a standard commodity market like the ones that keep all other routine costs of living relatively affordable.
- Unfortunately, EMTALA/Medicaid/Medicare are entitlements so ingrained in the public’s mind that no politician would dare dismantle them.
No dishonest politician.
Take Medicare, for instance. An honest politician would print out E-Sized charts from the Trustees’ own published report (scroll down to Chart D, for example) and explain to all of America why Medicare is not a feasible mechanism for funding health care. The fact that Medicare must steal, outright, increasing amounts from the general fund each year – which effectively comprises a secondary (tertiary?) Medicare Tax that doesn’t actually appear on one’s W-2 – demonstrates that it is not feasible. You can’t simply keep stealing larger sums to fund a failing enterprise. And the fact that it can only be sustained after 2012 by deficit spending demonstrates that it’s insane. EMTALA is a drop in the bucket by comparison, but socialized medicine will be more of the same, just on a much, much larger scale.
An honest politician would clearly explain all this, and also explain how the DHHS uses extortion to force retirees into Medicare, rather than allowing them to opt for alternatives that might reimburse on par with private plans, providing access to better care.
Medicare is completely insolvent and, were it a business, would have been declared bankrupt and sold off for its few assets long ago. Most Americans – especially most retirees – would understand this simple truth.
- What about those who are unaware or who deny that they are sick, like the alcoholics?
Well first of all, skyrocketing routine health care costs are not caused by alcoholism or the general public’s ignorance. And even if it were, just as ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it, ignorance on the part of some regarding their health is no justification to punish everyone else with mandatory insurance.
Help these folks all you like. Set up charitable organizations. No one’s suggesting you shouldn’t. The government is well within its authority if it funds large-scale programs to educate the public on these issues. Perhaps we can divert a few billion$ from the War On [Some] Drugs™ to fund this effort. But the feds just don’t have the authority to legislate what an individual does with that information or how an individual decides to manage their own risk. Trying to legislate against ignorance is no different from endlessly looking for ways to cover skyrocketing costs. In both cases there is an underlying – false – assumption that one can’t address the root cause.
- But you’re still funding EMTALA with the leftover 5%.
That’s the whole idea. And that funding becomes easier over time as long as you simultaneously break the insurance companies’ monopoly over the price of health care. The free market will force the costs of health care back into equilibrium with other routine costs of living. It’s a package deal.
- Some would take the 95% home and spend it on what pleasures them, fully expecting the leftover 5% to pay for whatever illness comes their way.
Uhm… “whatever illness” is not how the law reads. In order to make this logic stick, you have to be suggesting that a statistically significant segment of the population is going to allow themselves to go through the enormous discomfort of becoming critically ill, just so they can get ‘free’ health care. That suggestion strains the argument beyond the point of absurdity.
Most people want to be healthy. They’re mostly scared to death of being critically ill. The vast majority of responsible adults will ensure that they and their children never reach that point. Right now that’s perceived as ‘hard’ because the cost of health care is perceived as prohibitively high. And for some it may be. We can’t know because right now, the true value of health care is completely hidden by a morass of reimbursement schedules, provider/insurer agreements, government price-fixing and misleading co-pays that don’t reflect what the consumer would pay for it in any way, shape or form.
Either way, the notion that a program like EMTALA – which already exists – is somehow going to change people’s priorities and basic survival instincts such that they wait for treatment until it’s critical care? Just so they can get it for ‘free’? That’s just a little bit silly.
Cheers!!
@ 187 Goy:
Wow, the never ending thread!
“No dishonest politician.” Is there any other kind??
Most politicians are not in the business of running an honest, effective government. They’re in the business of getting themselves re-elected. Running a modestly successful government is simply a tool to that end. But the best tool they have is giving the majority what they want, and that includes “free” safety nets (at the expense of that “top 5%” who don’t pay their fair share anyway).
“Medicare is completely insolvent” – Agree!
“Most Americans… would understand this simple truth.” – Disagree!
Most see Medicare as a sacred entitlement. Hell, all of us working are paying into it, we BETTER get something out of it! It will not go away. I’d love to see the government reform Medicare to a high-deductible -type insurance to keep it solvent and truly help reduce the cost of routine care. But too many angry citizens/special interests would rise up to stop this.
How will the government keep it afloat? Just like it plans to impose socialized medicine on the rest of us -raising taxes, rationing services, or lowering reimbursements. I can see the government reducing benefits for future retirees, or phasing out benefits for “the rich.” The latter would worry me. Medicare/Social Security have always been a contract between the government and the people, whereby we put in money expecting one day to receive something back. If the rich pay in, and receive nothing in return, it effectively becomes a transfer of wealth tax. Of course, the definition of “rich” is an arbitrary number, which the government could alter to meet its needs…
“ignorance on the part of some regarding their health is no justification to punish everyone else with mandatory insurance.” But as it stands right now, ignorance is a common justification to punish everyone else with covering the ignorant’s health care bills! Don’t get me wrong, I would only consider mandating high-deductible insurance. Let everyone -ignorant or not- cover their routine expenses. But if someone develops a catastrophic injury/illness, they can’t be left to die, even if they were ignorant, or negligent, or miscalculated their level of risk tolerance. So who will pay if they cannot?
“Set up charitable organizations”
Charities are an honorable endeavor -really. But the top 200 US charities raised only $40 billion in 2006. Federal government outlays for Medicaid/SHIP were about $220 billion. True, if all health insurance was high-deductible, the cost of covering the underclass/uninsured could drop significantly. But I doubt they would drop to the point charity could cover it all. Rather than having the government step in to pay, I’d mandate catastrophic insurance.
“…statistically significant segment of the population is going to allow themselves to go through the enormous discomfort of becoming critically ill, just so they can get ‘free’ health care. That suggestion strains the argument beyond the point of absurdity.”
Hmm… Come one down to my hospital, and we’ll see how absurd this really is. It’s not that people consciously decide to become critically ill to get that “free” healthcare. It’s that they delude themselves into thinking they’re all right -until they’re not. There is none so blind as he who does not wish to see. And it doesn’t take a large segment of the population to drive up costs. I could easily tick off a half dozen patients who have spent over a half million dollars each in care over the past year, all of whom were on some form of government insurance (Medicaid/Medicare).
“Most people want to be healthy.” Indeed they do! They just don’t want to pay for it… Or at the very least, suffer the inconveniences associated with health maintenance. They have other priorities! Young people, for example, will gladly shell out $200 and wait for hours to get into to a sold-out Shakira concert, but some won’t bother buying insurance, or go for a routine checkup. Alcoholics could spend thousands on booze every year, but not get insured, because they don’t believe they’re ill. And it wouldn’t bother me, really, if they got sick and “paid their way.” But all too often, I’m the one footing their bills!
“the notion that a program like EMTALA – which already exists – is somehow going to change people’s priorities and basic survival instincts…” EMTALA has ALREADY modified people’s priorities.
From http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/us/emergency-room-to-many-remains-the-doctor-s-office.html
“In New York City, three out of four visits to an emergency room are for non-emergencies, according to a new study by the Commonwealth Fund, a private philanthropic organization.
“In many areas of the country, especially in cities with large numbers of uninsured, emergency rooms are being crushed under the increased volume and patient care is often compromised, doctors said.
‘
‘We are not adapting very well,” said Dr. Daniel Higgins, the medical director of emergency service at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood, Calif., where 27 percent of the patients are uninsured and emergency room visits have risen 13 percent in five years.
”A good one-third of our population is uninsured so we would not expect any change in utilization with that group,” said Virginia Hastings, the director of the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency.”
From Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2199645/pagenum/all/
“If you are uninsured, it’s even more rational to get your care in the E.R. Federal law requires a screening exam and treatment for any patient who shows up, regardless of whether they can pay. And hospitals, after a string of negative press reports, are less likely than ever to aggressively pursue patients for delinquent medical bills. In contrast to ERs, primary-care clinics routinely fail to provide urgent appointments for patients who are uninsured, even if they have a serious condition or are willing to pay cash for their visit.”
Granted, even insured people are flocking to the ER, as “In the E.R., a single $100 co-pay may feel like a relative bargain compared with the alternative: fees for multiple trips to the doctor and testing centers, hours on the phone arranging the whole process, and days of missed work.” So not all the ER congestion is because of the uninsured. But a significant proportion is, thanks to EMTALA.
The crux of our debate centers on personal freedom vs. personal accountability.
I’m sure you are a responsible person, and don’t feel the need for government to tell you what to do, much less order you to buy insurance.
But I’ve come across too many irresponsible individuals who are unwilling or unable to pay their bills. I hold myself accountable. I don’t feel the need to be held accountable for other people’s healthcare bills.
If all healthcare was high-deductible, and costs were lower, perhaps the number of people opting not to have insurance would decrease, and general costs would decrease as well. But I still feel there’d be a significant number of people who would opt not to have coverage, to terrible consequences to themselves, and to me.
Good debate! Party on!
188. Chileno: – “No dishonest politician.” Is there any other kind??
Most politicians are not in the business of running an honest, effective government.
As long as we blindly accept that and actively support it, there’s no point in discussing any of this, since it’ll never get fixed no matter how much “debate” takes place. So I don’t accept that. Guys like Paul Ryan give me hope. As the % of the electorate that wants to throw out the entire Congress grows, eventually we’ll get majority turnover until these people start actually representing the People. It’ll either be that or the complete breakdown of the Republic. There’s no third option.
“Medicare is completely insolvent” – Agree!
“Most Americans… would understand this simple truth.” – Disagree!
- Most see Medicare as a sacred entitlement.
No. Have you ever had to deal with Medicare – as a beneficiary? I don’t think so. Most people who aren’t retired see Medicare as just another tax on their income that benefiting someone else, paying for a benefit they’re not likely to ever get, just like Social Security. People who ARE retired either see it as the only option – because of the extortion the DHHS employs – or a major pain in the ass. They key – while demonstrating the system’s moral and financial bankruptcy – is to present viable alternatives.
- How will the government keep it afloat?
The only way to keep it afloat is to do exactly what they’re trying to do: fold it into a larger version of the exact same thing: a government-controlled insurance policy that starts out insolvent and perpetually steals Taxpayers’ money from the general fund to stay in operation.
- But as it stands right now, ignorance is a common justification to punish everyone else with covering the ignorant’s health care bills!
Wrong. Absolutely wrong. The current dynamic is NOT justified. It’s precisely what encourages skyrocketing costs. You’re simply saying that the two types of ignorance are unavoidable and that one is no better than the other. I contend that ignorance – just like skyrocketing costs – IS avoidable, and that public awareness and education, combined with appropriate legislation, is the way to do avoid it.
… top 200 US charities raised only $40 billion in 2006. Federal government outlays for Medicaid/SHIP were about $220 billion.
This is an argument based on the false premise that we have no way of bringing the costs of routine health care back down into equilibrium with other routine costs of living. We need to think OUTSIDE that box if we’re ever going to resolve this issue.
Come one down to my hospital, and we’ll see how absurd this really is.
I’d prefer to examine some actual numbers rather than rely on anecdotal information. The simple fact is that EMTALA exists now. Medical facilities are not going broke covering the costs imposed by that legislation. And what’s more, there are better ways to handle the costs that ARE imposed.
- “Most people want to be healthy.” Indeed they do! They just don’t want to pay for it… Or at the very least, suffer the inconveniences associated with health maintenance. They have other priorities!
Agreed. Education is a good way to address this. And changes in the tax laws that encourage behavior which addresses it.
I read your link. It supports my thesis and proposal completely. Non-critical care isn’t gratis under EMTALA just because someone goes to the ER. And both Vanity Fair and the NYT know that. And if it can be demonstrated that this legislation is being abused by a large enough segment of the population, then it needs to be modified to provide compensation or repealed.
AFTER the costs of routine health care have been brought back into equilibrium with other routine costs of living, let’s look at the numbers of people still abusing critical care services. Likely, what’s needed is enforcement of the law rather than onerous legislation that penalizes the responsible for the benefit of the irresponsible.
@ 189 goy:
Amazing that we’ve gone on for so long, considering we’re both in agreement on most of the issues at hand!
Read on to the end, I think I came up with a compromise we could both live with.
“As the % of the electorate that wants to throw out the entire Congress grows, eventually we’ll get majority turnover until these people start actually representing the People.”
The whole “throw the bums out” movement has been around for decades, with little real change. Though Congressional approval ratings are extremely low, people keep re-electing most incumbents. Most people agree Congress is bad, but insist their individual congressman is good. I commend you in your endeavor, and I do vote for whom I think can adequately represent me. But though seeking change for the better is noble, to expect it any time soon is not realistic. You may think me a fatalist, I’d consider myself a realist. It’s difficult for things to get better. I mostly concentrate on working on them not getting any wrose (fat chance of that with our new government)! I don’t see entitlement reductions coming any time soon, but I’ll do my best to fight entitlement expansions. The nation won’t collapse, but I do see it slowly morphing into a European-style former empire. I don’t like it (really), but historically, it’s been the fate of all great powers.
“Most people who aren’t retired see Medicare as just another tax on their income that benefiting someone else, paying for a benefit they’re not likely to ever get, just like Social Security. People who ARE retired either see it as the only option – because of the extortion the DHHS employs – or a major pain in the ass.”
Any facts to back up your opinion? Surveys show Medicare recipients actually quite satisfied with their service.
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Content/News/News-Releases/2002/Oct/Survey–Medicare-Beneficiaries-Report-Greater-Satisfaction-With-Insurance–Better-Access-To-Care-Tha.aspx
In my economically depressed region of the country, people actually look forward to receiving Medicare, and many retirees do have Social Security as their primary source of income, so I disagree with your above stated contentions.
“a government-controlled insurance policy that starts out insolvent and perpetually steals Taxpayers’ money from the general fund to stay in operation.”
Agreed! The fact that people (particularly the underclass) may like Medicare has nothing to do with its solvency. They must be reformed somehow (though I see little political will to do so -yet).
“This is an argument based on the false premise that we have no way of bringing the costs of routine health care back down into equilibrium with other routine costs of living.”
Costs can and should come down. But to expect $40 billion in charity to cover what the government does with $220 billion is, borrowing your expression, straining the argument beyond the point of absurdity. The cost of technology/drugs can come down. But the cost of human services will be difficult to reduce. For example, considering our nursing shortage (there are 126,000 unfilled nursing positions in the US), it’ll be difficult to reduce nursing wages. http://www.accessnurses.com/nursingshortage/ Doctors’ fees comprise a sizeable chunk of healthcare costs, and considering there are areas with doctor shortages (particularly primary care docs), it will be difficult to reduce their wages as well. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/health/policy/27care.html?_r=1 Lowering reimbursements could even heighten a doctor shortage, encouraging older docs to retire, and discouraging medical school enrollment. How many will choose to be doctors, if faced with high litigation, low reimbursement, and up to $140,000 in educational debts?
“Education is a good way to address this. And changes in the tax laws that encourage behavior which addresses it.”
I’d encourage education, though I don’t see it as a panacea. There’s none so deaf as he who doesn’t want to hear. …Changes in the tax law to encourage behavior? Hmm… almost sounds like a subtle endorsement of the cigarette/snack taxes!!
“AFTER the costs of routine health care have been brought back into equilibrium with other routine costs of living, let’s look at the numbers of people still abusing critical care services. Likely, what’s needed is enforcement of the law rather than onerous legislation that penalizes the responsible for the benefit of the irresponsible.”
Here’s the core of our difference of opinion. I believe you overestimate the drop in costs and underestimate those abusing the system (or overusing it -at my expense- because of self-destructive behavior).
You strongly believe in your freedom to choose (or not) health insurance. I strongly believe in my freedom to fund (or not) other’s healthcare costs. I believe you freedom of choice stops when I am forced to fund it.
You don’t want a system “… that penalizes the responsible [who'll pay for their healthcare costs] for the benefit of the irresponsible [those who won't].”
I don’t want a system “… that penalizes the responsible [who'll pay for their insurance] for the benefit of the irresponsible [those who won't, and expect others to foot their bills].”
I wonder if we could reach a compromise.
Instead of mandating insurance, and instead of having the government come in to rescue the uninsured, why not have the government offer low interest healthcare loans? Imagine a program akin to federal student loans, whereby people with no insurance, who are suffering through medical hardship, can apply for a government loan? Instead of selling off the house, or dying for lack of treatment, or being bailed out for “free” by the government, you establish a program whereby the patient’s critical illness medical bills are paid by the government, in return for a promise to pay off the sum over an extended period of time. The loan should have some form of financial insurance, as some patients will no doubt pass away before completing treatment. The cost of this financial insurance would be factored into the loans being made. Hence, the cost of defaulted loans would be spread out among all the uninsured taking out loans. Some would no doubt still face economic hardship. But being without catastrophic insurance shouldn’t be “comfortable.” The point is to help people help themselves, not to give them a free pass.
Sounds kind of hare-brained, but it would be a mechanism whereby some could choose not to have insurance, and the government would not be obliged to bail them out for “free.”
What about the poor? They’d still be enrolled in some form of government healthcare system, though I would advocate it be reformed into high deductible type of insurance. What about the poor who engage in self-destructive behavior, and end up costing the system billions a year? It would be difficult to separate self-inflicted vs. natural diseases. But you could tax the things that make you more prone to become catastrophically ill -snacks/cigarettes/alcohol. These taxes would disproportionately affect the poor. But then again, they disproportionately benefit from the government healthcare system anyway. And nobody forces them to smoke/drink….
The only problem I’d see is with the “uninsurable”: people who do not qualify for Medicaid/SCHIP/Medicare, yet cannot get insurance because of “preexisting conditions.” Perhaps a special clause could be made whereby those turned down by several insurers could qualify for Medicaid?
So rephrasing my original tenets:
1) Establish cost/coverage transparency in the healthcare industry.
2) Insurance companies compete across state lines and become non-profit.
3) Establish all insurance as low-premium/high deductible, with government incentives for consumers to create and fund Health Savings Accounts.
4) Medicare/Medicaid/SCHIP convert to high deductible insurances. Those living under the poverty line could be eligible for HSA-funding government vouchers. I recognize I’d still be funding other people’s healthcare, but it would be cheaper than today’s system. Given today’s political landscape, it’s the best I could hope for. Besides, I’m not that heartless, to leave the poor completely out in the cold!
5) Raise sin/snack taxes, to discourage these self-destructive behaviors, and make those who choose to continue to engage in them pay a little extra.
6) Tort reform
7) Insurance would not be compulsory. But those who do not qualify for government healthcare are on their own. If they want to pay their way, fine. If they cannot, they could apply for a federal healthcare loan, which they would have to repay over time.
There, sound better?
It’s been a cool debate, but I don’t know if I can keep up much longer. I’m off to do some personal business -try to spend some of my cash before the government takes it from me! I respect your steadfast resolve in defending your constitutional rights -though I don’t adhere to them as strongly as you do (must be my Latin American upbringing…). I’ll see you around! We’ll have to get together one day, and go troll hunting!