If Democrats ignore health-care polls, midterms will be costly

Seems to me its designed to make the problems in the current system worse, thereby paving the way for a complete takeover. Enertainingly, as I mentioned, it takes the bad things about the current system, which are largely government mandated, and expands and unimproves on them. A big part of the subtext of the current health care debate has been that this design is quite explicit. This plan is not explicitly a takeover, but it's meant to lead to one. And thus, anyone who has much sense and doesn't want that, should see these guys for the snake oil salesmen they are.

Also, it's set to cost a couple trillion dollars we don't obviously have, which will impose deadweight costs on everything else.

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Denny, I think some level of subsidization for rural medicine is already in place. From a broader perspective, many of those resources are publicly funded at least in part at state and local levels.

One of the really big problems here, and its a typical symptom of how the government does things, is the typically high regulation in medical labor markets. This especially hits rural areas hard, and they would benefit by allowing NPs, paramedics, etc to perform more medical services. A good example of how this is playing out is in Alaska.

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And, again, I'll ask for the tangible benefits of providing extremely high level health insurance to the uninsured. I'm solidly with Denny on this one. Studies (discussion and links here) have indicated that the uninsured actually get fairly good and fairly cheap health care. So the improvement that may come from this is likely quite small and relatively expensive.

One of the biggest problems here is the current plan mandates extraordinarily high levels of coverage for folks and discourages out of pocket spending, which is yet another reason to expect it won't cut costs. It'll take a large swath of people who now have strong incentives to economize on health care, and give them strong incentives not to.

 

The main issue to me is that everyone should have catastrophic health insurance. Yes, anyone can go to the emergency room and get treatment for an immediate issue. However, everyone can't get the drugs needed to treat cancer, that can run into the tens of thousands of dollars per month. Even if you did as Denny has suggested and provide the drugs as a loan and bill them later, that means people without catastrophic insurance will have to choose between life and the complete financial destruction of themselves and, potentially, their families. That isn't a reasonable thing to do, in my opinion, to force people to decide between the needed drugs to combat a serious illness and financial solvency.

While I'd be in favour of even non-catastrophic health insurance for everyone, as I think it's important that people not avoid preventative care due to lack of money and then end up in the much more costly emergency room, it's really the catastrophic that I think is the absolute need.

 

I agree with this, and believe this could be done at a small cost, or possibly even a decrease in overall spending. I've said previously that even using the conservative numbers for savings from tort reform could go a long ways to paying for catastrophic insurance for the uninsured.

Part of the problem of that many of those in favor of government run health insurance use the "cancer patient" example as a reason we need to provide full health insurance to everybody. And that just isn't a valid argument. They need catastrophic insurance coverage, not cadillac coverage.

But the proposed plans are nowhere near just providing a safety-net / catastrophic insurance. The proposals are closer to making everybody have the same insurance, and government takeover of ~20% of our economy.

 

That's great. Not relevant to my point, but that's a good thing.

Taking out a mortgage on one's house to invest in a business or education is a calculated attempt to recoup the money borrowed and more. Having to do it just to stay alive doesn't put one in a better economic position than prior to the illness and forced loan, so it's simply a crippling financial debt with no real way to address it.

If one has to take on a crippling debt to save a loved one, I consider that a worthy sacrifice to make. I simply don't believe it's humane to force people to make that sacrifice. Scream socialism all you want, but I absolutely believe in a safety net to allow people to address expensive, life-threatening illnesses without having to take on a different enormous burden.

 

Absolutely. But not an attempt that I think people should be forced to make if they want to keep a loved one alive.

 

I thought it was interesting that a British guy on the Daily Show last night said that people are 60-70% happy with their health care in Britain. There are long wait lines, and the doctors are also underpaid and not too happy about it (and the Docs are better in the national HC than the private). But he did say if you have money you can go the private route.

I just thought it was interesting. Obviously we aren't going for a national health care.

 

Since I'm in the healthcare industry, I went to a forum of doctors discussing the new healthcare bill. Clearly, it will mean a short term drop in income, but they state they will simply raise their rates to cover the increase in forced Medicare payments. Most of the doctors over 50 stated they will retire within 1 year. None of them felt this bill will actually provide anything for "uninsured" that they already do not have in one way or another. Their biggest concerns was that this will all be paid for by the next generation. Yet another case of this administration passing along trillions to today's 20 year olds. Of the 40 or so doctors, not one of them was for this bill. They also predicted it might mean a slow end to the PCP as they really don't make enough as it is.

I guess what I don't get is that for all the good ideas to provide more coverage for people, why do we choose the worst possible idea?

 

We spend trillions on keeping America(and other places) safe, so why not spend the same on keeping it healthy. I mean after all what's the point of protecting a dying herd when it is essentially going to kill itself? Maybe letting a nuke slip into the country would solve a lot of these issue, especially in the areas that have the most poverty. Imagine having 30 to 50 million people removed from the government tit in a matter of hours...it would be a conservative dream come true. Basically what people are saying is we will spend a shit load of money to "protect" you, but we don't care if you live or die unless you have the cash to pay for it. Hell that even goes for the poor bastards that sign up for the military and get life long injuries/illness. I see healthcare as a national defense issue, one that is much more important than say Iraq or Afghanistan, but wait we pay for their national healthcare...

 

A very interesting (and humorous) post. Well stated.

 

I currently pay five figures annually to keep six people healthy (me, my wife, my son, my sister-in-law, my mother-in-law and my mother). How much more should I be expected to pay? How many more people should I be expected to cover? How much are you willing to pay? Give me a hard figure. Out of your salary, how much are you willing to pay to make sure those who can't afford it have health insurance? Do you think it's fair that future generations pay for our health insurance?

In terms of care, do you believe that this bill will guarantee better care for everyone? Do you believe we'll be able to pay physicians less and have more physicians in the future? Do you believe that hospitals can staff fewer nurses and have better care? Do you believe you can add 30MM patients to the healthcare system and have improved care? Do you believe there won't be rationing?