For political purposes, President Obama has vilified insurance industry workers. He has demonized insurance companies. He has done this to promote his socialistic agenda. The truth is that for every dollar spent on health care in America, less than one penny goes toward health plan profits! The focus needs to be on the other 99 cents. The truth is that insurance helps millions of people to afford catastrophic health care expenses. The truth is, insurance underwriting practices that require individuals to be in good health when they buy coverage for future expenses is sensible. It is not a bad thing. The truth is, group insurance covers new employees regardless of their current health. The truth is our health care system is good and a cause for pride. The problem is costs are escalating so rapidly that some people cannot afford health care. That is what we need to address. We cannot afford to extend government health care to all the people who won’t or are unable to pay for it. That would bankrupt our already overextended government. Potentially, this would leave everyone without health care. Health care expansion is not the important issue. What we need to do is reduce the cost without increasing the bloated government.
In recent speeches, Obama has said that his bill will “bring down the cost of health care for millions.” “It will lower the long term deficit by a trillion dollars.” Does anyone believe this?? The President’s words seem to obscure the bill rather than clarify it. He has a growing credibility gap and the public does not trust him. His bill is not worth saving. Americans do not want this bill. The only people who don’t seem to be getting the message are Democrat Leaders. The priority list should be the Great Recession and two wars. Then, let’s concentrate on reducing the cost of health care. Recklessly extending health care to everyone would be a financial disaster. The President says he is fired up. I would like to fire him for lack of prudence and judgment! Just my opinion.
Well said, Mr. Thinker. Coming from a retired insurance agent, your thoughts have added force. It seems that the Dems have decided to pass a health care bill, any bill, just to say they did it. While the ObamaCare bill probably isn't quite as bad as the Reps would have us believe, its assumptions of cost savings are wishful thinking at best and spurious at worst. WashDC should follow your advice and bend the cost curve down first, then gradually expand the coverage.
ReplyDeleteOne question: What do you recommend we do about those who will refuse to buy insurance no matter how affordable it might be? TsarPat
The Emotion of Reform
ReplyDeleteBy David Brooks
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There is something morally impressive in the Democrats’ passion on this issue. At the same time, it’s interesting to compare it to their behavior on other issues in which they have no emotional investment.
For example, Democrats say the right thing when it comes to helping small businesses create jobs, but there’s no passion there. For the past year, small business owners have been screaming that they can’t hire people because they don’t know what the rules will be on health care, finance or energy. Democrats hear them, but those concerns take a back seat to other priorities.
Small business owners have been screaming about the health care bill that forces them to offer coverage or pay a $2,000-per-employee fine but doesn’t substantially control rising costs. Democrats hear their concerns, but push ahead because getting a health care bill is more important.
Then there is the larger issue of exploding federal deficits. A few Democrats are genuinely passionate about this, President Obama among them. He has fought tenaciously to preserve a commission that might restrain Medicare spending. But 90 percent of the people in Congress have no emotional investment in this issue.
They’re going through the motions. They’ve stuffed the legislation with gimmicks and dodges designed to get a good score from the Congressional Budget Office but don’t genuinely control runaway spending.
There is the doc fix dodge. The legislation pretends that Congress is about to cut Medicare reimbursements by 21 percent. Everyone knows that will never happen, so over the next decade actual spending will be $300 billion higher than paper projections.
There is the long-term care dodge. The bill creates a $72 billion trust fund to pay for a new long-term care program. The sponsors count that money as cost-saving, even though it will eventually be paid back out when the program comes on line.
There is the subsidy dodge. Workers making $60,000 and in the health exchanges would receive $4,500 more in subsidies in 2016 than workers making $60,000 and not in the exchanges. There is no way future Congresses will allow that disparity to persist. Soon, everybody will get the subsidy.
There is the excise tax dodge. The primary cost-control mechanism and long-term revenue source for the program is the tax on high-cost plans. But Democrats aren’t willing to levy this tax for eight years. The fiscal sustainability of the whole bill rests on the naïve hope that a future Congress will have the guts to accept a trillion-dollar tax when the current Congress wouldn’t accept an increase of a few billion.
There is the 10-6 dodge. One of the reasons the bill appears deficit-neutral in the first decade is that it begins collecting revenue right away but doesn’t have to pay for most benefits until 2014. That’s 10 years of revenues to pay for 6 years of benefits, something unlikely to happen again unless the country agrees to go without health care for four years every decade.
There is the Social Security dodge. The bill uses $52 billion in higher Social Security taxes to pay for health care expansion. But if Social Security taxes pay for health care, what pays for Social Security?
There is the pilot program dodge. Admirably, the bill includes pilot programs designed to help find ways to control costs. But it’s not clear that the bill includes mechanisms to actually implement the results. This is exactly what happened to undermine previous pilot program efforts.
The Democrats have not been completely irresponsible. It’s just that as the health fight has gone on, their passion for coverage has swamped their less visceral commitment to reducing debt. The result is a bill that is fundamentally imbalanced.
This past year, we’ve seen how hard it is to even pass legislation that expands benefits. To actually reduce benefits and raise taxes, we’re going to need legislators who wake up in the morning passionate about fiscal sanity. The ones we have now are just making things worse.
I agree with most of what Mr. Brooks says except I do not think that President Obama is passionate about reducing federal deficits. On the contrary, he has been recklessly increasing them.
ReplyDeleteConcerning the Tsar's question, "What do you recommend we do about those who will refuse to buy insurance no matter how affordable it might be?" My answer is NOTHING! It is their constitutional right. They will have to pay their medical costs or go without treatment.
ReplyDeleteBut hospitals are obliged to treat them first and get payment later, which is to say never. How is a hospital going to know which is which? How about a national ID card upon which, inter alia, is a notice that the individual is a pay-first-treat-second classification? TsarPat
ReplyDeleteSaw your letter to the Adrian Telegram and noted what I missed in your blog. Do you really think Obama has a socialist agenda. Seems to me that he is just acting like he has for many years as a center left politician. As poor as Obamacare is at its core, it's not really a government takeover. Just sayin'.
ReplyDeleteTsarPat
If Obamacare becomes law, it allows the government to take over a huge portion of the private economy. If that is not a socialist agenda then, what is? He does not call himself a socialist but he sure acts like one.
ReplyDeleteI am impressed that you read the Adrian Telegram over there in Pennsylvania. Don't you have any conservative republican newspapers? The Telegram is a fine local paper and the editor is a friend of mine.
It might be the start of a takeover but the socialists would still have a long way to go. I'm not yet worried. But, I'm glad you're keeping an eye on it.
ReplyDeleteActually, I think the Telegram, like all small town newspapers in this age of politically correct and don't anger the advertisers, does a lousy job of watchdogging the the corruption in local, in this case Lenewee County, politics. It's gotta be there; all they have to do is look. Ask you friend how he explains that. TsarPat