Impeding changes to our Health Care system

[skysidhe]

I can choose not to buy a car. I can choose not to renew my insurance. There would be consequences but I am not fined by the federal government either way.

[morethanpretty]

Originally Posted by skysidhe

I certainly don't think the sky is falling but I sure don't want my health care mandated. Offered yes but mandated and fined if you don't is unconstitutional. That isn't a fear mentality that is just a fact.

Where in the constitution does it say the gov't can't mandate health insurance?

Originally Posted by skysidhe

I can choose not to buy a car. I can choose not to renew my insurance. There would be consequences but I am not fined by the federal government either way.

A person can choose those things, therefore choosing the monetary responsibility/liability. A person can't (usually) choose a major health crisis that costs money well beyond their means, and they can't guarantee to avoid them in anyway except by dying (quickly.) Therefore, if a person has such a crisis without proper insurance, then the cost is passed onto the rest of us. This is the same concept as mandating auto-insurance, making it law that people buy the insurance, helps the cost from being passed onto others when there is an accident. If a person has a major health crisis and doesn't have the money/insurance for the medical bills, then the gov't tax they've paid helped keep the costs from being passed on to others.
I don't think this legislation is perfect by far, but its a start as to what we need.

[Clodfobble]

Right, if you drive without insurance you're fined by the state government instead.

It's true that you can choose not to drive a car, and avoid auto insurance. You can also choose to never go to any doctor for any treatment, and while still against the rules, in that case the government would probably never catch on to the fact that you had no insurance.

[skysidhe]

ok you win

[xoxoxoBruce]

Rather than mandate purchasing insurance, just bar anyone from going to the hospital, without insurance or cash in advance. Problem solved.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

You can also choose to never go to any doctor for any treatment, and while still against the rules, in that case the government would probably never catch on to the fact that you had no insurance.

Uh no - the 12,000 additional IRS positions that were created within this reform are to look for just that. They are to apparently going to look at the returns to ensure that all have insurance.

Originally Posted by classicman

Uh no - the 12,000 additional IRS positions that were created within this reform are to look for just that. They are to apparently going to look at the returns to ensure that all have insurance.

12,000 additional IRS positions created within the reform?

From Glenn Beck's mouth to your ears! So you dont listen to Beck? Then you just regurgitate what you read from some right wing blogger who does. Just the latest scare tactics. When all other arguments have failed, raise the specter of the IRS bogeymen tracking you down and taking away your freedoms.

Uh no. What the IRS will do is similar to a current 1099 where a bank sends IRS a statement that says “here’s the interest” someone owes, and they send it to the taxpayer.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

So Redux, for one, welcomes our new health care overlords.

He needs to grow a more independent and less party-hack turn of mind before he truly enters adulthood -- the very place his political party definitely does not want him to go.

The "unconstitutional" arguments are, I think, insuperable and will prevail.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

So Redux, for one, welcomes our new health care overlords.

He needs to grow a more independent and less party-hack turn of mind before he truly enters adulthood -- the very place his political party definitely does not want him to go.

The "unconstitutional" arguments are, I think, insuperable and will prevail.

UG...any time you want to discuss the constitutional issues like an adult, we can do so.

[TheMercenary]

by Dr. Elaina George

The vote is done and we have awakened to a new era. Under the guise of coverage for pre-existing conditions and the security of knowing that you can’t be kicked off your insurance when you really need it, the democrats have pushed through a bill which will lead to the end of health care as we know it.

Besides taxing us from everything from our unearned income, to payroll taxes to medical devices we can look forward to paying into a pot for the next four years. I only hope the money will be available for health care. As it stands now, it will be used to set up yet another government bureaucracy run by various task forces and yet another Czar to oversee the entire mess. If we’re lucky they will actually use the money for the intended purpose, but I have visions of the social security lock box. It is hard to believe that this will end up any better than Medicare, The Post Office or Social Security – big, bloated and bankrupt.

The bill sets up committees to study ways to deliver care. A committee to study what another committee is supposed to do? Sounds like bureaucracy at its finest. It is hard to believe that that money used to ‘study’ things will be used for patient care. By the time 2014 rolls around what money will be left to implement medical care?

The government sold health care reform with 5 basic talking points:

1. You won’t be able to be kicked off of your insurance when you really need it

•Turns out that the insurance companies CAN kick you off if they pay a fine. It is not hard to imagine that an insurance company will figure out pretty quickly that it would be cheaper to pay the fine than to pay for coverage of a long term chronic illness.
2. You won’t be denied medical care for pre-existing conditions.

•If the insurance company deems that you have lied on the application you will be denied coverage.
•Sick children are no longer considered to have pre-existing conditions, but what about women who are pregnant?

3. You can keep the doctor you have if you are already covered.

•With the cuts in Medicare reimbursements that have already happened (no more consultation fees) and the looming 21% cut at the end of October. Many more physicians than the current 30% are looking to opt out of Medicare. When the commercial insurance reimbursement rates drop (as they invariably will since they pay at a percentage of Medicare) there will be more doctors looking to leave commercial insurance as well.

4. Health care reform will lead to increased access

•There is no way that there will be an increase in access when you take into account; 1) the physician shortage, 2) Those physicians who will leave medicine after the passage of this monstrosity (a recent poll of physicians states that 35% would leave the profession), and 3) those who will stop taking insurance all together because they are simply fed up.
•Expanding Medicaid to those who are currently uninsured is not going to help since most doctors are not taking Medicaid now. Currently access to specialists is pretty poor, it will decline further.

5. Health care reform will cover 30 million more uninsured people

•The bill will cover approximately 7 million more people over the next nine years and leave over 100 million people under insured.
6. The health care reform bill will decrease the deficit

•The CBO numbers do not take into account the “doctor fix” and the government takeover of student loans was added to pad the numbers.
•If you do real world accounting by adding in the “doctor fix” (over 230 million dollars) you actually wipe out the cost savings and you increase the deficit (anywhere from 400-700 million dollars.)
•It is likely that the estimated costs will likely be much higher. How can anyone really know what is going to happen in the next 10 years. To say that these numbers are optimistic is being kind.
•The Health care reform bill has done absolutely NOTHING that would really lower the cost of health care.
The pharmaceutical companies got three major cost raising concessions

- the government cannot go out of the country to shop for cheaper drugs

- the patent for biologics was extended to 12 years from 7 thereby locking out cheaper generic drugs. (For example a patient can continue to pay over $1000 a month for a drug like Embrel instead of getting some relief.

- patients will not be able to buy cheaper over the counter medications with their health savings account only more expensive prescription medication.

The health insurance companies may whine about their profit margin, but they get millions more people to add to their roles. Most of those people will only see a doctor 1-2 times a year for routine things, but will pay 14% higher premiums for the privilege.

The hospitals which account for the biggest piece of the Healthcare pie (31%) got a pass. Surgeons have had to deal with bundling of charges for over a decade. What about applying that to hospitals? That would have certainly lowered the cost. Since bankruptcy caused by medical costs are largely due to the hospital charges.

- There has been no legislation to change their habit of itemized billing where they stand to make a profit on everything from the single pill of Tylenol to the box of Kleenex in your hospital room.

I got a call from a fellow physician today who talked about picking up stakes and doing medical work overseas. I have a feeling I am going to get a lot more of those types of calls from fellow physicians in private practice. There are only so many physicians that the hospitals can employ and only so many more patients a physician can see.

It seems that the ultimate goal of this exercise is to eventually make all physicians government employees under a single payer system. As it stands the system created by health care reform is a give away to the pharmaceutical industry and the health insurance industry (you just need to look at the rise in their stocks today). It certainly can be seen as the first step on a slippery slope towards single payer. The powers that be are banking on physicians going along like lemmings, but I have no doubt that if we don’t they will institute some sort of draconian policy to make us do it like they have in Massachusetts (medical licensure is tied to taking the state insurance plan). If that happens, good luck finding a physician who will want to deal with this.

http://biggovernment.com/egeorge/201...ck/#more-94402

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

http://biggovernment.com/egeorge/201...ck/#more-94402

http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/2...l-responsibili

Two more partisan links......biggovernment.com and reason.com

Your record of posting the most partisan links (far more than anyone else) in this discussion is intact.

Just keeping my promise to point that out, Merc.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

Two more partisan links......biggovernment.com and reason.com

Your record of posting the most partisan links (far more than anyone else) in this discussion is intact.

Just keeping my promise, Merc.

Doesn't change the facts in the article. Dispute them if you think you can. Nearly all the weaknesses that I have pointed out are now the topic of the majority of the news concerning the new Obamacare.

biggovernement is partisan because they are anti-Obamy, Reason is libertarian. So that must make them partisan because they don't support your propaganda of the White House or the Dems. I get it.

Keeping my promise on calling you out on your propaganda.

The Reason Foundation is an American nonprofit think tank founded in 1968 that also publishes Reason magazine. Based in Los Angeles, Reason is self-described as nonpartisan and publishes a statement of values that can best be described as libertarian. Like most think tanks, they are a non-profit, tax-exempt organization that provides papers and studies to support a particular set of values. According to Reason's web site, these are "the values of individual freedom and choice, limited government, and market-friendly policies."

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

http://biggovernment.com/egeorge/201...ck/#more-94402

There are no citations. How can we check the veracity of his points if he doesn't cite chapter and verse?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

There are no citations. How can we check the veracity of his points if he doesn't cite chapter and verse?

[Sigh] Well, you can try finding an opposing bias, propping them up against each other, and dropping a plumbline and seeing if it lands somewhere that would satisfy a critical view. That's the least you can do.

[TheMercenary]

The Lie of Fiscal Responsibility

As Democrats made cable-news victory laps in the wake of securing the necessary votes to pass a massive legislative overhaul of the American health care system, there was much talk of history—making it, watching it, being part of it, answering its call. But Washington's true attitude towards history is that of an abusive conqueror; it's not something to learn from, it's something to triumph over. And in that respect, Democratic health reformers deserve nothing but congratulations. Thanks to their dogged efforts, history—along with the popular will of the American public—has been thoroughly trounced.

Since the New Deal, American entitlements have consistently grown faster than projected in size, scope, and cost. Like unwanted houseguests, they cost money you don't have, and they can't be kicked out. Reform and repeal efforts are about as successful as kindergarten experiments with do-it-yourself haircuts. Indeed, the health care bill's very structure is a testament to this fact. Much of it is funded with changes designed to eliminate waste in Medicare and Medicaid—changes that could, or at least ought, to have been used to reform those programs, both of which are unsustainable. Yet the only way these changes were politically viable was if they were made in order to fund an all-new benefit.

To hear the bill's supporters explain it, health reform constitutes a triumph of fiscal responsibility—lowering the deficit, extending the solvency of Medicare, and stifling the growth of health care costs. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), a staunch pro-lifer whose last-minute decision to vote yes assured the bill's passage, was typical in his declaration that the legislation would provide "health security and financial security" to Americans. "This is a good bill for the American people," he told MSNBC. "We're not adding to the deficit. Indeed, the CBO says the bill will actually reduce the deficit over time."

This case was crucial to the bill's last-minute success. In the preceding week, it became increasingly clear that a number of votes were contingent upon the bill receiving certain scores from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). And when the scores—a $940 billion price tag for the first 10 years, $138 billion worth of deficit reduction in the first decade, and $1.2 trillion worth of reduction in the following 10 years—came through, many wavering Democrats hopped on board.

But health care votes bought with promises of fiscal responsibility might as well have been bought with suitcases full of Monopoly money. The truth is that the bill is the exact opposite of fiscally responsible.

A little more than 24 hours after releasing the reconciliation bill's preliminary score—the one that picked up the majority of the headlines and votes—the CBO released another report, this one produced at the request of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). It said that if in addition to the health care bill, the Democrats also pass legislation known as the "doc fix"—which would cost an additional $208 billion—the total effect would be to add $59 billion to the deficit over the first 10 years.

Defenders of the reform bill now argue that the doc fix is a separate issue. But Democrats didn't always think so: Last summer's first draft of the House health care bill included the doc fix. And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has reportedly used the provision to ensure support from the American Medical Association. Are we somehow supposed to believe that it's good enough to bargain with but not good enough to figure into the budget?

Maybe the problem is something more elementary: Democrats just don't know how to count. Hard to believe? The CBO's letter also says that, contrary to administration claims, the bill won't both reduce the deficit and extend the solvency of Medicare. One or the other, perhaps, but not both.

Nor is that the only double count. The score for the Senate bill includes $72 billion in revenues generated by the CLASS Act, a federally-backed disability insurance program. But that $72 billion is just premium revenue that will eventually have to be used to pay out benefits. The score counts that revenue anyway, despite the fact that, according to the CBO, it would likely add to the deficit in the long term.

Eventually, the deficit damage starts to add up. Toss out a few of the bill's more fanciful assumptions—the implementation of the tax on so-called "Cadillac" insurance plans (already successfully delayed by a full five years by benefits-rich unions), cuts to Medicare payments, and a planned slowing of the growth of insurance subsidies—and the CBO reports that, two decades out, the deficit would spike “in a broad range around one-quarter percent of GDP”—something like $600 billion. Fiscally responsible!

Why does all this matter? It's not just the cherry-picking of figures and the rhetorical deception, it's the country's overall fiscal future. Thanks to a spiraling deficit, the economy is chugging merrily towards a broken bridge over a rocky canyon—a fact that almost no one from either party is willing to do anything about. America, according to the CBO, is on an "unsustainable" fiscal path, and the nation's solid-gold credit rating may be at risk. So it doesn't matter how many times blinkered legislators repeat to themselves, "I think I can, I think I can": Nothing short of significant cutbacks to entitlement spending is going to magically transform the U.S. budget into the little engine that could.

Instead, politicians are paying for new entitlements by shifting money from unsustainable programs—money that ought to have gone toward getting America's fiscal house in order.

Democrats made history all right—but only by sacrificing the future.

Peter Suderman is an associate editor at Reason magazine.

http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/2...l-responsibili