It just isn’t right, and we can stop it. First off, it’s un-American. There’s nothing helpful or redeeming about the plan. And it’s bad – really bad – for small businesses. Here are five reasons it’s sick – please share this information with co-workers and employees and contact your representatives; at the end of the post there is a list of additional action you can take. Government run health care is losing the battle right now, but it is a tough fight and there’s lots of work to do.
1. It takes away freedom and choice from hundreds of millions of Americans
I’d like to be able to choose my doctor, to choose whether or not I want health insurance, what amount I’ll pay for it, what my deductible will be. I’d like to be free to determine the care I’ll receive, and not have a group of bureaucrats standing between me and my doctor. But all that will soon end if the Administration gets its way.
You know how President Obama is telling you, “You get to keep your private health insurance?” Well, he’s only telling you half the truth. The whole truth is that if you lose or leave your insurance plan, or if ever want to switch plans or change your employer, you cannot have private insurance and instead MUST go on the government plan. That means you get what the government decides to provide you, when they decide you merit it, and you have no choice. How’s that for hope and change!
2. It’s expensive, bureaucratically bloated, and it won’t work.
In fact, costs will go up by a trillion dollars. Isn’t the whole reason for taking on health care reform is because Americans believe health care is too expensive, not because they think we should impose socialist universal coverage? Well, how can you increase costs by a trillion and look us in the eye and keep a straight face . . . this isn’t about health care costs, never has been. It’s a about control. And we all know our taxes will be going up to pay for this grand socialist experiment. Oh, except for the Unions.
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are all headed toward bankruptcy, and we’re introducing yet another unsustainable entitlement program? It’s like approaching a cliff in your car and hitting the gas pedal instead of the brake!
Check out how the bureaucracy will look under Obamacare. Can you find the “Doctor” and “Patient” in there?
3. It doesn’t require politicians to go on the plan, only the people they govern.
I have no comment on this. I’m just speechless. When a cook won’t eat his own cooking, run from the restaurant. The food might kill you, but it most certainly will put you in danger. Same with this health care plan.
UPDATE: oh yeah, and it exempts Unions, too.
4. It funds controversial procedures that many Americans deem immoral and coerces all taxpayers to pick up the tab.
Right now, it’s set to fund abortions with tax dollars. Of all the things tax dollars shouldn’t fund, it shouldn’t fund these. More than half the country opposes the legality of abortions and finds it to be wrong – and then to require them to take their hard earned dollars to pay for others to have abortions? It’s just wrong.
5. It punishes small businesses.
Small businesses that don’t currently provide health care get an 8% penalty tax taken from their earnings. Shelly Roche explains more about this in the clip below and more about why small businesses are set to take the brunt of the pain from this plan.
This is wrong and we’re going to stop it.
I’ve written my congressional representatives and explained that I oppose government run health care because
- it robs us of our freedoms
- it’s expensive and we can’t afford it
- it’s bloated
- it won’t work
- it exempts politicians
- it funds procedures I oppose on moral grounds
- it punishes small businesses
You can take action, too. Write your congressional rep by using DownsizeDC.org’s tool to quickly get a letter sent (free) to your representative. And then sign Grassfire’s Petition which will be delivered within the next 48 hours.
Send this blog post to everyone you know. Do something, anything, because you make a difference!
If US health care really is sick, then the government must think the cure is to kill the patient! We can’t let that happen.
Image originally posted at PoliGazette
UPDATE: Be sure to check out our follow up post to this one: The Two Biggest, Fattest Lies in the Health Care Reform Debate.
UPDATE: I have an exit questions to discuss in the comments. Big Government keeps asserting that health care is a “right.” Is health care a right? A right is something that is owed you, that you are free to partake of. You have the right to free speech, for example, if others owe you the space and freedom to speak, and you are free to speak if you choose.
Some people distinguish between claim rights and liberty rights – claim rights being something you have the right to take, and liberty rights being something you have a right to do. Big Government says that Health Care is a Claim right (not a Liberty Right), something you ought to be free to HAVE (claim right) not just something you ought to be free to PURSUE (liberty right). In fact, under the current proposal the government is taking away your personal liberty right – preventing you from being able to pursue the health care you may individually want – in order to provide every one with a (now more limited) claim right. They trade choice, freedom and quality for less-choice and less quality, but more “equal” distribution of health outcomes.
Note some key things here – the importance of “Others” in the provision of a right. So, is health care a right? Because if it is, then someone has the Obligation and Responsibility to provide the “right” so that you can be freely allowed to partake of it. That’s another way of saying that someone has the can be forced (obligated) to give you what “rightfully” belongs to you. Health care is provided only by oneself to oneself, or to oneself by other people. When government speaks of a health care right, they are speaking of care provided to one citizens by way of another citizen. So, who are these other citizens who have the obligation to provide health care? How are they identified? How will they be coerced? Is the person who “provides” the health care the one who delivers the service? Or is it the person who pays for the service?
Our take? Health care is not a right. It is one of many goods and services that free peoples can choose to provide to others if others are willing to trade for it. No one should be coerced into forced labor providing any service – and that means indirectly, too; no one citizen should be forced to hand over a % of the fruits of her labors to pay the people who are providing and consuming the service.
Human beings are mortal. They die. We all will die. It is a given that we’ll all suffer from poor health at some point in our lives and to varying degrees. Our longevity will in part be determined by our body’s ability to maintain systems in optimal operative condition. We have an obligation to OUR SELVES to care for our own bodies. If we want others to help us maintain and repair our biological system, we have no right to coerce them to do it. We can either learn that service ourselves, and provide ourselves with our own care, or learn to provide a service of value to others so that we can trade with them (and make them better off) in exchange for their service.
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July 20th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
I’ve personally written my representatives and sent a fax to over 60 reps who are “on the fence”. We must turn up the heat on them.
I’ve also sent personal emails to moderate democrats who are waffling and informed them that I will personally donate to their opposing candidate in the upcoming election if they vote for socialized medicine. And I will. Those reps who vote for this bill need to know that they will pay for it by losing their jobs. That seems to be the only thing that gets through to these guys anyway.
July 20th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Here’s a copy of a fax I just sent 161 congressional reps. Feel free to use it for your own purposes.
—
This government health care plan is un-American. There’s nothing helpful or redeeming about the plan. And it’s bad – really bad – for small businesses. Here are five reasons I oppose it.
1. It takes away freedom and choice from hundreds of millions of Americans
I’d like to be able to choose my doctor, to choose whether or not I want health insurance, what amount I’ll pay for it, what my deductible will be. I’d like to be free to determine the care I’ll receive, and not have a group of bureaucrats standing between me and my doctor. But all that will soon end if the Administration gets its way.
You know how Barack Obama is telling us, “You get to keep your private health insurance?” Well, he’s only telling you half the truth. The whole truth is that if you lose or leave your insurance plan, or if ever want to switch plans or change your employer, you cannot have private insurance and instead MUST go on the government plan. That means you get what the government decides to provide you, when they decide you merit it, and you have no choice. How’s that for hope and change!
2. It’s expensive, bureaucratically bloated, and it won’t work.
In fact, costs will go up by a trillion dollars. Isn’t the whole reason for taking on health care reform is because Americans believe health care is too expensive, not because they think we should impose socialist universal coverage? Well, how can you increase costs by a trillion and look us in the eye and keep a straight face . . . this isn’t about health care costs, never has been. It’s a about control. And we all know our taxes will be going up to pay for this grand socialist experiment. Oh, except for the Unions.
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are all headed toward bankruptcy, and we’re introducing yet another unsustainable entitlement program? It’s like approaching a cliff in your car and hitting the gas pedal instead of the brake!
Check out how the bureaucracy will look under Obamacare. Can you find the “Doctor” and “Patient” in there?
3. It doesn’t require politicians to go on the plan, only the people they govern.
The health plan stinks so bad that you are giving yourself exemptions so that you don’t have to use it, but instead get to opt-out, while the rest of us don’t get this choice.
I have no comment on this. I’m just speechless. When a cook won’t eat his own cooking, run from the restaurant. The food might kill you, but certainly will put you in danger. Same with this health care plan.
4. It funds controversial procedures that many Americans deem immoral and coerces all taxpayers to pick up the tab.
Right now, it’s set to fund abortions with tax dollars. Of all the things tax dollars shouldn’t fund, it shouldn’t fund these. More than half the country opposes the legality of abortions and finds it to be wrong – and then to require them to take their hard earned dollars to pay for others to have abortions? It’s just wrong.
5. It punishes small businesses.
Small businesses that don’t currently provide health care get an 8% penalty tax taken from their earnings. Shelly Roche explains more about this in the clip below and more about why small businesses are set to take the brunt of the pain from this plan.
I am watching your vote on this issue and if you support this monstrosity in any form, I will make it a personal mission of mine to work for whoever your opponent is in your upcoming election.
July 20th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Physicians have absorbed an approximately 40% cut already over the past 10 to 12 years when the economy was sound. When (if) this plan is enacted it will instantly produce an additional cut of an additional 30 to 50 %. Medicare pays roughly that much less per unit of work done. The “come on” is that we wont have uninsured patients. Inner city hospitals with a large % of unhealthy population (many noncompliant +drug users) will improve their bottom line at the expense of the rest of the responsible population. Will we also cover the millions of illegals??? The response of many practices will be to opt out of medicare or medicaid. (many do this already) this will instantly produce an enhanced access crisis. Many MD’s already make less than nurses with which they work(peds or primary care). The problems that you discuss are pertinent but I dont hear as much from the thousands of providers responsible for delivery.
July 20th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Dr. Newman,
You are correct. Why aren’t we hearing a more focused voice from Doctors? I am hearing A LOT of individual doctors and many have expressed to me how helpless they feel. Why is it that Doctors are not better at making their voices heard in concert?
The old saw is, “If you want to get less of an activity, punish it (or, alternatively, tax it, which is the same thing).”
By punishing health providers, we’re going to get a lot less of them. Heck, my own family’s GP dropped out of practice a couple of years ago – said after paying his malpractice premiums and paying his staff, there was nothing left over for him each month . . . all this from a GP who never had a malpractice claim against him and didn’t practice/undergo risky procedures, but who bore the cost of runaway jury awards and a refusal of the politicians to take on tort reform.
The insanity has got to stop. The government just “assumes” that things happen in a vacuum, that behaviors will stay the same even though they change the incentives.
If you change the incentive, you change the behavior. And if you’re dis-incentivizing doctors (through pay caps) at the same time that you’re spiking demand for their services, you’ve got de facto shortages and rationing.
July 21st, 2009 at 9:00 am
To your question as to where are the Doctors? – Here they are:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/21/mayo-clinic-calls-house-plan-bad-medicine/?feat=home_cube_position1&
July 20th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
seeing the word president on the top of that flow chart makes me physically ill. the president of the USA should never ever be on a flow chart like that. nasty. will this creep ever go away? he’s like a moth that you can’t hit because it’s too fast but is always flying around bugging you.
July 21st, 2009 at 1:09 am
This is what you get when the amoral meet opportunity. This is not about helping amyone have more accessible medical care. It.s strictly about the misuse and abuse of power for political gain.
CED
July 21st, 2009 at 8:27 am
You all talk about this being a bad idea, yet we are the only country that has private insurance. We pay higher prices for meds, insurance and health care than any other country. We have more uninsured people than any other country. So how exactly is the Obama plan worse than where we are now. Your premiums continue to go up and benefits continue to go down in the current format, yet you say that the Obama plan is worse. Politicians have already made the current plan bloated and full of red tape, so how would Obama’s plan be worse. Seriously people. I am unemployed and have no insurance. At least under Obama’s plan I would…
July 21st, 2009 at 9:11 am
JTB,
You are right. Our current system is ill. But you don’t cure a disease by killing the patient. Go live in a country with socialized medicine. You’ll find the government run plans incredibly inefficient and incompetent at nearly every level. The only redeeming element in them is that along the way you encounter a human being here and there who really does care. But that is fortune smiling, not because you had a choice.
Markets work. Markets are very efficient, because there is accountability every step of the way. When government moves from oversight to delivery there is no one to hold accountable. Bureaucracies reduce human beings to commodities. We’re not talking about taking care of the garbage, here.
If you think this through, you’ll come to understand you are dramatically impacting the probability of your own premature death or the death of a loved one.
CED
July 21st, 2009 at 9:37 am
JTB,
I am sorry you are unemployed and do not have insurance. That is a hard place to be and I hope that soon your situation improves.
The Health Care system in America does need reform, but not the type that is currently being proposed.
American health care is expensive because it is over-regulated. For example, drug companies have estimated that their costs could be cut by 85% if they didn’t pay so much into a bloated regulatory structure. Also, in the US we protect patent rights. So many of the “cheap” drugs in the world wouldn’t exist if not for the US – it’s only b/c of the potential to make money on drug development that the US companies develop them. How many blockbuster drugs are coming out of Africa, Eastern Europe, even the UK or Canada? They’re not.
In spite of our problems, our health care provision has been the envy of the civilized world and everywhere you look people want to come to America.
The solutions to these problems are to unlock the potential of free markets. If we want to improve the health situation, All health care purchases / health insurance purchases could be tax deductible. We could better allow more pooling of risks by the self-employed. We could make health care portable. We could encourage high deductible plans (so that we only insure against catastrophic health risk), and encourage health savings accounts for routine care, to encourage “shopping” amongst patients, stimulating development the same way that supply/demand does in other markets. We could cap malpratice awards to actual damages to help keep malpractice insurance costs lower, so that the cost of procedures can be lowered.
All of these things were introduced in previous sessions of congress (and continue to be introduced) but the Democrats have shot them all down. They want their socialism, and they want it now . . . Look at countries that have socialized medicine and health insurance for all – the care is poor, there’s shortages of doctors and cares, and the rich opt out and come to America for their care anyway.
See this book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1930865813?ie=UTF8&tag=dredav-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1930865813
Again, I hope your situation improves. You are in a tough spot and I understand your desire to have coverage and affordable care. There are ways to get there that make the situation better for everyone. Socialized medicine makes it better for a few, worse for the majority.
July 21st, 2009 at 10:03 am
CED,
The point you make is excellent regarding the move from oversight to delivery.
The President talks about government plans “competing” with private plans.
A real world equivalent would be this – imagine that the Lakers and the Magic were set to play the NBA finals, but before tip-off, the league turned to the Lakers coach, handed him the referee shirt and the whistle, and said, “You are now both the coach and THE referee. Oh, and you can change the rules anytime you see fit.”
Government should do nothing more than provide the minimum amount of protection for citizens against threat of violence to their lives, liberties or property. That’s it, end of story.
Look at EVERYTHING else government has taken over because “free markets can’t do it.” (in their words)
Retirement benefits for all? (Social Security). Bankrupt. People who are on it today are getting benefits not by their withholdings, but by the withholdings of people working today. In other situations, we call that theft.
Health care for the poor and elderly? (Medicare and Medicaid) Funded by borrowing money from other countries. Money that will be paid back not by this generation, but by a future one. In other situations, we call that theft.
DMV? USPS? Two organizations held up as models of INEFFICIENCY, how not to run an organization, how not to serve customers. Again, Federal Government.
Has the federal government succeeded at anything it has done without having to borrow massive amounts of money or steal from future (or current) generations?
When will the American people ever learn. Government takes monopolies to itself (coercively), borrows against the lives of future generations or eats the substance of all who labor in this generation, and everyone’s standard of living and personal choice/freedom goes down.
Unless America quickly changes course, the end is much nearer than we all know. We are only able to consume what we do because other countries are willing to hand us their resources in exchange for our IOUs . . .
Socialism only socializes on thing – misery. It is rooted in envy, it nurses grievances and says, “you are worse off because others are better off” and it’s only satisfied when everyone is as miserable as everyone else. It has failed everywhere it has been tried and almost always had ended in mass violence and murder (see USSR, Cuba, China, etc). But hope (and change!) springs eternal.
July 21st, 2009 at 10:09 am
One last thing.
Ever notice how everyone lines up to GET free health care, but no one is beating down the doors of the medical schools to spend 10 years of their lives learning how to PROVIDE free health care????
America has a problem, and it’s called “something for nothing”-itis.
So many people want everything for free, and they want someone else to provide it.
If you want free health care, go to medical school. Then you can give yourself all of it you want. Otherwise, if you don’t want to pay that price, and you want good medical care, you’d better provide some incentive to the people who actually have to use up huge chunks of their lives both learning and providing it.
July 21st, 2009 at 2:35 pm
As a CPA, one of my clients is a national home health care provider. Basically, this is a way that hundreds of thousands of aged and infirm persons get low cost health care services provided in their homes or in private care facilities.
The state and federal governments provide funding for these services for health care providers that, in the best of situations, manage an approximate financial return of 3 – 5%, after tax. A typical home health care provider will hire 40 to 50 Personal Care Attendants (PCA’s) to monitor home bound individuals at rates of $9.00 to $11.30 per hour without providing them health care benefits.
Under the Obama Health Care proposal, all home health care employers would be required to provide health care benefits at an additional cost of 8%. This would cause most home health care providers to go out of business because of a lack of profitability.
If this happens, not only will these minimum waged employees lose their jobs, but all of the home care patients serviced by these health care providers would be thrown back into the hospital/medical care system which could break the system even further than anticipated.
I personally do not think the Obama Administration is serious about implementing Health Care reform. I think they simply wanted to “run it up the flag-poll,” see where all the problems pop up and then blame George Bush!
July 22nd, 2009 at 5:51 pm
JTB,
You may not have health insurance now, but at least you have ACCESS to a doctor. I too am unemployed and without health insurance. I have gotten sick twice since I lost my job, and had to pay out of pocket. I got a large discount from my doctor (even though was still expensive), but I was in and out in 30 minutes, and had access to medical care and medication (and my doctor usually gives me free samples so I don’t have to spend money on those either).
The health care plan that the current administration is proposing is a form of modern slavery. You do not have a choice to NOT be on it (which would be my choice, actually). If you are working, and you change anything on your health plan (like, for example, add more coverage or add a kid), it automatically defaults to the government plan, which means that the health company just lost you as its customer because the government forcefully took you away. Not only that, small businesses would perish, like in Mr. Foster’s example, because of the additional tax on businesses that already can’t afford to cover their employees.
The government is forcefully trying to put us under its thumb and try to limit our freedoms. This isn’t only about health care coverage. It’s about power. And I would rather go without health insurance, and be able to keep my freedoms, than become a lackey of the State and have other people who worked hard for their money pay for health insurance for me.
The way to solve the health care “crisis” (I would like to know where the crisis is. I don’t see people dying in the streets because they can’t get to a doctor) is by de-regulating the industry. This would allow for more competition in the market, and therefore lower rates. That’s what we need, not the government getting its grubby hands all over us and our patient information.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:42 am
I am self employed and uninsured but because I chose to be. It is less expensive for me to pay the cost of a doctor visit then to pay the $300 / month premium. Most doctor / hospitals, walgreens give you a substantial discount for not having insurance. that tells me that the standards set by insurance companies exploit the actual cost for the healthcare provider. If you look at the statistics of those that are uninsured. There a quite a few people that choose to be that way or are in the age of 18 – 25. I definately do not want the gov’t involved in my choice. demanding that i “Have” to have insurance.
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:26 pm
BJM,
Great points. You often hear the 46 million uninsured!!! parroted in these debates. Here’s the truth.
Of the 46 million:
10 million are ILLEGAL ALIENS.
8 million are young and won’t buy it b/c they are healthy and don’t want to pay for it or use it
10 million make more than 75,000 per year and STILL WONT BUY for whatever reason they have.
So, that leaves 18 million people, or 6% of Americans not insured.
And you know what? Many of them qualify for Medicaid.
So it’s less than 6%.
So, for less than 6% of Americans, we’re going to throw out the health care system that is the envy of the civilized world? A system that 93.6% of Americans reported being “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their physician services (see http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82m0022x/2003001/t/4069108-eng.htm).
This is about a power grab and socialism pure and simple.
July 24th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Did anyone actually click on the links in the post? The one about politicians allowing themselves to opt-out was a letter which had nothing to do with politicians opting out of the program, and another link is to http://www.midwestfreepress.com, which has a section called “The Holocaust Myth”. I like SBABG, and I oppose socialized health care, but some of the sources in this post are not even close to reliable.
July 24th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Hi Chris,
Politicians opting out. I usually just grab a source (there are lots on this one), but the one I grabbed clearly has some issues. So, here’s some more explicit info:
Federal Employees Health Benefits Program
http://www.opm.gov/INSURE/HEALTH/
It’s separate from ObamaCare and remains excluded. Government employees get a better plan than the one they’re forcing the rest of citizens on.
HR 615 is the resolution to “encourage politicians” to forgo FEHBP and instead participate in ObamaCare, which currently exempts them, as well as other government workers. See:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.RES.615:
More info here:
http://kingsrightsite.blogspot.com/2009/07/end-congressional-exemption-from-obama.html
July 24th, 2009 at 10:55 am
And here’s the Wall Street Journal Article on the Union exemptions, which I didn’t even mention in the posts . . .
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124581677678245833.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
July 24th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Thanks as always for the links and information. Obama’s original proposal was to allow anyone to use FEHB – this was not a half bad idea. I worked for the government for 3 years (I hate to keep saying that, for regulars), and it was the best health care plan I have ever had. I had a choice of dozens of different providers and plans and the costs were much lower than any other plan I have been offered – even after the 50% pitched in by my employer (uncle sam). I don’t blame congressmen for wanting to keep it; the only problem I have is that they’re going to foist this new mess on the rest of us. The plans weaving their way through congress are a total disaster that are nothing like what was represented to us in his campaign speeches or elsewhere.
I don’t think that health care is a right, exactly – or that someone else has the responsibility to provide it, but I do think our current system needs a lot of work.
First of, 90% of health care happens at home. If you want better health the first, best, and cheapest thing you can do is eat healthier and get regular exercise. This can actually reduce your monthly grocery expenses (contrary to popular belief, you do not have to buy overpriced organic foods to be healthier than the Mc.Donalds diet, nor are those expensive boxed t.v. dinners with ‘healthy’ plastered across the box actually healthy or valuable). Exercise in the home is free, but if you really have forgotten the basic routines you learned in P.E. look for small gyms or take a fitness course at your local community college (or Wii Fitness!). I haven’t had health insurance in years since I left the government, but I also haven’t had a single out of pocket medical expense during that time besides over-the-counter medication. I don’t even get regular exercise (shame on me for being a hypocrite) but I do have a healthy diet and that alone has meant being sick less often than I was while I was insured. The boredom and depression inherent in government work probably had an impact as well, but I digress.
The next issue is that it falls on us as small business owners to realize that healthier employees are more productive employees. I don’t have any employees, so forgive me for any naivete here. The cost to insure employees is ridiculous, but there are a lot of other things we can do; providing gym, martial arts, or other fitness memberships (try bartering with a local gym for an exchange of services), exercise equipment in the office. even hook up with a local catering service to serve a healthy meal once or twice a month. Research has shown again and again that you can dramatically reduce productivity lost to illness and disease with efforts like this, which can more than offset your costs.
If we want to be able to afford health insurance for employees, or for employees to be able to afford their own, major changes need to happen up and down the health care system. Besides cleaning up regulation and improving technology and infrastructure (by the medical industry, not the government) to reduce costs, there are smaller changes that can be made. We need smarter insurance that does not leave people with serious preexisting conditions out in the cold, but also has plans that don’t cover everything and the kitchen sink – catastrophic coverage makes more sense for people in good health. We also need lower costs in the hospitals for both the insured and uninsured. Community level investments like free clinics are a huge help; the clinic that provided birth control prescriptions for my wife (then girlfriend) when we were younger certainly kept down our costs and our burden on society while we could not afford insurance or a child.
Anyway I’ll stop there – I always respond to an article with another article, haha. Thanks again.
July 25th, 2009 at 1:16 am
This post was okay, but the discussion (comments) are EXCELLENT! I work in healthcare and I agree 100% that the current plan will kill the quality of the healthcare system we enjoy today. Advances in medical care are made, whether you like it or not, by monetary incentive to do so. At the same time our system is breaking down, especially when it comes to basic care. General practitioners and pediatritions don’t even make enough to pay for the huge cost of going through medical school. It kills me to see someone who has dedicated 10-12 years of their life and $200,000 in schooling to be working 120+ hours a week, not to mention being on-call 24 hours a day, making less than $150,000 a year. By the way, that works out to about $24 per hour before taxes and malpractice insurance. Registered nurses make $25/hr or more after just 2 years of schooling, and as much as $40-60/hr depending on specialty and experience.
What we need to do is make an incentive for people to live healthy and contribute to society. So much of what has been done in the past, and being proposed now, has made us into a society that rewards laziness and provides an “out” for everyone. It seems absolutely absurd to me that the govt will give you free healthcare, free food, even free housing and a cell phone in most places if you make less than $xxx, but once you cross that line they’ll take it all away and tax you until you’re making less than the “impoverished”. Where’s the incentive to work? There also needs to be tort reform to reduce the cost of healthcare providers to do business, thus reducing the cost to the consumer (patient). Frivolous lawsuits are truly THE drain on healthcare today. Talk to any provider and those are the two things they’ll complain about. So why aren’t those issues being addressed?
August 11th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Free markets work theoretically, but we don’t have a free market in health care. Not just because of government red tape, but because of our reliance on and deregulation of private insurers. The fear of government interference in personal choice over quality and quantity of health care or insurance is valid, but not a viable argument against the current health care proposal (which will keep changing in the coming months, getting diluted and made even weaker in the process) since we already have insurance companies making those decision for us. They are the ones rationing our care right now, establishing drug prices and paying off politicians to stave off real caps on how much they can charge. They are the ones we have empowered to eliminate any semblance of personal freedoms when it comes to taking care of our own health. We are endebted to and beholden to them because besides Medicaid and Medicare, which have limited scope and space themselves, there are no other options for nearly 50 million Americans. And repeated ER visits do not count as health care.
A government supported option would ideally provide competition to private insurers, making the market more like a market than the monopoly it currently is. Companies like Aetna and Blue Cross competing against one another does not a free market make when they have no incentive to actually provide care to patients and all the incentive in the world to maximize profits at patient’s expense.
Ever hear of redaction? When insured people get knocked off because, say, they sprained their ankle or had a cold 10 years ago and didn’t list it as a preexisting condition?
Ever hear of underwriters? Among other things, they research ways to reject individuals and families from coverage.
Ever hear of local doctors not taking certain health insurance? Just because someone doesn’t have health insurance or is ill does not mean they are not taking good care of themselves or are irresponsible. They could be far from the nearest physician or can’t afford the gas or the car or the bus fare or the time for a 30-mile ride to someone who can help.
My point is that there are more factors at play here than just taking care of yourself and not doing so. More than just public versus private.
It’s not great to have government take on the role that private insurers now have, but to dismiss it offhand is not the answer either.
August 11th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
The following is what a colleague of mine sent me in response to the charge that any form of government supported health care would force people out of their existing coverage and be one step closer to a government takeover of health care:
“While it is true that each individual must take responsibility for
his or her behavior, we must remember the fact that public policies
support the production and sale of unhealthy food and discourage active living… [also], a free market health care solution produces what economists refer to
as negative externalities – high social costs born by all of us. It is often
more cost-effective to cover prevention, because when individuals lack health
services and the wherewithal (financial, educational, logistical) to stay
healthy, we all pay a substantial cost.”
August 12th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Personally I am tired of hearing about pre-existing conditions and underwriting. Most of that became a thing of the past with the passing of HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act).
Initially Pre-existing clauses were used to make sure that an employee or insured did not come onto a plan needing a surgery and as soon as the issue was addressed, drop the coverage, essentially making someone else pay the vast majority of the bills. All pre-existing condition clauses had term limits, meaning if you are on the insurance for a specific period of time (the usual was 1 year) then the condition would be considered as any other disease or medical condition. With the advent of HIPAA regulation, the rule changed so that if an individual had insurance with one company and was then hired by another company, no pre-existing condition clause would apply. That is if they were insured within the 90 of coming onto the new employers plan.
Underwriting is a very much changed animal. You can no longer be denied medical insurance, though if you are in very poor health, you may not like the premiums, but then you are at a higher risk. Unless you are on an individual policy, this will not even matter. The group insurance offered by your employer is usually a pooled fund where all costs are spread out over a group or block of business. They cannot deny one person coverage, unless the person actually lies on the application.
Also, much of the insurance on the market today is based on a partially self-funded model, and though your employer may be with a Blue Cross or one of the other big companies, every year they compete with other health insurance companies and get bids for the insurance you do receive.