- We need decent health insurance options that are not coupled to our jobs. Just because I change jobs shouldn’t mean I have no decent health plans available to me.
- Health care costs in general are out of control. Even after my insurance, I was charged over $200 per month for a relatively common medication.
Conservatives, however, seemed to read it differently, leaving several versions of this comment:
My question is this; someone has to pay for these pharmaceuticals. In a case like yours, who should that be? If your answer is to shift the burden to taxpayers, let me say as a taxpayer that I am having enough trouble paying for my own family’s living expenses.
The point of health reform — and of my story — is really not about “shifting the burden to taxpayers,” but conservatives insist on seeing it that way. Ironically, they seem completely obsessed with the government’s role. There is a role for a public plan, but the public option is not an end in itself. Rather, it’s a way to help us meet some of the main goals of health reform:
- Insure all Americans.
- Make health insurance less dependent on your employment.
- Lower overall health care costs.
The solution to these efforts isn’t just to have the government pay for them. In fact, market forces are meant to play more of a role than the government is, through the efficiencies gained by insuring all Americans and focusing on preventative care. The function of the public plan is simply to increase competition and lower costs. Yes, to provide health care to some Americans, taxpayers will have to foot the bill. But these are people who are already forced to use the emergency room as their primary health care, passing the costs along to taxpayers anyway.
Most Americans, including myself, aren’t asking the government to pay for our health care. We simply want a system in which changing jobs doesn’t mean you must also change your doctor or stop taking your medicine, and in which health care is affordable for everyone. The fact that one commenter suggested I get a second job to pay for my single medication should be a sign that our health care system desperately needs a change.
I really don’t know how anyone can understand conservatives(and I am talking about the more hardcore ones here) without reading a book like ‘The Paradoid Style in American Politics’ by Richard Hofsterader. It is a classic and it tries to dig into why the fear by conservatives of gov’t is almost psychotic at times.
This really became apparent to me when I went home last week to visit my parents in Iowa. My parents are not crazy religious fanatics but they do always vote Republican, so that makes for some very interesting Thanksgivings…anyway my father has recently been tossed from his health insurance because he has a heart condition. In essence the private system in our country has decided he is not fit for life. Now thankfully he qualified for tests done by IowaCare and is being cared for under that system now…AND YET..AND YET…I was unable to convince either of my parents that a public option is a good idea…Sounds impossible right?? My mother gave me a long list of Republican talking points and told me that a Gov’t option would probably be run like the post office or the DMV and that the Gov’t couldn’t fix anything.
So there you have it…my parents…conservatives…are literally saying that they would rather die than recieve healthcare from the gov’t. I wish I could say that this is the only example of irrationalism around the idea of gov’t healthcare, but I think this point of view quite common in conservatve cicles…and it is nearly impossible to argue them out of it.
I love the post office argument.
What you use Fedx to send out your Xmas cards and pay your bills?
Of course the point is usually missed.
Bill Maher had a great point about the post office:
“I can send a letter, from my home in LA, on a Monday, and it gets to my sister in New Jersey on Wednesday, for 42 cents. How is that “broken?”
Jeff - This has nothing to do with health care, it is about control. There are always those (left and right) who want more control over society. Health care, energy, taxes, land planning, etc….they all come with one goal…shifting power and control from the individual to the government.
A limited and effective government is best. Notice, I’m not saying eliminate police/fire, public schools, etc. I’m saying…LIMITED.
I don’t buy it. There is very little control in the private healthcare system, the insurance company makes the decision for you(as it did my father) and you don’t get treatment. Now I know Medicare isn’t perfect and can be improved, but it give the patient MUCH MORE control over their health than the private sector and actually offers treatment.
I think this starts with a false premise. In your universe, there are only Government and the Individual. But there are other entities at work here in the real world- Corporations being one major example.
I don’t know why conservatives are so sanguine about corporate power- people like Jefferson understood that any concentration of power is a danger to individuals. Libertarian conservatives have butchered Jefferson’s beliefs to take the parts they like and leave the parts they don’t like behind, yet that results in an incoherent approach.
I don’t see any major move from the Individual to Government in a public health plan, the significant shift is from Corporate to Government, in large part because corporate health care has by and large been a failure. As Teddy Roosevelt understood, one doesn’t grow government out of love for government, but out of skepticism of other large and powerful entities in society that infringe on the rights of individuals. Conservatives idealize and deify private entities and completely overlook the fact that they infringe on individual rights every bit as much as Government does, sometimes even more.
Who heck is sanguine about corporate power? Jeez!! You act as though there are really only two options: the way things are today or everything run by the government. This conservative hates monopoly, which is precisely why I oppose a single payer plan or an unchecked public option. My God how dense. Do you really believe that everyone against obamacare is some big business stooge? Do you really believe that putting the government in charge the health of every man woman and child in one of the largest first world countries in the world is the ONLY way to fix this?
If you want to debate this topic, debate the arguments offered, not some straw man “conservatives love big companies and hate government” crap. Get out of your echo chamber and listen to the arguments real life people have against this, not some fictional “conservative” bogeyman that gives you all the arguments you know how to win.
http://www.truthvmachine.com/?p=11337
Dear Lloyd-
First, take a chill pill, or two- however many it takes for you to get to a frame of mind where you can intelligently debate.
The strawmen you accuse me of setting up are strawmen themselves. The poster I’m responding to - it’s not a HUGE amount of reading, so give it a shot- implied EXACTLY what I’m saying (and which you say no conservative believes, despite its actual existence in black and white on the very same page). To paraphrase “Health care…come[s] with one goal…shifting power and control from the individual to the government.”. As I point out, this rather manichean, either/or, government/individual viewpoint is quite clearly and obviously implied in the quote. It may need to be read while not in a state of apoplexy in order for it to be followed. Let me know how that goes for you.
P.S.: My posts are considerably less snarky when I’m not responding to infantile outbursts.
“I don’t know why conservative [strawmen] are so sanguine about corporate power- people like Jefferson understood that any concentration of power is a danger to individuals. Libertarian conservative [strawmen] have butchered Jefferson’s beliefs to take the parts they like and leave the parts they don’t like behind, yet that results in an incoherent approach.”
“Conservative [strawnen] idealize and deify private entities and completely overlook the fact that they infringe on individual rights every bit as much as Government does, sometimes even more.”
Sorry but you are painting with a pretty broad brush there. Guyg’s point was completely valid. The single payer system is simply a transfer of power from a small handful of state sanctioned “private” insurance companies to one big public insurance company. To say it’s anything but a power grab by the more powerful than rich from the more rich than powerful is a lie. You may not see any major move from the individual to the government with this plan but do you see any movement at all towards the individual and away from powerful or monied interests?
Can you tell me who authorizes and regulates health insurance companies today? How many are there? On what basis do they compete against one another? Who are their customers? Who do they market to? And single payer or some public plan that can run at a loss in perpetuity will put all that power back in the hands of the individual how?
“And single payer or some public plan that can run at a loss in perpetuity will put all that power back in the hands of the individual how?” Tell me where I said that the public plan will put power back into the hands of the individual. I was countering the argument that this is a big shift in power from the individual to the government. My argument that this is not the case: it is a shift in power from large private entities to the government. For individuals, it is mostly a wash. I was also decrying the fact that his analysis seems to acknowledge two possible entities: government and the individual. Such an analysis ignores the reality in this case that the shift is between government and private (non-individual) entities.
I’m all for limited government, but health and wellbeing(police/fire, healthcare) need to be part of that limited government. Energy costs need to reflect actual costs. Now a days, if a company sells cheap energy, has an oil spill, and goes out of business, who has to pay for it? The taxpayers.
Energy costs are currently subsidized by our government. And I mean oil and gas, coal and others. The costs of doing business can outlast the existence of said business, and it must be addressed, which means it is subsidized by taxpayers now.
It’s sad that cap and trade is closer to a free market system than what we have now. Tying health insurance to place of employment is closer to free market as well. It’s free market for everyone, not just companies. Employees should be able to pick and choose which company to work for, rather than giving up benefits, especially since some get to a point where they can’t move because of health issues anymore.
Yeah, there could be other ways. Perhaps a clean-up insurance fund or something that companies who deal with certain stuff handle, etc.. I prefer less paperwork myself, and don’t know if cap and trade can accomplish that or not. This “Clean Up” insurance needs to be government backed, or we can have an AIG mess all over again.
But yeah, I’m tired of being a taxpayer and reducing energy costs for all americans when I only want to pay for what I am using(much less than many americans, more than some others to be sure though). The problem is the issue becomes political, and everyone sees it differently.
Remember when either Obama or Bush or one of the congresses’ decided to roll back massive tax forgiveness programs for oil companies, who said they wouldn’t be competitive afterwards. They were not paying a whole bunch of taxes, so again, we’ve been subsidizing these energy sources for a VERY long time now.
The fact that our current system is what it is because of government intervention seems to be either forgotten or purposefully overlooked. The fact that insurance is attached so strongly to employment started due to compensation limits during WW2 (Pay-Czar anyone?) which caused companies to find other ways of attaining the few remaining employees. It was further entrenched by provisions in the tax code designed to reduce the tax burden on union employees who often received a large percentage of their compensation in the form of health care coverage. On top of that there is the fact that Medicare, Medicaid and the multitude of local and state entities account for about half the countries medical spending. Add in the thousands and thousands of pages of government regulation governing the different aspects of delivering health care and you can see how there really has been no effective free market in health care for decades. The various entities, insurance companies, hospitals and doctors have all adjusted to the playing field set in front of them which has given us the mess we currently have.
So complain all you want about what we have now but it is a creature born almost entirely from the unintended consequences of government interventions of years gone by. Once you destroy the market you can no longer use it as the boogie-man required for further intervention. It is the equivalent of blaming nature for an infestation of mosquitoes after you decided to kill all the bats you thought were evil.
The biggest problem is not that healthcare is linked to employment. I would say that the gov’t is actually what makes private healthcare possible at all. If you look to all the major gov’t programs: Medicare, Medicade, SCHIP…down to the Minnesota Programs like GAMC, the Gov’t actually covers most of the people that the private system would turn their noses up to anyway. The fact that the private system works so poorley given these circumstances and the massive economic and political subsidy given to it by the taxpayer is very telling.
The problem most certainly originated with insurance being attached to employment. The current disaster of a system is based on that distortion. It detached the consumer from the cost of the product and the providers from the cost of delivering a bad product. An insurance company doesn’t care about preventative care because there is a good chance that the individuals they are covering will switch providers between the point the money is spent on prevention and when that investment is recouped.
I believe we need universal access and that government has an important role to play. I would prefer that we mandate all insurance companies must have a prototypical basic plan they must provide to anyone regardless of condition, one that cannot canceled so that there is an incentive for preventative care regardless of income. Than we then provide income based vouchers to those who need assistance funded by a tax on premiums.
Then the insurance companies can provide plans that don’t cover motorcycle accidents or people who smoke or drink at a lower rate than those who do. You want to make unhealthy choices and you will have to pay for those choices. The only way to really reduce real health care costs is to encourage people to make healthier choices while maintaining a very basic universal coverage to everybody that focuses on prevention.
Show me three examples of a government program which was ineffective or too costly, and was adjusted or dealt with in a responsible timeframe.
I can only think of one: BRAC. And to do it, they actually had to get a non-partisan panel together and keep the politiicans out of it.
I don’t hate government. I don’t even hate “big government.” I just have zero confidence in government’s ability to be self-critical and deliver value to its citizens that is commensurate with its cost.
The ridiculous thing is that we have gone out of our way to keep the insurance companies in business…ya know what? We don’t need them…how many people could be treated for the salary or bonus or cost of one of the corporate jets of the upper level management in these companies? Insurance companies simply aren’t necessary. They are middle-men that take out a pound of your flesh on the way to the doctor…and then if you are sick they just kick you off their rolls and add someone more healthy.
This is where you’ll see different responses from conservative and moderate R’s. Conservatives will give you reasons why that corporation needs to stay in business and why the corporate jet is justified.
Moderates like me largely agree with you, but then say that government-run insurance companies aren’t the logical conclusion. What about states experimenting with innovative approaches? What about nonprofits taking a large share of the market?
“Moderates like me largely agree with you, but then say that government-run insurance companies aren’t the logical conclusion. What about states experimenting with innovative approaches? What about nonprofits taking a large share of the market?”
I think there is some room for agreement here and I appreciate the thoughtful response. I promise you that if we could simply eliminate the bad-faith negotiators in the healthcare debate, I bet we would have had meaningful substantive reform many years ago. You do realize that this position would probably get you called a communist sympathizer by the mainstream of the Republican Party don’t you??
no argument from me on that either. The insurance companies are greedy little piglets sucking at the teat of the states they reside in. They face no competition outside of their sheltered borders, they don’t have to deal with customers (unless by customers you mean the employers they sell to or the state regulators whose skids they grease). The insurance companies suck. They suck big time but at least you have the CHOICE to change jobs, buy your own insurance, pay in cash, or move to another state where the offerings are better. What choice would you have in single payer? What choice will you have with a “public plan” that will outlaw the creation of new policies?
The other absurdity in this argument is that people actually think these ass clowns are going to be put out of business by Obamacare. Yeah right. Who do you think the government is gonna get to run this crap once they take it over? If you want a glimpse at the future take a look at the treasury department and the revolving door it has on wall street. All those guys that have been ripping us off in the not for profit sector will be ripping us off from the public sector and if you think they wont have the same perks they had before you’re wrong. They’ll have even more power to trade with.
I’m sorry for the rant. I honestly am but this is the most short sighted piece of garbage idea this country has seen in a long long long time and it’s frustrating that so many seemingly smart people believe that they can improve the system by giving it more of the same.
Same could be said about government. How many people could have health care if not for the billions spent on war, sports stadiums, bike trails, dog-parks, overbuilt-transit systems, and every other nicety paid for with tax dollars? If health care were truly a priority it would be paid for before things of less import.
In any event you seem to continue to avoid the realities of why we are where we are which makes it a fairly good bet you won’t have any idea of how to get to where we need to go.
Great point, KH.
“If health care were truly a priority it would be paid for before things of less import.”
Finally! Something that we can agree upon. I think there is plenty of money in the Defense budget…which is something like 50% of the total world dollars of military spending for healthcare money. However this still misses the point that the U.S. cost per capita for healthcare is much more than other developed countries and yet we get a hell of a lot less…now all of these other countries have massive gov’t ‘interference’ in the industry and yet that produces a lot better results.
I would venture that the two forms of gov’t healthcare systems in this country, the VA (socialized medicine) and Medicare (single payer) actually get better ratings from their patients than do many of the private insurers…and like I have said in the past…DESPITE the massive infusion of political and economic subsidy that the taxpayers essentially GIVE to the private insurers they still provide a very expensive product very inefficiently.
Can you even imagine how much worse these health insurance companies would be viewed if there was no government around to take the most expensive patients in the country off of their hands?