Cranky-D

Go here and read. Stay away from breakables.

I read his article, and I agree with InstapunK. Our president is not a master architect of destruction. He is a narcissistic vandal who has grandiose ideas about “what is right for the country” but has no idea of the ramifications of what he does and wants to do. He truly believes he can do no wrong.

It looks like his ability to get things done is waning. Since what he wants to do will further damage our economy for decades to come, I will be very glad if he fails in this. Perhaps then he will scale back and start listening to people other than progressives. I doubt this will happen, but I can dream, if only just a little.

Reducing the cost of health insurance and health care is blindingly simple. A few changes will make it better.

• 1. Tort reform: We need to put a cap on damages that can be claimed in malpractice suits. Texas passed a law that put a cap of $500K for pain and suffering and doctors have flooded into the state. If you reduce the cost of malpractice claims, the insurance will cost less and that savings can be passed on to the consumer. Any doctor that does not will see his business drop. Also, insurance companies negotiate rates with the doctors on their plan, so insurance would cost less as well. Furthermore, if malpractice claims were reviewed and the ones without true merit were thrown out (yes, I know, but you cannot get away from people making these kinds of decisions), then doctors would not have to practice as much defensive medicine and therefore some tests which are unnecessary would never be performed, again lowering overall costs. While I agree that doctors who screw up need to be punished (boy do I ever agree), multi-million dollar judgements are ridiculous. Life sometimes hands out bad deals. FYI: I could have won a malpractice judgment handily, but I decided that since things turned out okay in the end to just leave it alone.
• 2. Medicare payments: Currently the government vastly underpays doctors who treat patients on medicare. If the government lived up to its obligation on that (whether we should HAVE medicare is a whole other issue… did you know you don’t have a choice whether to have it? If you qualify, you MUST enter the program) then doctors would not have to charge more to other patients to make up for the losses they take on medicare patients. Again, costs would decrease.
• 3. Regulation reform: A huge amount of the expense for doctors is in making sure all the paperwork is filled out properly, especially government paperwork. If that were streamlined (and as we know that stuff can ALWAYS be streamlined since it’s full of clauses and conditions put in to fulfill some politician’s dream about How Things Should Be) then costs would go down since the doctor wouldn’t need to hire as many people to do that work. Even though this might mean lost jobs, it would mean lost jobs doing stupid bureaucratic stuff which does not create wealth, thus freeing up some money elsewhere that can create wealth.
• 4. Hospital compensation: Another huge expense for hospitals is treating people without insurance. Basically, hospitals right now are the socialized medicine in our country. If the government policy is to have the hospitals treat the uninsured (and our Judeo-Christian ethics would have it no other way, thank G-d) then they should be compensated by the state or federal government for their costs. The way it is now, the hospitals amortize the cost by charging the people who can pay, more. If the hospitals didn’t have to do that, costs for the insured would decrease.

Okay, enough. You get the idea. I think it’s possible to have real reforms that can reduce costs while still not touching on anyone’s current insurance or quality of care. Tie this in with my proposal in my last entry for expanding the insurance plan to cover all those not covered now who want to be covered and you are done.

Yes, this will cost the government some money… the money they are not paying the doctors who treat medicare patients. However, it will not cost even close to the amount they want to spend to basically insure 7 million more people. Even if they wanted to insure 20 million people, it would be insane.

There are cheaper ways. There are better ways. I outlined them above and in my last post.

Remember, though, this “health care crisis” is not about insuring people. It’s about the government controlling even more of the economy than it already does. That is the plan. That is the goal. Otherwise, they would be doing the kinds of things I have already suggested rather than what they are trying to do now.

BTW, yes, I hope Obama fails in this.

A nice writeup on why health care costs increase over time at Ace of Spades HQ.

You can count me among the fear-mongers who are very afraid of government-run health insurance. What I don’t understand is why more people aren’t afraid of it. The government has already proven that it’s bad at things like this. Just take a look at Medicare, which underpays for services rendered. This means that the people who are insured subsidize the health care of older people, because the slack in income has to be taken up somewhere. Also, you don’t have a choice but to be on Medicare when you are old enough to qualify. It’s required. You can get supplemental insurance as well, though, which probably won’t be true under any system that “covers” all of us. However, if we are all on a program which underpays for services rendered, who will take up the slack in payments? No one. Which means that we will no longer have access to cutting edge medical technologies. It might also mean that cutting edge technologies might not be developed as quickly.

I think the current system is pretty fair. Those who cannot or will not get insurance still have access to health care. They will probably not get the best treatment available, but those are the breaks. Instead, they will get the standard treatments (which of course were the best treatments 10 years ago). That upsets progressives because they think that is not a “fair” situation. So their solution will be to reduce the kind of care everyone gets to the kind of care the uninsured get right now, though maybe it will be a little better than that.

There is no way it could be any different. The government does not look at things like it’s a business, since it does not have to. Instead, they look at costs vs. tax revenue and figure out a way to either cut the former or increase the latter. And, since tax rates and tax revenue are not proportional (meaning you cannot just increase taxes and get a proportional increase in revenue), cutting costs is the only way to keep the program solvent.

If you look at the current plan as proposed, you will see that while you can keep your current insurance, if you want to change it at any time you will have to get the government insurance. They will have everyone on that plan purely by attrition. Also, it’s pretty obvious that larger businesses will drop their plans in favor of the goverment plan, as benefits are a huge sunk cost to businesses.

By the way, did you know that businesses started offering health care benefits in the first place because taxes were so high that it made more sense to increase the size of non-taxed benefits packages to entice people to work for them? Fun fact.

I just turned 45, and my health insurance costs me a little over $300 per month. That’s with a $2500 deductible for care and a $350 deductible for medications. So, I basically pay out of pocket for my health care. My medications cost a heck of a lot more than $350 per year (approx $2000 I think) so most of that gets paid for except for about $40 in co-pays per month. Not bad, really. Not cheap, perhaps, but about the same as a car payment. It’s a program that is through the state I live in, but administered by a regular health insurance company. The rates I pay are tracked against private insurance rates, and they keep them within 120% of private rates. People who have lower incomes can have part of the costs subsidized by the state. I have never read those documents too closely, but I imagine if you’re really poor you can get most of the costs subsidized. Of course, if you’re on welfare, there is already a program for you.

If we are truly concerned about providing health insurance for everyone, why not use the same kind of program I’m on right now? I am a Federalist, and would prefer that people look to the states to provide these solutions (and they probably already do, for the most part), but if you want it to be national, fine. Have insurance companies in every state bid for the market in that state. Set up a rate structure that tracks private insurers in each state. And finally, those who cannot afford it will have the government pay for some or even all of their premium costs (paid directly of course).

That would provide a minimal impact on the current system, and leave people like me who are quite happy with the way things are alone.

We would still, of course, have people who are uninsured by choice who can afford the payments. Half of those “47 million uninsured” are people who make more than enough money to buy insurance. That’s fine with me. If something bad happens to them, they won’t get the kind of care I could get. They took their chances.

Choices have consequences. Life has consequences. Progressives are not trying to save people, they are trying to remove the consequences from life. In doing so, they will make all of us suffer.