It’s even worse than you think:
The Democrats want to spend $1.5 trillion over a decade, impose an $800 billion tax increase in the midst of the worst recession in a generation, increase federal borrowing by $239 billion (on top of the $11 trillion the Obama budget already requires us to borrow through 2019), impose costly mandates on employers that will discourage hiring as unemployment nears 10 percent, force individuals to buy one-size-fits-all government defined insurance, and insert the government in countless new ways between doctors and patients. All of that would occur whether or not the plan includes a “public option,” which at this point it does include and which will exacerbate all of these problems.
As these facts have become clear, Obama’s standing has fallen and public opinion has grown decidedly less enthusiastic for the administration’s approach. The trend is likely to continue, because the details of the plan reveal that its two most serious drawbacks–its cost and the prospect of government rationing–are worse than even most of their critics have grasped.
Of course, that won’t stop them, in and of itself. We have to make our views known to our representatives next month when they’re back in their districts.
Though perhaps it’s not fair to call it Obamacare, since the president admits that he doesn’t even know what’s in the bill. And yet he continues to flail around attempting (and apparently failing) to defend it.
[Update late afternoon]
Why “health care” is not a right:
…imagine if the government had a body of experts charged with figuring out what your free-speech rights are, or your right to assemble, or worship. Mr. Jones, you can say X and Y, but not Z. Ms. Smith, you can freely assemble with Aleutians, Freemasons, and carpenters, but you may not meet in public with anyone from Cleveland or of Albanian descent. Mrs. Wilson, you may pray to Vishnu and Crom, but never to Allah or Buddha, and when you do pray, you cannot do so for longer than 20 minutes at a time, unless it is one of several designated holidays. Please see Extended Prayer Form 10–22B.
Of course, all of this would be ludicrous beyond words.
Actually, I can imagine this gang coming up with something exactly like that.
Oh and Leland, here’s a list I found with virtually no effort of absolutely blood curdling horror stories about US healthcare.
http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=20693#comments
Oh, yes – what struck me about these is they aren’t even marginal cases. Most of the UK “horror” stories turn out to be marginal, at best, where a person in a similar situation in the US probably wouldn’t be able to get the treatment anyway because the insurance wouldn’t pay either.
So when your employer’s premium is hit with a million dollar surcharge for you because your wife has leukemia and have to can you… what are you options?
I can always fly home…
Except most of them aren’t “choosing” to self-insure. They can’t get insurance.
That would be an interesting statement, if it were true. Aside from very expensive preexisting conditions, the claim that someone “can’t get” insurance just isn’t true.
Let me elaborate a little. I think there’s a huge economic problems with the way health care and health insurance is regulated. For example, requiring employers to provide health insurance even to ex-employees out of work for 18 months and enlarging what conditions are covered by insurance has resulted in enlarged demand for health services. Similarly, the regulation of doctors (for example, the ludicrous education and training schedule that even general practice doctors go through) and hospitals (for example, that hospitals have to take in anyone who is experiencing a sufficiently dire and urgent health problem) results in restriction of supply.
As I see it, even in a wealthy and healthy society where everyone could afford appropriate health insurance, people will often chose to not be insured. And to be blunt, it stretches credulity to believe that all 40+ million uninsured in the US have an expensive preexisting condition (like dying of cancer, for example) that precludes them from getting health insurance.
My view is that the only way universal health care would reverse the real problems and costs of current health care is by undoing decades of regulation. In that light, it’s much simpler (at least for me) to just undo the regulation rather than implementing a clumsy government bureaucracy first and then undoing the regulation (at least for the government agency).
More data on mortality rates for Cancers. First, I happen to live near this hospital. So I know I don’t need to increase my carbon footprint, but I guess some people have no problem flying around the world telling others how to live.
And speaking of living, lets look at Cancer mortality rates. Here’s the US and here’s the UK (note I provided cites, unlike some people who otherwise demend them)
So I look up Texas, because that’s somewhere I don’t have to fly, and I find that mortality rate for cancer is 174.5 deaths per 100,000 people (age adjusted). So what about the UK? It’s 177.3 deaths per 100,000 people (age adjusted).
So then I decide to look at UK suicide rates, since I see at least one British subject that likes being a lemming. Hmm, US and Texas, it’s about 10/100,000 age adjusted. UK, well it’s about 17/100,000 age adjusted, but good news, the number is coming down.
The UK has a higher life expectancy than the US. (See here). Since everybody dies of something, longer life expectancies would skew deaths to slower-acting diseases like cancer.
We’re around 30th in the world for life expectancy, but we spend a heck of a lot more money. The other industrialized countries on that list have “socialized medicine.”
Perhaps we can also get a monarch like the UK too.
Well, France doesn’t have a monarch, and they have a higher life expectancy.
Perhaps we could actually get a higher life expectancy and quit being stupid.
Gerrib, you can quit being stupid today.
Since everybody dies of something, longer life expectancies would skew deaths to slower-acting diseases like cancer.
Go learn what age adjusted means.
So the link I provided that said the UK has a year or so longer life expectancy and spends half of what we do on health care is chopped liver? Not that a UK system is what’s being proposed.
Bottom line – we’re #30 in life expectancy, and pay twice the going rate for that less-than-stellar result, with costs going up several times faster than inflation. Until somebody comes up with an explanation for why we continuing on the current course isn’t being “stuck on stupid,” I will continue to support the proposed reforms.
So the link I provided that said the UK has a year or so longer life expectancy and spends half of what we do on health care is chopped liver?
Well
Not that a UK system is what’s being proposed.
I guess so
Bottom line – we’re #30 in life expectancy
Behind Andorra, Macau, San Marino, Guernsey, Gibraltor, Cayman Islands, Monaco, Liechtenstein, Faroe Islands, Malta, Ilse of Man….
pay twice the going rate for that less-than-stellar result, with costs going up several times faster than inflation.
Hey, what do you think about that English system of loser pay? Or do you prefer France that formally doesn’t allow punitive damages for tort. Maybe you should look at punitive laws in relation to those countries that have “stellar’ health care that costs less. It might help you get unstuck.