Not only is dissent racist, and no longer patriotic — it’s downright Un-American.
Just when was it that opposing socialism became un-American? Are Nancy and Steny going to revive this?
I’m pretty sure this isn’t the way to win the hearts and minds of the American people. They seem to be just desperately flailing. I can’t take them seriously of course, in their sudden interest in discussing the issue. If they’d had their way, the bill would already have been a fait accompli, with no public discussion at all. But we’re the ones who are “un-American.”
[Noon Pacific update]
Geraghty has similar thoughts to mine:
I understand that the House of Representatives has done this before when Democrats were running the show.
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., could chair with Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as the ranking member, except we would need some sort of catchy nickname for the idea of looking through the American population for those who dissent from the line of the White House and holding them up for public demonization and ridicule and shunning…
Beyond that, I would have someone who’s not in Congress right now put together a list of people who ought to be shunned and public persona non grata for their un-American behavior and views. We could get some prominent Democratic state legislatior to run it — say, Wisconsin Democratic Assembly Member Spencer Black — and we could name that list after him…
It would be ironic on multiple levels.
[Afternoon update]
So, do Nancy and Steny think that the SEIU is un-American?
Opponents of reform are organizing counter-demonstrators to speak at this and several congressional town halls on the issue to defend the status quo. It is critical that our members with real, personal stories about the need for access to quality, affordable care come out in strong numbers to drown out their voices.
The logical and hypocritical knots into which these creatures twist themselves is a sight to behold.
Leland – “regulate interstate commerce” has been used since the founding of the Republic – see the history of the Bank of the United States (1782) or the FDA (1906). It’s pretty settled law.
As I pointed out in a previous thread, the 1st amendment specifically says “peaceable” when talking about assemblies.
It is not a market because there’s no ability for buyers and sellers to determine what is to be sold, to set prices, or even walk away from the deal.
That isn’t correct; private insurers will continue to set premiums. They just can’t set a higher premium for you than for your neighbor, because of your health history.
Not only is Medicare underfunded, but no one is required to enroll, regardless of how much they’re taxed.
Okay, so enroll in Medicare and don’t submit any claims. That’d be fine with the rest of us.
[Medicare is] also going broke.
Yes, and Obama is the first President to try to do anything about it. For that he gets accused of wanting to set up “death panels.”
“Regulate commerce among states” is a far cry from creating a health care organization
It’s also a far cry from mandating federal inspections of commercial meat packing plants (even when the meat doesn’t cross state lines). But do you really want to go back to the world of The Jungle?
Jim: “Which is why the reform efforts do not drastically alter the parts of the system that are working. People who are happy with their insurance can keep it.”
How can you know that Jim?
Have you read the bill? If not, do you actually trust the people writing it? And if you do trust them, why?
The whole problem with passing bloated bills without knowing their contents is that… you don’t know their contents. How can you honestly say that the bill won’t cause X item? What are you taking the President at his word?
Assuming you’re not a mindless partisan flack knowingly spewing lies, you show a delusional faith in the competence and altruism of our governing class. A class that accuses people exercising their First Amendment rights Un-American.
Trustworthy.
As I pointed out in a previous thread, the 1st amendment specifically says “peaceable” when talking about assemblies.
Yeah, and apparently Democrats are requesting thugs come out and hit back twice as hard. Sorry, but the videos provide better compelling evidence than your rhetoric.
Chris, the max annual co-pay is set by the bill. Coverage is outlined by the bill and detailed by the commission. By law, you will have to have all of those coverages. The commission will determine premiums for the public option. Do you think employers are going to pay 2x or 3x for the same coverage as the public option for their employees? On the contrary, it is likely that employers will simply dump people onto the public option since that (being backed by the full taxing authority of the federal government) will have the lowest premiums. Now, if the pro-gov-insurance folks wish to argue that giant top-down systems are wonderful, that’s a personal values judgment, and I’m not going to talk anyone out of those. But plesae don’t try to whitewash it.
Also, Barbara’s comment leads to a point – on its own merit, a federal “individual mandate” would be struck down by the courts. The feds cannot require an individual to buy something simply because they reside in the US. So they’ve done it on the sly by charging people a tax on their AGI on the 1040. Sadly, I think that’ll make it much harder to litigate.
How can you know that Jim?
Because the bills are public documents being picked over by legions of health care policy experts in and out of the government. If there were a provision that kept people from keeping their current insurance some blogger would have found it by now.
Instead we get made up stuff about “death panels.”
Coverage is outlined by the bill and detailed by the commission. By law, you will have to have all of those coverages.
Minimal coverage levels are set today by insurance commissions in each state. This is nothing new.
For that matter, each state sets minimum requirements for cars if they want to be registered to drive on public roads. And yet there is still a market for different kinds of cars.
The commission will determine premiums for the public option.
Might this cut into insurance profit margins and slow premium inflation? Yes, and that’s precisely the point.
That doesn’t mean that you have to take the public option, or that private insurance will disappear. Private insurance hasn’t disappeared for senior citizens, and Medicare isn’t optional.
If there were a provision that kept people from keeping their current insurance some blogger would have found it by now.
Do you understand the difference between a “provision” and an “inevitable consequence”?
Instead we get made up stuff about “death panels.”
You can criticize the effectiveness of the rhetoric if you wish, but that’s essentially what will result.
So, Chris, it is your opinion that this tactic by Pelosi and Hoyer is going to be politically effective, and bring more people over to their side?
I don’t know about Chris, but I’m certain their tactics will bring more to their side. I just put this bumper sticker on my SUV to help the process. Nice, eh?
I can’t speak for Jim, but I actually read the whole bill. (If you’re going to try that at home, make sure you’re fully caffienated first.)
Titus – Do you think employers are going to pay 2x or 3x for the same coverage as the public option for their employees? Well, if it is truly the same coverage, probably not. But then it wouldn’t be a sucky socialist system with poor service and long wait times. You can’t argue “government health care will suck” and “but everybody will voluntarily take it” in the same breath.
Leland – asking people to come out with ” real, personal stories about the need for access to quality, affordable care” is perfectly okay. Telling them that they need to come out in force to drown out rowdies is a problem. Although, if the “antis” weren’t being rowdy, there wouldn’t be a need to come out in force.
See, that’s the other side of not being polite – you invite not polite behavior on yourself. I do not want to see town hall meetings become even more of a riot then they have already been.
No, Jim. The federal government would be mandating that people buy the public option or a clone thereof. That is new. Again, if you’d like to explain how this giant government option is not a giant top-down government system, go right ahead. Also, did you read the bill?
Also, if you have evidence to show how the commission will be able to cut into a ~5% profit margin *just enough* to not put insurance companies out of business (so that we can all “keep our insurance”), I’d love to see it. The sad reality is that gov’t bureaucracies usually have less information than the private sector in these matters.
Rand – how does this bill produce “death panels?”
Not that private insurance doesn’t produce death panels now.
Well, there’s nothing which keeps your existing policy/company from folding up, and given that they won’t be able to add new people or change premiums, the consequence is, I won’t say “inevitable”, but quite likely. Also, the grandfathering only last for five years, after which you’re back on an insurance exchange clone.
Gerrib, I think you, and your Democratic friends in Congress, fail to understand how upset the voters are. You act like the “rowdies” haven’t tried other means, much more civil, to get their Congressmen to respond to them. Again, the videos provide a much different stories. No matter how many times Democrats try to claim these people are not constituents and that they haven’t tried other means; the facts just get in the way.
So now, these people are being called UnAmerican. Keep it up, if you think that is the way to win hearts and minds.
Chris, you won’t have a choice. Your employer will dump you on the public option because it’ll be the cheapest solution. (Profit margins, you understand.) Sure you can keep your existing insurance — if you can afford it.
Yesterday I was watching a piece about Probation on the History Channel. Barring perhaps Social Security, so called health care reform is the first time since then the government has entered of such a massive social engineering program.
I do not see a Dr Al Capone in the near future, but given the Town Hall meetings of late a body does have to wonder.
I used to watch the likes of Stalin standing on the Kremlin Wall taking the salute of the soldiers marching by and wondering “does he really believe what he said he was pushing?” Really?
Does Nancy really believe?
Apologies to Stalin.
You can criticize the effectiveness of the rhetoric if you wish, but that’s essentially what will result.
We’ve had Medicare — government-run, single payer, socialized health insurance — for 44 years. Where are the Medicare death panels?
Do you understand the difference between a “provision” and an “inevitable consequence”?
Yes, and I understand the difference between reality and Rand’s fevered imagination.
Gerrib, I think you, and your Democratic friends in Congress, fail to understand how upset the voters are.
I don’t doubt that there are millions of people upset at Obama. Heck, there are millions who don’t think he was born in the U.S. But there are far more who voted for him, in part because he promised to do something about health care.
Don’t mistake a handful of edge cases with the entire country.
We’ve had Medicare — government-run, single payer, socialized health insurance — for 44 years. Where are the Medicare death panels?
I’ll repeat: Medicare is going broke.
Yes, and I understand the difference between reality and Rand’s fevered imagination.
It takes little imagination to anyone not an economic ignoramus.
Jim’s assertion that people are happy with Medicare is fantasy. Doctors are refusing new Medicare patients due to lower and late payments. The fraud and waste are horrible yet he keeps tossing that out there.
Chris, if you read the bill then you know insururs are required to offer a minimum level of coverage and there are mandated coverages that most people won’t use and don’t want to buy. My employer provided health insurance is free. It’s excellent and, as I have said before, this “reform” is going to lower my quality of care and that makes me very angry. I am as much of my brothers keeper as I want to be. Every poll is showing the majority are against this bill. In fact, Rasmussen has a poll showing people are more afraid of the government than the insurance companies(someone alert Pelosi) 51-41
Jim says people are pretty happy with Medicare.
They’re not. Explanations of Benefits are issued by public plans only every 90 days and are often so confusing that many of the elderly require outside assistance to interpret them. Useful preventives such as vaccination for Shingles, a very painful and potentially intractable disorder in older people, isn’t covered. Unhappy enrollees’ only option is to switch to private plans which offer many more choices in types of coverage available.
Jim says private plans will survive unless people choose to move away from them.
They’ll have to move away, as the public option will eventually crowd out the private plans. Obama himself has said this is his expectation. Medicare pays private health plans a set amount every month for each of their enrolled members. The government is going to reduce the amount of these payments. Read the bill.
Jim asks where the Medicare death panels are.
In Veterans Homes.
People like Jim and their trust in Der Staat are pretty lame. It’s like some big gang with a long history of killing and stealing shows up in your town and says, “put your lives and property in our care–you can trust us.” And the Jims of the world tell the other townspeople, “Hey, let’s trust these guys! Nothing to fear here!”
Well, I have a group of relatives on Medicare, including my parents. They seem okay with the program. Of course, they also buy a Medicare supplement, which will be perfectly legal (and profitable) after the bill passes.
I have employer-provided health care, but I pay part of the cost. So do most people. I am also involved in the overall decision for the company, where I’ve watched the premiums charged go up 6% to 8% a year every year this century.
I have employer-provided health care, but I pay part of the cost. So do most people. I am also involved in the overall decision for the company, where I’ve watched the premiums charged go up 6% to 8% a year every year this century.
And you live in Chicago.
Leland, this may come as a surprise to you, but Chicago is not the root of all evil. This may also come as a surprise to you, but quite a few companies not based in Chicago also charge for a part of their employee’s coverage.
In fact, nationwide, The annual premium that a health insurer charges an employer for a health plan covering a family of four averaged $12,700 in 2008. Workers contributed nearly $3,400, or 12 percent more than they did in 2007.
So the average American worker pays 1/4 of their health insurance premiums.
Jim’s assertion that people are happy with Medicare is fantasy.
There’s actual research on this question — click my name for some — and in fact Medicare recipients are more satisfied than people with private insurance. In one survey, 40% of private insurance recipients rated their health plan as a 9 or 10 on a scale of 0 to 10; by contrast, Medicare was rated that highly by 56% of its recipients.
I wrote: We’ve had Medicare — government-run, single payer, socialized health insurance — for 44 years. Where are the Medicare death panels?
Rand replied: I’ll repeat: Medicare is going broke.
So in Rand’s imagination we’re going to solve the Medicare fiscal crisis with death panels. Of course Medicare costs will be a greater crisis if we don’t pass health care reform (since the bills before Congress do attempt to reduce health care inflation), so if anything he should support reform in order to postpone the need for those death panels.
Out here in reality there won’t be death panels, period, unless you consider any decision to withhold reimbursement for a medical service to be the decision of a death panel. In that case we’ve got lots of death panels right now.
Jim, price fixing doesn’t reduce the cost of production. Nixon tried that almost 40 years ago and inflation went out of control. There’s nothing in the bill that’s going to reduce the cost factors. No tort reform to reduce medmal premiums and the practice of defensive medicine, nada. The number of practicing nurses and physicians has not kept pace with population increases — naturally prices are going to increase. There’s nothing in the bill to increase the number of medical schools. All it does is redistribute the existing medical resources by spreading the wealth around.
Also, I read the link. Yes, it’s a total non-surprise that people getting money out of medicare are happier than people putting money into it.
Good point, Titus. I often wonder why “liberals” think that medical goods and services are magically exempt from the Law of Supply and Demand. But then “liberals” have problems with the Law of Supply and Demand to begin with, and wish it would simply disappear. (Maybe “Il Dufe” can ride in on a unicorn, wave his magic wand, and repeal it!) To be a trube-believing “liberal” (i.e., State-Shtupper) you have to have the historical consciousnes of a fruit-fly and the economics acumen of Sling Blade.
This was so funny I just had to share it. Check out this editorial Investor’s Daily Business (which Rand has been linking to lately):
“www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=333933006516877” (or click on my name). It is an editorial on Health Care Reform, Town Halls, and, particularly, on End-Of-Life Counseling. The editorial contains this wonderful quote:
People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.
Gee Bob, would that be Stephen Hawking who spent most of his life living under the NHS??? 🙂
Maybe the pundits at IBD were fooled by Hawking’s accent…
There’s nothing in the bill that’s going to reduce the cost factors
Wrong.
The bills before Congress are about two things: covering everyone, and controlling costs. The public plan will (by virtue of its size) have more negotiating power with drug and service providers. The IMAC (an independent, non-partisan body of doctors and other health experts) will be empowered to make recommendations about Medicare payment rates, and other cost-saving reforms (rather than having those things handled by Congress the way they are now); this is similar to the way the base closing commissions took (most of) the politics out of base closing, making it possible for the DOD to close hundreds of facilities and save billions. The promotion and dissemination of comparative effectiveness research will give doctors better guidelines for identifying unnecessary treatment expenses. There will be incentives to move away from fee-for-service medicine towards capitation, which better aligns the incentives of the patient, doctor, and system [Massachusetts is moving this way now, as a result of their health reform effort]. And so on.
I often wonder why “liberals” think that medical goods and services are magically exempt from the Law of Supply and Demand.
Click my name and wonder no more.
And you think we should take Paul Krugman seriously because…?
And you think we should take Paul Krugman seriously because…?
He’s generally speaking right on these matters?
His talk at Anticipation on Friday was excellent, there’s a transcription floating somewhere.
Anyway, that aside, The Daily Show did an excellent review of snips from Fox and others from circa 2005/6/7 all complaining about left wingers protesting the government and calling it unpatriotic – especially Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly.
Dissent is one thing. Shouting down Town Halls is actually another.
Apparently at a panel on the Science of Global Warming on Monday, somebody physically set up their own presentation to run against the panel to disagree with them.
That isn’t dissent, it’s plain old fashioned rudeness.
He’s generally speaking right on these matters?
That’s obviously not it.
Anyway, that aside, The Daily Show did an excellent review of snips from Fox and others from circa 2005/6/7 all complaining about left wingers protesting the government and calling it unpatriotic – especially Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly.
When they find clips of George Bush, or Denny Hastert doing that, get back to me.
I never fail to be amused by mental midgets who think that The Daily Show is a news program.
Rand, it’s amazing to me how when I point out to lefty friends what Obama, Pelosi, Reid and other political leaders say, the lefties always counter with things Rush, Hannity and O’Reilly (not sure what he is) say. Of course, their material is gather from the Daily Show along with a recommendation I should watch it so my mind is opened. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.
Jim, that’s a laundry list of “how Medicare will pay less money”. The only thing you mentioned that concerns cost factors would be comparative effectiveness, and the HHS is already on it. The root causes of medical inflation are left unaddressed.
The link Jim provides–that will takle you to a Magic Land where the Law of Supply and Demand only applies to certain goods and services–isn’t, as I hoped, to Narnia or Oz, but into the dark mind of Paul Krugman, a man who’, like Ezra Kleui, often has the State’s Mailed Fist so far up his rectum he can taste Rustoleum. The article does not, by the way, demonstrate that medical goods and services are exempt from the Law and Supply and Demand. It only shows that Krugman would like them to be. I wish that Park Avenue penthouses weren’t subject to the Law of Supply and Demnd, and that I could get one for pocket-change. Too bad reality intrudes.
Ok Bilwick, explain to me how supply and demand works where my back is concerned. My back hurts. I want an MRI to see what’s going on in there. My doctor isn’t sure it’s strictly necessary, but if I’m insistent enough she’ll go along. My insurance company will cover it if my doctor orders it.
So I get an MRI. I didn’t get it because the price was good — I’m not the one paying. My doctor doesn’t care what it costs — she doesn’t have any idea, that’s something between the hospital and my insurance company. My doctor might not have ordered it if she thought I’d be using the machine instead of a more needy patient, but because there was free MRI time she went ahead. So, contrary to economics 101, a greater supply of MRI time resulted in the insurance company spending more on MRIs.
By the way, Krugman’s piece was a summary of a 1963 paper by Ken Arrow. Do read it and let us know why the journal was wrong to publish it.
Jim, that’s a laundry list of “how Medicare will pay less money”.
No, only one item in the list was about Medicare, and even that one has the potential to bring down private insurance premiums as private insurers adopt IMAC recommendations.
And you think we should take Paul Krugman seriously because…?
He knows more about economics than you or I.
Gerrib, I’m still surprised you can’t find volunteers without paying them. I have weighed everything you ever write about running a business against that claim of yours.
Ok Bilwick, explain to me how supply and demand works where my back is concerned. My back hurts. I want an MRI to see what’s going on in there. My doctor isn’t sure it’s strictly necessary, but if I’m insistent enough she’ll go along. My insurance company will cover it if my doctor orders it.
In my case, the way it works is that I don’t expect my insurance company to pay for an MRI. I have catastrophic insurance with a high deductible. So if I need an MRI, I shop around, and often get a good quote because the lab doesn’t have to deal with paperwork from either an insurance company or the government. If more people did this, it would drive more competition and prices down. The notion that we should never pay anything out of pocket for medical expenses is one of the root causes of the current mess.