…versus reality. A lot of those talking points are familiar, because the supporters attempt to deploy them here, in comments.
33 thoughts on “The Health-Care Talking Points”
Comments are closed.
…versus reality. A lot of those talking points are familiar, because the supporters attempt to deploy them here, in comments.
Comments are closed.
Reality: If the bill merely stepped up oversight of the insurance companies, it would have passed with overwhelming bipartisan support a year ago.
With votes from a GOP that 1. Declared that health care reform was to be Obama’s “Waterloo”, and 2. Declared that its preferred approach was to abolish state-level insurance regulation.
Mr. Ponnuru has a reality all his own.
Mr. Ponnuru has a reality all his own.
…sez Jim.
lulz.
lulz.
Now that’s a persuasive argument.
With votes from a GOP that 1. Declared that health care reform was to be Obama’s “Waterloo”, and 2. Declared that its preferred approach was to abolish state-level insurance regulation.
Yes, Jim. With votes from that very party. Bottom line is that if the Democrats can’t get legislation passed with 59 supposedly guaranteed votes, then they aren’t trying.
The key word is “merely”. But to understand that requires reading comprehension.
As I recall, the Republicans didn’t declare health care would be Obama’s Waterloo, they just suggested it could be. By pushing it the way he has, Obama is the one who turned it into Waterloo.
The fact is, if the public support numbers were different on this plan (as in reversed) then there isn’t anything the Republicans could have done to stop it. You can not hold a 41 vote filibuster together on something that is popular. No politician (yes, even a Republican one Jim) is that stupid.
Kill the individual state rules and allow cross state sales and prices would go down. Make it so people are aware of the real costs of medical care and costs would go down. (HSA’s are a huge win here)
Paul
Oh, the irony.
I agree with some of his points but disagree with others. I disagree with this:
Talking point: The bill “brings down costs for everyone.”
Reality: Unless you’re young and healthy, or a taxpayer.
I guess the commenter is assuming a young person will never get old, and that there taxpayers who do not need health coverage. Which stands starkly against reality. In which world does he live in? The world of Logan’s Run?
I would find this funny, if it was not sad however:
Talking point: The bill “protects Medicare for America’s seniors.”
This is political speak by government people akin to “rightsizing”. When politicians say they are “protecting” something, they usually mean they are cutting it to the bone, even not outright canceling because they fear public outcry.
McGehee beat me too it. Jim, dialing in another one, via his BlackholeBerry.
Reality: If the bill merely stepped up oversight of the insurance companies, it would have passed with overwhelming bipartisan support a year ago.
See Patients’ Bill of Rights.
Reality: Unless you’re on Medicare Advantage, or your plan doesn’t meet the new regulatory standards, or the new law induces your employer to drop your coverage
At the current rate of medical inflation, employer was going to have to dump you anyway.
Talking point: The bill “brings down costs for everyone.”
Reality: Unless you’re young and healthy, or a taxpayer.
Most young, healthy taxpayers will turn into old, sickly beneficiaries. Who demand Medicare.
Talking point: The bill “protects Medicare for America’s seniors.”
Reality: The bill cuts Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars, and some of those cuts will even occur.
Protect != financial obesity (especially when a hefty component of that was imposed by the GOP as Medicare Part D).
Kill the individual state rules and allow cross state sales and prices would go down.
California is a huge state with relatively low regulation; and premiums are going through the roof. The problem is for any kind of health care system where actually treating sick people is a consideration, healthy people are going to have to contribute. If the healthy are going to escape paying (“cheap catastrophic policy”), the costs for the ill go up dramatically. And the ill are the least able to pay!
The alternative are high risk pools (see Death Panels).
If the healthy are going to escape paying (”cheap catastrophic policy”), the costs for the ill go up dramatically.
Where’s the money going to come from to pay the bill, if the ill have to pay for themselves? Answer is that demand will drop, hence, price will drop.
Oh Duncan, you make this too easy. Californians can’t buy insurance from companies in other states. Pay attention. I also doubt CA has relatively low regulation on anything.
Medicare – you present a straw man. Obama wants 500 billion in cuts so he can pay for Obamacare – part D not in the equation
inflation – My employer hasn’t raised rates in 3 years ExxonMobil hasn’t in 2 and they have 85,000 employees.
Oversight – There’s a big difference between “rights” and making sure the rules are followed.
Young and healthy people may only want a high deductible catastrophic policy. Under Obamacare the mandates preclude that. Who can say what interstate competition might do to future costs? Unless we try, we won’t know but I bet they come down. That’s what competition accomplishes.
If you graduated college, go get your money back.
Karl,
And if they can’t pay…? Unless you take them out back and shoot them, someone else will.
If one has a broken leg, or chronic back pain, or brain cancer, demand goes to infinity, irrespective of price. And if one is a doctor with a suffering patient, who is paid by procedure, and are unaware of the intricate details of said patient’s insurance plan, and thus have no idea of the price, one will be strongly incentivized to give said patient every procedure in the book in order to maximize potential revenue and shut the whiny patient up.
Which is why the best plan (not the offered one, alas) would have the doctor paid by result, instead of treatment, which requires attaching patient to doctor, and having a faceless bureaucrat set an a priori price on each procedure, the way they do it in nearly every other country (and the State of Maryland).
But of course, that would turn you all into prancing Muslim COMMIES!!! Or so I hear.
And if they can’t pay…? Unless you take them out back and shoot them, someone else will.
Unless they don’t get the treatment. Then nobody pays for it. There’s this conceit that there is an obvious treatment path and that either someone gets that treatment path or they don’t get anything at all. There is some level of health care that a hospital would have to apply. But not everything will be covered.
If one has a broken leg, or chronic back pain, or brain cancer, demand goes to infinity, irrespective of price.
It doesn’t.
And if one is a doctor with a suffering patient, who is paid by procedure, and are unaware of the intricate details of said patient’s insurance plan, and thus have no idea of the price, one will be strongly incentivized to give said patient every procedure in the book in order to maximize potential revenue and shut the whiny patient up.
Doctors who do that end up with a lot of bills that don’t get paid either by the insurance company or by the patient.
Which is why the best plan (not the offered one, alas) would have the doctor paid by result, instead of treatment, which requires attaching patient to doctor, and having a faceless bureaucrat set an a priori price on each procedure, the way they do it in nearly every other country (and the State of Maryland).
Name the government plan that “pays by result”.
But of course, that would turn you all into prancing Muslim COMMIES!!! Or so I hear.
Thanks for confirming that you’re not firing on all cylinders in this debate.
You can not hold a 41 vote filibuster together on something that is popular.
As if. Pre-Brown, the GOP held a 40 vote filibuster on whether to set up a bipartisan commission to reduce the deficit. Today’s GOP could sustain a filibuster against motherhood and apple pie.
Duncan, how is the doctor paid by result, instead of treatment the best plan? A lot of medical care, such as diabetes management, is in large part successful based upon patient behaviour. Metformin helps, but if the patient continues to carb load every day then no amount of the drug will produce a positive result for the doctor.
I also need some kind of reference to support how well that process works in nearly every other country (and the State of Maryland). I see a lot of stories that fly in the face of your argument, with foreigners coming to the US for surgical procedures who describe their frustration about the state-run medical services in their home countries. I found references to Maryland’s HealthChoice program when searching for ‘Maryland medical assignment’ — is that the program you described in your post?
Heck, maybe my satire radar is defective and I am missing your point entirely. Help me out!
You can not hold a 41 vote filibuster together on something that is popular.
Also note that the popularity of Obama’s plan has fluctuated. Last summer, when DeMint made his Waterloo statement, the most anti-reform pollster (Rasmussen) had the public favoring it 50-45.
The GOP’s opposition is not based on the polls, or on the specifics of the bills (which closely match those of plans championed by such GOP luminaries as Mitt Romney, Scott Brown, and Bob Dole). The opposition is motivated by a desire to deny Obama and the Democrats a policy victory that could translate into a political victory in November and 2012.
Californians can’t buy insurance from companies in other states.
Yes, they can, provided that those companies abide by CA regulations.
Not really picky about why the GOP has come to their senses, just thankful that it happened at all.
Yes, they can, provided that those companies abide by CA regulations.
Jim, they can only do so by having a presence in the state. It’s unrealistic to expect insurance in one state to work in another unless the two states have deliberately harmonized their regulations to allow that.
The GOP’s opposition is not based on the polls
The GOP is set to win a considerable number of Congressional seats in 2010. Eyeballing it, Intrade says that the GOP wins 35-40 seats (with a little less than 50% chance that they take over) in the House and several Senate seats. That’s the polls that matter. They seem to be making the right moves to gain seats while the Democrats are losing seats.
“…provided those companies abide by California regulations.”
That being the point. The company can provide services in all 50 states, but they have to tailor their coverage by state. 50 sets of regulators, 50 sets of requirements, etc. Set one uniform, minimum level and let the insurance companies offer services everywhere – then the market goes to work. Some people will want more than the minimum and will pay for it. Company A is slow paying, has poor doctors, charges more than you can afford – go to company B or C. I believe I read that in an Economics textbook at one point.
“If you graduated colege, go get your money back.”
I laughed so hard I threw my back out.
Healthcare is not a right. Your rights end when they require taking something from someone else. If I get sick and I had insurance the insurance company should not be able to cancel me.
If I’m already sick and don’t have insurance , my insurance bill should cost as much (or more) than the expected average cost of treating my sickness. any other arrangement is welfare not insurance. My 23yr old son has relatively good insurance with a several K deductible, its 67/mo. My 47 yr old self and wife have very similar insurance at around 600 a mo. 47 year olds use about 5 times the health care of 23yr olds. My wife had a malignant melanoma removed from her cheek. Getting “new” insurance if I let the old insurance drop would be very expensive. (As it should be she is high risk for needing expensive care.) This is how insurance is supposed to work. You should not be able to buy fire insurance when the house catches fire, you need to buy insurance BEFORE it catches fire. Now someone will say what if your poor and get sick, there used to be a lot of charity hospitals. We are a very generous people. Life is not fair, it sucks to be poor, being poor is actually the #1 leading risk factor for heart disease. So in a fully honest system a poor person would pay more for equal health insurance than a rich person. I can see an argument for county wide rating for insurance as a remedy for this, but for it to work the preexisting conditions rules have to be strictly enforced, otherwise the system collapses.
You misspelled “cratered”.
A 40-vote filibuster.
So it’s the Republicans’ fault Harry Reid couldn’t turn his FILIBUSTER-PROOF 60-VOTE MAJORITY into a working Senate?
ROVE, YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD!
Jiminator:
Here is the link to the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission. Elements of pay for treatment rather than procedure actually are part of the much ballyhooed cuts in Medicare. It is also implicit in the “Gatekeeper” role of family doctors in the UK, and of course U. S. HMO systems like Kaiser.
I also hear a lot of stories of Americans heading off to India and Thailand and Costa Rica to get affordable surgery. Not to mention perky Alaskans heading to the doctor in Whitehorse… The truth though, it that the cost savings in other systems are in the end about reducing the number of specialists, and their attended costs, in the system. The result of getting them out is a) a financially much more tractable system that is available to all b) waiting lists for specialist care. That is the trade off.
Doctors who do that end up with a lot of bills that don’t get paid either by the insurance company or by the patient.
And they jack up the price on the patients who can pay. All part of the medical cost death spiral. One way or another, if you accept medical stabilitiztion, healthy people end up paying for the sick, either by insurance premiums, taxes or higher prices. The last option also further drives up costs (and general misery) through cost recovery attempts.
The GOP is set to win a considerable number of Congressional seats in 2010.
Minority parties that don’t hold the White House virtually always win seats in the midterm election.
Set one uniform, minimum level and let the insurance companies offer services everywhere – then the market goes to work.
You just described the ObamaCare health insurance exchange.
You misspelled “cratered”.
Take a look — approval for health care reform is on the upswing, while disapproval is falling.
While you’re at it, check out the polling on who the public trusts on healthcare: #1 is Obama, #2 is Congressional Dems, and the Congressional GOP brings up the rear.
Jim, what about the election in Massachusetts in which ObamaCare was the major issue, the opposition candidate (Brown) ran on that as his number one issue, and he took Ted Kennedy’s seat? If this issue has the public trust, why isn’t the House simply voting on reconciliation instead of making procedural stuff up as they go?
“Take a look — approval for health care reform is on the upswing, while disapproval is falling.”
Oh, my. We’re on the verge of a Civil War over health care, and Jim thinks disapproval is falling. I wonder if denial is a pre-existing condition…
Jim, what about the election in Massachusetts in which ObamaCare was the major issue, the opposition candidate (Brown) ran on that as his number one issue, and he took Ted Kennedy’s seat?
Assuming facts not in evidence.
If this issue has the public trust, why isn’t the House simply voting on reconciliation instead of making procedural stuff up as they go?
They aren’t making stuff up — deem-and-pass has been used dozens of times in the last twenty years, by both parties.
As for why they are using it now, it’s because the House feels like it’s been screwed by the Senate. Under normal circumstances members of the House would never have to vote on the Senate’s version of a bill — they would vote on their own version, and fix it in conference committee. Scott Brown and the rest of the GOP are blocking that option, so the House is sucking it up; deem-and-pass is their way of telling the Senate and the public that while they’re willing to sacrifice their usual prerogatives to do the right thing for the country, they aren’t happy about being put in this position.
Yes, I’m sure it’s breaking their constitution-loving little hearts to pass an unconstitutional bill in such an unconstitutional way.
Well, on to the Supreme Court. Keep the popcorn coming — this spectacle ain’t over.