The Democrats Backdoor to Socialized Healthcare
Morgen on April 27, 2009 at 8:24 am
The Obama Administration and the Democratic leadership in Congress are progressing rapidly towards enacting healthcare reform this year – with or without Republican support. In fact, the Administration struck a key deal with moderate Democrats this past Friday, which virtually assures they will pay only lip service to bi-partisanship when it comes to crafting this legislation. Legislation which will fundamentally alter the future of healthcare for all Americans.
A centerpiece of Obama’s healthcare plan is the inclusion of a “public plan option” which will offer individuals and small businesses the choice of participating in a government-run healthcare plan. Charles Krauthammer and others have made the case that the public plan option is only an intermediate step towards liberal Democrats’ ultimate goal, which is the establishment of a single-payer, socialized healthcare system.
Of course acknowledging your plan is a step towards socialism is no way to sell the American people on the need for reform. No worries – with their willing allies in the mainstream media, Axelrod and crew have been very effective in framing this discussion around the need to reduce healthcare costs and provide greater access to healthcare for those without insurance.
However, all the messaging control in the world wasn’t enough to stop a certain loose-cannon liberal from acknowledging what the real agenda is. Take a look at what Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) had to say at a healthcare reform rally in support of the President’s plan on April 18:
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and co-sponsor of HR-676 answered criticisms from single-payer advocates. She said the public option is not a compromise, but a strategic step toward the single-payer system and the elimination of the private insurance industry…
The public option is simply the opening salvo against the private sector, Schakowsky and other speakers said.
Both Schakowsky and McNary stressed the need for solidarity among health care reform activists, in order to build mass support and momentum toward the goal of a single-payer system.
If Schakowsky’s name is familiar it’s because she has been in the news lately criticizing the Tea Parties (her husband is also a convicted tax cheat). And no surprise, she is also a close friend of Nancy Pelosi’s.
I can hear the spinmeisters already: Schakowsky doesn’t speak for the Administration, she is not involved in crafting the legislation, she was misquoted, etc., etc.
If you haven’t done so already I encourage you to read Krauthammer’s piece and then decide for yourself which is more likely. That Schakowsky is just a liberal kook with no basis for her statements, OR that in front of a receptive, far-left crowd in her home district, she actually let the truth slip out.
Update: I doubt this audience needs any more convincing, but listen carefully to what Obama had to say in this speech to the AFL-CIO in 2003. The Clinton campaign called Obama out on this during the Democratic primaries.
Category: Energy & Economy, Politics |
[...] is on the direct path to socialized healthcare and the elimination of private options. Good thing for us that some of his minions made the mistake of telling the truth a little too [...]
April 27, 2009 @ 6:23 pm[...] one co-sponsor and not representative of the effort. That might fly, except for another clip that Verum Serum rediscovered featuring Barack Obama telling the AFL-CIO in 2003 what his end goal is for [...]
April 28, 2009 @ 6:31 am[...] care and doctor care be under the control of the govt. He said that was his goal back in 2003. The Democrats Backdoor to Socialized Healthcare | Verum Serum Another thing what they don’t you about the so called 2 trillion dollars in "savings" [...]
May 12, 2009 @ 4:17 pmPlease explain to me why socialized healtcare is bad.
Why is it better to have wall-street make a profit off of our medical needs?
May 15, 2009 @ 2:22 pmPaul, first off socialized or nationalized healthcare is rationing, pure and simple. Second, your reference to “wall street” is ridiculous on the face of it. Wall street just happens to be where public cos. are traded. These cos. contain the inventors and enterprising individuals who create life saving techniques, drugs, technology, etc.
Is your conviction bureaucrats and lawyers create all these wonderful things that save peoples lives or is it simply you want people with these gifts to give them to the government so the lawyers and bureaucrats can ration the treatments accordingly.
May 15, 2009 @ 2:54 pmI don’t have the time to get into this now. But if its so immoral to make a profit off of providing healthcare, why stop there? Isn’t clothing fundamental to an individual’s survival? Why should anyone make a profit selling shoes? How about food? Surely food is even more critical to someone’s well being than visiting the doctor. And water!? By this standard what could possibly be more immoral than selling bottled water?
Paul, I’ll make you a deal. I will read any book you ask if you will pick up a copy of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and then come back and pose these questions.
May 15, 2009 @ 3:34 pmAnd what we have now is not rationing? How many people do you know have died in the last decade because an insurance company “rationed” care? I can think of 3 off the top of my head.
Not only that, but the poor are recieving sub-standard care and as a result using too much emergency room care.
This is a complicated system – Any change in one area is going to ripple throughout the system. Calling reform “rationing” is just fear-based rhetoric. What are the REAL consequences of our current system, what are the REAL consequences of any proposed policy change? These are questions that economists and other experts can’t agree on, altough all agree that it MUST be changed because our current system is unsustainable.
The problem I see is that the moneyed special interests are doing their usual dance to control the process – successfully I think. And this is going to result in inadaquate change.
I don’t care WHAT system we have so long as we have healthcare for everyone that is reasonable and affordable.
What no one is talking about is WHO BENEFITS from the current system. If healthcare costs are rising faster than inflation (which they are) then SOMEONE is making huge profits off of our pain and suffering. I can tell you from first hand experinece that it’s NOT the healtcare providers. So it must be the insurance companies and the big pharma, right?
Insurance companies are a parasitic buisiness model. There is no other way to describe what they do. They manage our healthcare dollars to their profit and not to ours. This needs to end.
Big pharma is more complicated. But there are a few major injustices going on here – for one, they don’t do all the research they say they do – the governemnt does. They just manufacture and advertise. This needs to stop. We have to stop subsidising their research and then letting them bilk us for huge profits.
I haven’t read this book, but I did read “where is the wealth of nations?”
One of the points this study makes is that human capital is a huge part of the wealth of nations. Having a healthy, well educated, politically and economically stable population is the greatest weath generator that any nation has going for it. Even in our current down times, most people want to invest in the US because we have stability.
Our current healthcare crisis threatens this stability. So how do we fix it?
Ideologically, do you REALLY want corporate accountants deciding what healtchare you can use? Personally, I would rather have someone I elected in charge.
May 18, 2009 @ 9:23 amOK, I’ve found a copy of the Wealth of Nations online, and I’ve read the first chapter. I’ll crank out a chapter a day on my breaks for a while and get back to you.
May 18, 2009 @ 9:53 am[...] The government plan option is an intermediate step to a single payer system. Dems favoring the government plan option aren’t being completely honest with the general public, but they let their real intentions slip out when talking with groups that favor a single payer system. As Charles Krauthammer points out, Obama has abandoned advocating a single payer system for now, but this is only a practical step. [...]
May 26, 2009 @ 9:04 pmThere is a lie inherent in your position: Insurance companies dont’ sell health care. They sell security. They sell financial safety. But they don’t actually sell healthcare do they? Doctors, nurses, counselors, phlebotomists. These people sell health care.
Insurance companies sell an IDEA. They sell the idea that if we give them our money, they will keep us safe. This idea is a lie. They have NO INCENTIVE to keep us safe exept what the law requires (there’s the hand of Governement again btw). The insurance companies keep our money safe, and let us die.
They are a parasitic institution, and they do not deserve to exist. Sell auto insurance, sure. Sell life insurance, absolutely.
But medical insurance? No. I have no objection to healtcare providers making money. but insurance companies are not healthcare providers – they are financial instituions. Your insurance premium is a form of privatized taxation. I believe that it is the role of govenment, NOT public institutions to keep the public safe.
This is why I have no objection to my taxes going to fund the military, and the fire department and the police. Healthcare is a safety issue. Healthcare is the role of govenment, not finaincial profiteers.
Your arguement is not valid on it’s face.
May 29, 2009 @ 9:39 amPaul,
You’re missing the key point in your analysis.
Because insurance companies are businesses, they are motivated to make certain that charges received are not fraudulent. What happens when you take this element out of the system is you get an industry full of rampant fraud, e.g. Medicare, Medicaid, Medi-Cal, etc.
This is one of the major reasons why the growth of Medicare and Medicaid has outstripped the growth of private insurance.
What you’re saying sounds good but it’s only a good idea if the cost of health care is of no concern.
May 29, 2009 @ 9:56 amAnd yet private insurance agencies spend about 25% of your healthcare premium on administration costs (including big CEO salaries and anti-fraud measures among other things), while those government burocracies spend less than 10% on the same things.
There are many ways that an institution can bleed money, and are those CEO’s really less “criminal” than those fraudsters?
We are now getting into areas of the issue that are too esoteric for most of us to grasp – One would need to make a career of it to fully understand how these complex systems actually work and where the full extent of the waste is.
Fortunately for me, my Girlfriend is actually working on this (her PhD work is focused on healthcare reform). So far, all indications she has found are that the waste of our healthcare system comes in 3 forms:
1) Insurance bureaucracy (the above CEO salaries and anti-fraud measures).
2) Price gouging by pharmaceutical companies (including payola to congressmen to keep government programs from negotiating better prices – this is protectionism plain and simple)
3) Cost re-allocation of the uninsured. This works as follows – an uninsured person gets sick or injured. They cannot afford healthcare and so they go into the ER. This often happens after a preventable issue reaches crisis, but it also happens when minor non-emergencies need treatment. This is done because the uninsured person can’t afford to see a regular doctor. This is extremely expensive care and the hospital never gets paid for it (all they can really do is ruin the credit score of the uninsured person after all) In order to recoup the loss the hospital is forced to charge huge fees for minor services – this is why Tylenol cost as much as $20 a pill in the hospital for example.
So this “buck passing” process results in poor care, high costs and higher and higher insurance premiums to you and me.
See – all of this ideological “I am John Gault” stuff that you conservatives are famous for ignores the fact that society as a whole is a system. Your hard earned wealth is meaningless unless it is spent in the context of the society as a whole. Healthcare is a textbook example of how the “I-got-mine-and-the-rest-of-the-world-can-go-fuck-itself” attitude that conservatives are famous for breaks down.
Whether you like it or not, poor people get sick. And whether you like it or not, YOU ARE GOING TO PAY FOR THEM. This is because hospitals are legally required to provide ER care.
You have two choices:
1) Create a healthcare system that covers EVERYONE – this means that private insurance companies will either cease to exist or they will simply be forced to insure even the most expensive patients at prices set by the government (which they don’t do now btw – they simply kick expensive patients off their rosters ASAP).
Or
2) Change the law so that the uninsured are not allowed ER care. What this means is that poor people will die much younger than they do now. In addition it means that YOU might suffer a head injury or get cancer or something like that, lose your job, and end up dead in a ditch, rather than getting any kind of healthcare – because 99% of us are only one major medical problem away from the poor house.
So really, what kind of world do you want to live in – because the system we have now is broken. It is unsustainable, and therefore it will not be sustained.
The key players in the drama are the people the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies. They have the money. We have the moral high ground. Personally, I don’t think we have a chance, and that this is going to be one of those issues that causes the fall of our democracy. But hey, a guy can hope.
May 29, 2009 @ 10:34 amOh yeah, one last thing – if you DO stop covering the healthcare of the poor, well, disease doesn’t care how rich you are does it?
So what this means is that the poor become a resevour for disease – making them a constant source of epidemics for our society.
All you need to do is look at Africa to see how this can cripple an economy.
Besides, who will the rich hire to clean their pools and wash their cars if the poor are dying in droves?
The rich NEED the poor. Capitalism requires a permanent underclass. Therefore capitalists have a moral (and self-interested) imperative to take care of the poor.
See how this works? One big system.
May 29, 2009 @ 10:41 amNow we are getting somewhere. If you believe in the superiority of Marxist Socialism, why don’t you and others on the Left advocate for this openly? But I am not going to just sit back and let a bunch of lying politicians and political hacks set us on the path in this direction by disingenuously touting that a government run plan is only intended to provide choice and fair competition in the market.
I respect much more those that express and advocate for their beliefs and policy preferences in a transparent manner. (I still include you in this category Paul).
May 29, 2009 @ 11:10 amWho said I believed in Marxist socialism?
I believe that capitalism is the worst economic system available, except for all other economic systems. I simply believe that healthcare is a human right and that health insurance should be treated like a public service.
Or to put it another way, the statement that capitalism requires an underclass is not a criticism, it’s just a statement of fact. I don’t want to get rid of capitalism, I just want to make it conform with some basic truths about the ecosystem as a whole. We all get sick, good public healthcare has preventative benefits. This is not even up for debate. What IS up for debate is who will profit off of our healthcare system – personally I think that healthcare providers should profit off of it, and that accountants and bankers should not. That’s not anti-capitalist, it’s PRO-capitalist. It’s anti-oligarchy.
Your statement is a good example of black and white thinking – either you are a free market capitalist OR you are a Marxist/socialist.
This view ignores the fact that the economy is a hugely complex and textured system, and that there are lots of ways to accomplish any particular goal using the economy. There is plenty of debate about what the role of the government should be in the economy, but given how complex the system is, it is inevitable that the government WILL have a role, and that the role of government will be constantly changing as the needs of society change (as it should be IMO).
It’s sort of like gun control – One can agree that we have the right to bear arms, but not the right to bear nuclear arms. So where do you draw the line?
Healthcare is a specific sector of the economy. I don’t want to change the whole economy. I just want to change healthcare. We need to re-draw the lines. If we don’t, well, our economic downturn has only just begun. I think that your false-dichotomy is a sign of tunnel vision, frankly.
May 29, 2009 @ 11:40 amI was probably a little hasty in implying that you support Marxist Socialism as a whole (it’s been a long week). But it certainly seems you are supportive of a socialist model for the payment/provision of healthcare services, are you not?
I take exception to your statement that “capitalism requires a permanent underclass”. If by “underclass” you mean a group of people who have relatively less wealth and income than others, than fine, although I think this is more a reflection of human nature than a requirement imposed by capitalism. But there is not a socio-economic system in the history of the world that has lifted more people out of real poverty and alleviated more human suffering than capitalism. The poorest among us today in the U.S. and the rest of the developed world have access to luxuries that the wealthiest could only have dreamed of 100 years ago.
In fact, I believe a much more compelling argument can be made that liberal ideology requires a permanent underclass. I can think of countless examples of individual success stories enabled by our free market economic system. People who refused to see themselves as victims, somehow held back by their lack of wealth or privilege. And who took advantage of the opportunities available to everyone in this country and achieved great success (however they define it).
But I fail to see how fostering a victimhood mentality and agitating for wealth distribution and “economic justice” has or will inspire anyone to greatness. Nor do I think this is even the intent of those who promote these ideas, as people who take individual responsibility for their own lives and outcomes tend to not look very kindly on those who seek to confiscate their output for the benefit of others.
The healthcare reform discussion is not a black and white issue, and not a choice between absolute capitalism or socialism. All I am asking is that the parties on both sides of the debate be honest about their agenda and desired outcomes. Perhaps its naive for me to expect an honest debate on this, but I am not the one who has heralded a “new era of transparency and accountability”. I truly believe that the American people deserve better when it comes to this debate, and will continue to expose the propaganda and falsehoods being promoted by the advocates of a public plan.
May 29, 2009 @ 2:26 pmOnce again it is readily apparent that the arguments about who gets hurt by the healthcare system, and even who profits from the pain in our society, is ineffective. Having worked in health insurance billing and accounts receivable at a hospital for about a year, I have seen first hand how many people get hurt by the system, whether it is financial or physical damage. The best arguments in this debate are the macroeconomic ones.
In one scenario, you have the industry stealing and wasting people’s money while hurting people, and on the other hand you have the government stealing and wasting people’s money while hurting them. On one side you have the insurance companies and government plundering the system, on the other you have the citizens and government plundering the system.
Sicko was a great movie. Sicko shows two things: how terrible the American healthcare system is, and how terrible the alternative is. Not many people realize this about the movie, because many people are foolish enough to believe something like:
Healthcare is not a basic human right. Especially if you are the kind of person who is purposely hurting themselves (think: smoking, drugs, dangerous sports, drinking, sexual promiscuity, ciminal lifestyles, poor diet.) There is no empirical evidence you can show me that healthcare is a basic human right; it is simply a philosophical belief, subject to debate. Of course there is no evidence for any human rights, but at least a few are enshrined in the US Constitution. Healthcare, nor retirement, are basic human rights; neither are found in the Constitution. Human history is heavily outweighed by people dying from fever, and working until they die.
The system in America is not broken. It works. Many people are harmed in the process, and it is expensive, but you will find that anywhere. The parts of the system that are closest to being “broken” are the big government entitlement sections. Ask a medical biller or an AR rep which they hate more: dealing with insurance companies, or Medicare. See what you get from them. I know what the answer is, but this is the kind of thing people need to hear first hand.
If you want to believe that social healthcare is the least suckiest system, then at least implement it at the state level instead of the federal level.
May 29, 2009 @ 2:52 pmWe already offer socialized medicine. Go to any VA hospital and you will see the worst possible healthcare offered. I’ve called on these hospitals for the last twenty-six years. When the government does something it usually screws it up (post office, DMV, Medicare, Social Security, etc.). Why? There is no competition.
By the way, if you want to see something similiar to a single-payor system, join an HMO. With the exception of Kaiser, these organizations are horrible examples of delivering healthcare services. I’ve seen this up front and personal as well. Just pray that you stay healthy. If you’ve got a cold, they deliver good service, but if you’ve got cancer, you’re in big trouble.
Conclusion – we’re pretty much screwed. Additionally, illegal aliens are killing our hospitals in Southern California. Many have gone out of business or are in the process because these border jumpers are using our ER’s as their primary healthcare provider.
Solution – force insurance companies to offer insurance to those folks with pre-existing conditions. Be prepared to pay through the nose, but at least you’ve got coverage. Allow individuals the right to sue HMO’s (in a substantial way – not the capped version we have today) to hold them accountable for their actions. Fix the borders – these people breed like rabbits and the 15 million of them in the US are killing us. Keep the government out of a single payor system. If you’re convinced that this is the solution, go join the military and your wish will be granted.
Bottom Line: I don’t hold a lot of hope here for the healthcare system. If Obamateur gets his way, he’ll screw it up like everything else he touches (stimulus scheme, massive deficit spending, etc.).
May 29, 2009 @ 4:08 pmPaul, just catching up on all of your recent points and arguments in this thread. I have to take issue with this earlier statement of yours as well:
It’s hyperbole to say that our current healthcare system is “broken”. In truth it works reasonably well for 80%+ of the population, and the quality of care, particularly with regards to advanced medical treatment, is among the best in the world.
You’ve done a reasonable job outlining the inefficiencies inherent in the current system, but of course as others have pointed out there is no reason to expect that the government would do a more efficient job of managing this. Far from it based on the track record of other large government entitlement programs, including and especially Medicare.
And one other important factor always seems to be left out of the debate over the looming “cost crisis” of our healthcare system. A significant factor in the ever increasing costs of our healthcare system is the ongoing advance in available medical treatments, technologies, and pharmaceuticals. Stop and think about the treatments available for cancer only 30 years ago compared to today. It’s no wonder that overall costs have been skyrocketing, and considering that we are talking about life-saving and enhancing products and services, is this even a bad thing?
If the overall share of our economy of the high-tech sector grows it’s looked at as a positive development. We’re improving our productivity, we are moving to a knowledge-based economy, etc. So why is it inherently bad that the overall share of our healthcare sector is growing? This is an industry which not only saves lives, but also employs a lot of people in reasonably well-paying jobs throughout the economy.
If there is a healthcare crisis, the actual crisis is that like other government entitlement programs, Medicare/Medicaid have been set up as a pyramid scheme without having the necessary assets to fund the expected liabilities over time. And rather than dealing with this problem first, our government is marching forward to add another 40-120M people to the Medicare rolls (or worse, a separate bureaucracy) over the next several years.
Yes, there is a legitimate concern over the ability for some amongst us to afford even basic healthcare for their families. (Keep in mind that a large number of people choose not to obtain health insurance). But if government is going to be the solution for this, we are doing no one any favors by not first getting our fiscal house in order. It is the poorest amongst us who will ultimately suffer the most under a stringent rationing program imposed by the government. As long as there is some remaining freedom in this country, the rest of us will find an alternative.
May 29, 2009 @ 5:15 pmGood points all – I would just make two caveats on your statement Morgan
It IS among the best in the world. For the rich. For your average schmo it’s nowhere close. For the poor it is emergency care only. We have a class-based system, and we will continue to have a class-based system. Such is the way of the world.
But it IS broken. The “cost crisis” is not just rhetoric. Major corporations are failing because they can’t contain insurance costs. As I said – unsustainable.
I’m sorry, but this is a stupid statement. I don’t go into private practice, because my daughter has diabetes, and the cost of healthcare for my family would be equal to a home mortgage in payments every month. While it is technically true to say that I “choose” not to go into private practice, the economic reality is that I have no choice at all.
While I suppose some small number of wealthy people choose not to buy health insurance, the truth is that most of the uninsured are poor or working-class. When you must choose between healthcare and food/clothing/shelter it is not a choice. As the saying goes “poverty makes slaves of us all.”
The thing is that there are all kinds of drivers of healthcare costs in the system. For example, drug companies advertise specific treatments, which then cause consumers to decide that they want that treatment. The consumer will then go doctor shopping for someone who will indulge them in this way. Effectively the consumer is self-treating and using a medical technician to do the work. This results in poor healthcare for the consumer and the use of expensive therapies that are unnecessary but well-advertised. Never mind that a cheaper and more effective alternative is available.
So one of the problems with the current system is consumer choice. We Americans view consumer choice as a more important “civil right” than privacy, or freedom of speech. But consumer-driven healthcare is stupid healthcare. And stupid healthcare is expensive and ineffective healthcare.
But of course if our politicians start saying this, you conservatives start shouting “socialized medicine! I don’t want some bureaucracy deciding my healthcare!!!” as if insurance companies are not already doing this.
The other point I want to make here is that financial institutions (like insurance companies) ARE a form of government! Just ask yourself one simple question. If the bank decided to turn off you ATM cards, credit cards and health insurance coverage today, how long would it be before you turned to a life of crime? I would give you a week.
The reason for this is simple – you have to eat. Whoever has the gold makes the rules. Corporations ARE government.
May 30, 2009 @ 9:55 amPaul,
Your assumptions about this are incorrect. Estimates indicate that as many as 9-10 million people in the US choose not to buy insurance even though they have ample resources to do so. Add to this another 9-10 million illegal aliens and you have about half of the 45 million uninsured the Democrats are constantly (and dishonestly) harping about.
Just yesterday you were saying that insurance companies were greedy profiteers and that’s why we should hand health care over to government. Today you’re saying corporations are government too? So why would we expect government government to do better than corporate government?
Anyway, the whole transition from corporations are government to the ATM-Lord-of-the-Flies scenario seemed like a non-sequitur to me. Are you defining government as: anything without which John Sexton would become a street criminal?
Cause if so I can tell you right now that the only thing that keeps me out of the Thug Life is Circus Peanuts. Honestly, if it weren’t for those I’d put a cap in yo’ ass right now.
Damn you Brachs for governing me via tasty, orange treats!
May 30, 2009 @ 12:20 pmlol
You know, that’s a good question, and in typical Susac style, I’m gonna give you a long-winded, philosophical answer.
Here is the thing – the capitalist system is very good at creating wealth, and both distributing it and concentrating it in the hands of a few people. In order to do this, it must commoditize everything. It needs to do this in order to put a monetary value on everything.
In the course of my lifetime, the insurance industry has essentially commoditized heath care. The problem with this is that heath isn’t like other commodities. First off, the fundamental source of heath is the person – so you can’t commoditize heath without commoditizing people. Second, heath care is always an ethical issue (a point that pro-choice Christians strongly agree with most of the time).
Herein lies the dilemma – on the one hand, heath care costs money. This is not going away. On the other hand, heath care is always about the ethical use of resources – so you need to make ethically based decisions about the finances of the system.
So what is health insurance? Heath insurance is the idea that we are going to pool our money in order to spread out the financial risk of illness, and put some sort of centralized authority in charge of how and when we spend this money. When you put capitalists in charge of these spending decisions, a new calculus enters the picture; namely, you decide that people will use this pool of money to compete with one another for profit. Companies that successfully profit off of heath insurance drive non-profitable companies out of the picture. This competition is fundamentally amoral, and it results in incentives to cheat the insured in order to remain competitive and to profit one’s shareholders. This is why capitalism fails in the case of heath insurance – it is founded on a fundamentally unethical application of heath care resources.
A government-based system takes the profit motive out of heath insurance. In other words, there is no incentive to cheat the patient or to disenfranchise sick people, because heath insurance is being run like a government utility. Granted this has other negative consequences – namely, that government bureaucracy is famously inefficient, but it is possible to built checks and balances to compensate for this.
All this said, I would like to offer some personal experience to this argument. I have worked in private, for-profit agencies in a marketing department – this was a cut-throat, alpha-male-driven, dog-eat-dog environment. The people I worked with often backstabbed each other, and engaged in psychological warfare both within and outside the agency. Hey, it takes all kinds, but are these REALLY the kinds of people we want selling us insurance policies? Because, you know what? They are EXACTLY the kinds of people who DO sell us insurance policies. The are also the kinds of people who act as drug reps for pharmaceutical companies – cut-throat alpha types who make 6 figures making sure that doctors don’t use generic drugs.
Conversely, I have also worked in publicly funded and private, non-profit heath provider companies. These workers were the most caring and compassionate human beings I have ever had the privilege to work with. I have worked in 4 such agencies, and in all of them, my co-workers were supportive of their clients, but highly invested in using the limited resources of the agency wisely so that the community as a whole could be well served. It seems to me that these are EXACTLY the sort of people we would want running our health insurance resources.
So one of the advantages of government run health insurance is that it is NOT the sort of employment that is going to attract the alpha-type personalities, but it IS the sort of employment that is going to attract the supportive, nurturing, cumbaya-singing types. Who would you rather have spending your health care dollars?
I know my answer.
Now the issue comes up about rationing and quality of care. People go on about how they aren’t always going to get their way. Well, you know what? It’s time for us to make some grown-up choices. We don’t know what kind of quality of care we are going to get out of a single-payer plan. We can’t know until we get there. The fact that employers are offering insurance as a benefit means that we simply cannot compete with socialist nations in many things (like the auto industry). Do we want to ignore our health and have all the heath care we want and or do we want a functional vibrant economy?
Because from where I’m sitting, it doesn’t look like we can have both.
No matter what we do though, heath insurance agencies are going to be making decisions that will determine when people live or when they die – that’s the price you pay for pooling your risk. We just need to get over this fact. None of us are totally in control of our lives. Heck, most of us can’t even control our own behavior (obesity is a good example of this). We are becoming a nation of frightened spoiled children. I don’t think we will have to sacrifice much, but you know what? Maybe it’s time we did.
Society, the environment, the economy. These are all just different words for the same thing: Our support system. Without these things we are dead. Period. We get no food, we get no air, we get no clean water, we get no love or human company, and we get no heath care. Taking care of your support system isn’t “socialism,” it’s survival. It’s time for us to step up. But to do this we need to change the rules enough that the greedy and aggressive amongst us can no longer use us as hosts for their parasitism.
THAT’S why a government bureaucracy is better. It takes amoral profit motives out. The trick is how to keep accountability in. But hey, no one said change is easy.
June 1, 2009 @ 1:29 pmSo 18-20 million people choose not to have insurance? Dude, that’s less than 1%
June 1, 2009 @ 1:46 pmExcept insurance isn’t what is driving health care costs, it is just where the increase is reflected to consumers. As Morgen and I have pointed out, several things drive costs including fraud, malpractice and greatly improved medicine and technology. Changing from a private system to a government one is going to make fraud worse, make no imporvement vis a vis malpractice and won’t reduce the cost of improved medicines and technology (from which we all benefit).
The only “savings” we’re likely to get via government insurance will come from the broader bargaining base. However, these savings will inevitably (probably very quickly) be offset by fraud and abuse as the lack of accountability and competition (which is the hallmark of any government run system) encourages people to pillage the system in every way possible.
The fact is, Medicare is government health care and it is upside-down and going bankrupt. If government was the solution, it should have worked by now. It hasn’t. It won’t if we expand the problem. In fact Medicare costs have expanded faster than private insurance costs.
So what happens to your “moral” system when everyone has government care and the government goes bankrupt?
Huh? 300 million people in the US. 1% = 3 million people.
June 1, 2009 @ 3:09 pmJohn’s point was that approximately half of the number touted as “uninsured” either choose not to purchase insurance or are not legal residents of the U.S. I actually suspect the number is far greater than 50%, perhaps as high as 75%.
It’s not just a few wealthy people who choose not to pay for health insurance. Decent individual insurance plans can be had for as little as $200-300/month for people under 40 with good health. I’m not saying that this isn’t a decent chunk of change for someone at lower income levels, but it’s well within the range of what could be paid for by most employed people if it was a high enough budget priority.
The problem is that it’s not, especially for single people under 30. And I believe this is due in no small part to the mentality which has arisen that health insurance should be an employer-paid benefit. For people that work for a company that doesn’t pay for insurance, the path of least resistance is to just blame your crappy employer and dream about the day when Obama solves all of your problems.
So as much as it’s against my libertarian leanings, I think the idea of an individual mandate should be part of the discussion on healthcare reform. People should pay for products and services that they use…period. If this means they have to drop their premium TV channels or otherwise cut back on their discretionary expenses, than they ought to. Rather than just dumping their personal liabilities on to taxpayers.
So this would leave a much smaller number of the truly poor where a subsidy would be required to achieve truly universal coverage. This type of system is already in place for children (SCHIP) and for seniors and the disabled (Medicare/Medicaid). Personally I would be very cautious about creating a long-term entitlement program for adults, but it’s on the table – fine. Let’s see what if anything we can afford to do given current budget constraints.
But what I and so many other conservatives are opposed to is the idea that we need to upend the structure of our healthcare system and explode the budget deficit…based on spurious arguments.
If we truly want to control costs (and I’m not sure this is a primary objective of the Left) we have 2 choices. A system of bureaucratic rationing imposed by the government, or moving to a system where there is a more direct connection between the healthcare we receive and how it is paid for. No surprise, I’m in favor of the latter option.
June 1, 2009 @ 3:32 pm[...] They have a very good article to show that there is a clear agenda to sell a “public plan option” while smuggling in universal health care by poisoning the health insurance industry. That article includes this statement by Rep. Jan Schakowsky with a corresponding video. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and co-sponsor of HR-676 answered criticisms from single-payer advocates. She said the public option is not a compromise, but a strategic step toward the single-payer system and the elimination of the private insurance industry… [...]
June 16, 2009 @ 1:51 pm[...] ● Democrat Admits Obama Healthcare Plan Will Destroy Insurance Industry Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) Admits Obama Healthcare Plan Will Destroy Insurance Industry: “I know many of you here today are single payer advocates and so am I … and those of us who are pushing for a public health insurance don’t disagree with this goal. This is not a principled fight. This is a fight about strategy for getting there and I believe we will.” Liberals don’t want you to see this video She said the public option is not a compromise, but a strategic step toward the single-payer system and the elimination of the private insurance industry…more [...]
July 2, 2009 @ 2:01 pm[...] they have no chance of passing single-payer legislation. And so they have devised another strategy for getting there – the so called “public plan option”. All the while vigorously [...]
September 2, 2009 @ 10:18 pm