Sep 07 2009
DC Health Care Math: 2+2 = 3
One wonders how someone can over-engineer a solution to the point it is worse than the problem, but DC and Congress are extremely gifted in the craft.
In this country we have the world’s best health care. Accessible to all either through insurance or on a walk-in basis or as a poverty program (Medicare/Medicaid). No one is denied care. Those who afford insurance and pay taxes subsidize those who don’t. The more you earn, the more health care you can afford to buy. Same as it is with cars, homes, schools, etc. Work hard, succeed, raise your kids to do the same, you reap the rewards of your success and efforts.
But in DC there is a need to ‘fix’ this arrangement. So we get these bizarre proposals that move those without insurance under insurance – with massive cost increases! Some how the DC elites think 2+2= 3. Case in point, the Baucus plan coming out today:
Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus is urging three Republican colleagues to sign off on the $900 billion health-care reform package they have helped to negotiate over the past two months, to add a bipartisan proposal to the mix before President Obama’s speech Wednesday.
It seems to ‘save money’ covering the uninsured in a more cost effective way is going to cost us tax paying, already insured folks a lot more than just subsidizing them through our current premiums and taxes and costs as we do today. As usual, DC comes up with a dumb solution when obvious solutions abound. Case 1:
Instead of a government insurance option, the Baucus proposal would create a network of non-profit cooperatives — an alternative that Grassley, the lead Republican negotiator, has backed.
We don’t need non-profit Coops (which simply hide their ‘profits’ under obscene salaries to top Execs). What we need is insurance pools for small businesses and individual policy holders that can cross state lines. What we need is the elimination of pre-existing condition barriers. What we need is tort reform. All simple solutions built upon the current world class system.
But while this concept is naive and denies easier paths to the same goals, the financial math from DC is ludicrous:
And it would levy a fee on insurers for providing high-cost plans, a provision aimed at curbing health-care cost inflation that Democrats and Republicans have endorsed, but that would violate an Obama campaign pledge not to target more generous plan covering many union households.
What in the hell is a ‘high cost plan? Is it a typical plan the more successful middle class can afford and currently has? Fees on premiums to cover the uninsured? Hell, we already do that! Â 2+2 = 3.
Until someone provides a rational and coherent plan that costs LESS than the current system why should any tax payer support larger deficits and taxes to simply come back to where we are now? Everyone has access to some form of health care, subsidized by premium payers and tax payers.  The fiction was the liberals could do it better and cheaper. Apparently they are the last to come to the realization they cannot. They never could.
900 billion dollars? 9.99 looks better than ten bucks. A game many merchants play to fool customers. What’s the difference between 900B and 1 T? Of that magnitude, not much. Except it just defers the Federal deficits.
And didn’t Obama say not to add costs to the bill?
Of course 2+2=3, why keep pushing that lie? Maybe it just doesn’t just matter to the Democrats!
Barack Obama accused of making ‘Depression’ mistakes
Barack Obama is committing the same mistakes made by policymakers during the Great Depression, according to a new study endorsed by Nobel laureate James Buchanan.
The paper, which recommends that the US return to a more laissez-faire economic system rather than intervening further in activity, has been endorsed by Nobel laureate James Buchanan, who said: “We have learned some things from comparable experiences of the 1930s’ Great Depression, perhaps enough to reduce the severity of the current contraction. But we have made no progress toward putting limits on political leaders, who act out their natural proclivities without any basic understanding of what makes capitalism work.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/6147211/Barack-Obama-accused-of-making-Depression-mistakes.html
Good grief! Looks like Grassely is about to cave in. He’s embracing the coop idea as the means of bringing in more uninsured into our health plan. He also likes the idea of taxing the insurance companies.
Time to replace most of the incumbents in both parties and get that health care reform replaced with a better bill. Can’t repeal it unless we have something better.
Obama’s Medical Care, Cap and Trade, and Stimulus bills are no different then closing Gitmo with out a plan, just really stupid.
Insurance companies can create co-ops without the government. The supporters of government created co-ops say the government will not run the co-ops and will only put in seed money for claims, but it seems to me that the government could just allow tax breaks for companies to create their own seed money for private co-ops.
With Baucus and Hoyer both coming out against the “public option” today, it looks like a fascinating setup for tomorrow night, especially since Obama has been hinting that he likes it but it isn’t essential.
The far left in the House is being put into a position where they are either going to have to knuckle under and back down or else they are going to be responsible for blowing the entire health care bill to bits.
Oh, it is fun to watch nutcases get put to a choice like that, becaue of course if they were rational it would be no choice at all.
And what does Obama think one more speech is going to accomplish, anyways? I’m wondering if he’s just going to come out mouthing the same old platitudes but in a “sterner” tone of voice. As if that will change anything.
News to Obama – just because YOU say the time for debate is over don’t mean it’s so.