Jul 22 2009
Most People Have Health Care, And Probably Don’t Want The Government Messing With It
Most Americans have health care according to Gallup:
Obama and Dems want us to focus on the 14% without coverage, but the political reality is which is the bigger interest group. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out.
I would wager the ONLY things the insured people would allow government to do is make insurance more affordable and remove the pre-existing conditions barriers for access. Beyond that I doubt that 84% of the population want the feds to touch a damn thing. They don’t trust government – why should they? Obama has proven not to be able to keep his word or promises, so his job stimulus failures are a good indicator of why the feds will be seen as making things worse.
It should be interesting to see how the GOP preempts the President this afternoon.  I would point out more people rent than own homes. By the Obamacare standard we need to all give up  some parts of our homes so everyone can have one. Why don’t we have the government hand out homes to one and all? What about cars? What about TVs? When does the government hand out end to give to the minority what they cannot afford?
Obamacare is in deep trouble because there is no upside for the 84% of us who are covered. President Obama claims we can keep our doctors and plans, but that is a disingenuous lie. We can keep them until 2013, then private plans are banned and companies will have walked away from providing the benefits to their employees.
And then there is the absurd costs and the obscene haste. Obama could allow the economy to mend and then balance the budget and then debate this plan in and open and honest way for as long as necessary until people really understand what they are dealing with.
But noooo, he has to come out with some plan, that is not a plan, but a conglomeration of several plans that no one seems to understand and it has to be passed by August.
No wonder people are scared of it.
If anyone was really, truly serious, they would be thinking of a way to subsidize a choice of plans.
Which is, by the way, precisely what the Federal Civil Service has. We’ve got a choice of a mix of options…HMOs, Pay-for-service, self and family options. It works out to about 10-15 choices for a given area (a given HMO will only cover a fixed area). We pay a premium subsidized by the Government – but high enough to make us shop wisely.
That plan could be expanded. Even allow an employer or union to negoiate for a better rate from one provider. Kindly note that you not only offer coverage for the lower income brackets, but help small business and the self employed. A choice would be mandatory – but I could see a ‘Catastrophe Care’ option that would be no more that the lowest subsidy for the area would buy.
You pay for it with a flat income tax – yes, you tax the ‘poor’ along with the rest of us.
But Obama and his mob aren’t interested in solving the problem. This is about power and privilege. Look at the Big Picture, and a pattern emerges: Second-rate schools/hospitals/police for the tax peasants, a very much better system for a handful of wealthy and powerful liberals. Lords and Serfs.
My forefathers did not fight the Revolutionary War to be serfs.
Look, the obama people are all over the web reading what we post and discuss….we are doing their work for them.
They are looking at our objections so they can craft their responses. We all know this.
This fight for the survival of the United States of America, our America the Beautiful, has just begun.
Book it.
And Guy, your guy voted AGAINST every single health care proposal put up by the Bush Administration. This is only about his legacy. Period.
crosspatch:
Please stop embarrassing yourself. I went and looked at the actual bill, and there on p. 16, is a section defining the term “Grandfathered Health Insurance Coverage”. The fact that it’s in a definition might lead readers to conclude that it doesn’t mean that you can’t buy individual insurance after the bill takes effect, or change your insurance place — but only that you can’t make such changes and have it meet the bill’s definition of “Grandfathered Health Insurance Coverage”. There is a difference.
“Grandfathered Health Insurance” is mentioned in Sec. 102, Sec. 202, and Sec. 401. Unless my search engine has melted down, these are the only mentions of “Grandfathered Health Insurance” in the bill. None of them even comes close to banning private individual insurance, or stopping you from changing your plan. Check for yourselves.
There is NOTHING in the bill that says “You can never change your insurance” or “You can never change your insurance”. You are looking at one section that is defining “Grandfathered”, and somehow extrapolating that to the entire rest of the document.
I swear, you people have the reading comprehension of a herd of buffalo.
(1) LIMITATION ON NEW ENROLLMENT.—
(A) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in
this paragraph, the individual health insurance
issuer offering such coverage does not enroll
any individual in such coverage if the first ef-
fective date of coverage is on or after the first
day of Y1.
Translation … Nobody can enroll any new employees in their heath care plans after the day of Y1 (when the government health care plan becomes effective).
People CAN remain in a qualified “grandfathered” program.
(2) LIMITATION ON CHANGES IN TERMS OR
CONDITIONS.—Subject to paragraph (3) and except
as required by law, the issuer does not change any
of its terms or conditions, including benefits and
cost-sharing, from those in effect as of the day be-
fore the first day of Y1.
Translation … the moment the issuer changes any of its terms and conditions, it is no longer a qualified “grandfathered” program.
(3) RESTRICTIONS ON PREMIUM INCREASES.—
The issuer cannot vary the percentage increase in
the premium for a risk group of enrollees in specific
grandfathered health insurance coverage without
changing the premium for all enrollees in the same
risk group at the same rate, as specified by the
Commissioner.
Rates can be increased but must be increased equally for all enrollees in the same risk group. So it means that you can’t reward a customer who has a better health and safety record or charge customers who have an unsafe environment more, you have to raise rates for everyone you insure that falls in that “risk group” as specified by “Der Kommissar”
That means that if a business has a lousy safety record, they increase the rate of the people down the street who have a great record rather than limiting the cost to the ones who cause the most cost. It is like saying you can’t charge bad drivers more than good drivers for car insurance.
The result is to prevent a health plan from ever gaining any more customers and causing customers they have to leave by unfairly charging “good” customers for the sins of the “bad” customers.