I'm on deadline, so I haven't been following the ephemera of S-Chip as closely as I might. Apparently the Democrats paraded some kid name Graeme Frost in front of a camera in support of S-Chip. Now conservatives are claiming that the kid is actually affluent, and therefore shouldn't be getting gummint money for health insurance. My thoughts:
1) I told y'all this was going to happen. Maybe next time you'll listen, hmmm?
2) Anecdotes, no matter how photogenic, are terrible ways to make policy. It doesn't matter how crappy your public policy is; I guarantee I can find one very telegenic person who is better of under your godawful boondoggle of a system than under almost any other potential system. But argument by anecdote is what we seem to be stuck with, particularly in the realm of social policy affecting children. Isn't democracy marvelous?
3) If Think Progress's account of the case is basically accurate--the family owns its own business, has a lowerish-middle class income, but lives in a basically nice neighbourhood--this actually raises important issues about benefits that no one is asking. To wit: should we expect families to sell assets in order to qualify for benefits? On the one hand, Medicaid's ludicrous rules keep disabled people in crippling poverty. On the other hand many people, including me, don't want to pay for the health care of someone so that they can stay in their Park Avenue mansion. At some point, it is reasonable to expect people to liquidate assets in order to pay for expenses, rather than expecting society to pick up the tab. But I'm not sure what point is reasonable.
I don't think this is particularly interesting as it applies to S-Chip; frankly, I doubt there are enough low-income families with children and sizeable assets to make it even worth debating the issue. But it is a very important question regarding Medicaid, because of all the elderly people who shelter significant assets in order to get Medicaid to pay for their nursing home care.
In the case of a spouse, this seems (usually) legitimate, again with the Park Avenue mansion exception: I don't care how long you've lived there, if you're squatting on five or ten million worth of real estate, you should sell it and pay for your spouse's nursing home, rather than asking the payroll clerks and bank tellers of the world to lend a helping hand. But normally, I don't think it's reasonable to demand that anyone make themselves homeless in order to qualify their spouse for a nursing home.
But that isn't the only reason people shelter assets; often they're doing it so that they can leave something to their children. This doesn't strike me as at all reasonable. You have a right to have society pay for your nursing home care if you are destitute and will otherwise suffer and die. You do not have a right to have society pay for your nursing home care so that you can leave the house and some financial assets to the kids. Aside from its rather repulsive moral logic, it's regressive; the people who benefit are upper-middle-class kids who have already benefitted quite a lot from their fortuitous choice of parents.
We need a better, more granular system than we have for deciding who qualifies for public assistance: one that doesn't force families of modest means out of their homes, but also doesn't allow wealthy families to gain the system as they currently do.
4) That said, even if Graeme Frost is basically middle-class-ish, that wouldn't be a stunning indictment of S-Chip. No system is without error; all will let through some people who don't deserve benefits, and miss some people who do. That there has been one error, in either direction, is not necessarily an indictment of the system, but merely an indication that we live in an imperfect world. Moreover, in the case of children, I'm perfectly content to bias the system towards including too many undeserving children, rather than take the chance of missing too many deserving ones. I find S-Chip's practice of covering adults problematic, but frankly, the prospect that Graeme Frost might have gotten some undeserved healthcare ranks, on my list of things to worry about, somewhere between pandemic toe fungus, and finalizing the guest list for my Chicago Cubs World Series Victory Party.
5) Reading the comments on this, I have to ask conservatives and libertarians: is this really the hill you think we should die on? I do understand your objections to the program, but an informal survey of swing voters, in their current incarnation as my mother, indicates that this is killing you with the moderates. Save it for national health care next year, is what I'm saying. This debate is framing the issue in a way that is going to make things harder, not easier, when Hilarycare is on the table again.
In regards to your question addressed to conservatives and libertarians, I think they're answer is 'yes'. cf. :http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2007/10/08/7267
We need a better, more granular system than we have for deciding who qualifies for public assistance: one that doesn't force families of modest means out of their homes, but also doesn't allow wealthy families to gain the system as they currently do.
What about providing the same health care for everyone, and funding it with a progressive tax structure? Asset tests are a brute to administer.
Given the generous exemptions in the inheritance tax, this would not solve the particular problem I am discussing.
Apparently the Democrats paraded some kid
Not the most even-handed use of terminology there, Megan. "Paraded?"
Anecdotes, no matter how photogenic, are terrible ways to make policy...But argument by anecdote is what we seem to be stuck with, particularly in the realm of social policy affecting children. Isn't democracy marvelous?
Well, compared to philosopher-kings, yes, I'd have to say so. Argument by anecdote is a tried and true method of illustrating features or failures of a proposal or policy. Assuming the anecdote is something that actually occurred, of course, and is related accurately.
At some point, it is reasonable to expect people to liquidate assets in order to pay for expenses, rather than expecting society to pick up the tab. But I'm not sure what point is reasonable.
Or you can avoid negotiating where to draw that line at all, by simply making health care a benefit of citizenship and financing it through progressive taxes, which fall more heavily on the wealthy than the poor. But OH NOES TEH SOCIALIZM!!!!1one!
But it is a very important question regarding Medicaid, because of all the elderly people who shelter significant assets in order to get Medicaid to pay for their nursing home care.
Yes, I'm very concerned that Warren Buffett not be subsidized for his nursing home care. I'd much rather set up a system that denies Medicaid to everyone, because I simply can't abide that possibility.
But wait a minute...how'd we get onto nursing home care of the wealthy elderly? The S-CHIP debate is about health care for POOR KIDS.
...frankly, the prospect that Graeme Frost might have gotten some undeserved healthcare ranks, on my list of things to worry about,
...pretty darn low. So why all the agita, one of the longest posts you've made recently? You could have said this much more succinctly. Just your point 5 alone would have sufficed.
Well, so far I have tended to be in favor of single payer systems even when they have worked against me (which, in Canada, is more often than you might think). But I think the question of "deserving" health care is deadly to the debate. The issue is not whether Graeme Frost deserved health care -- I'd not want to see an injured child go untreated if there was any other option.
Instead I think that the question is how to best allocate the limited resources available. So far, I think that a socialized medicine system does many things very well. What it does poorly is to drive medical innovation and that is a legitimate concern that needs to be addressed.
But I begin to like hybrid systems like the UK more and more with time. Functional, low-cost basic emergency care at state expense probably solves most of the moral issues on both sides of the argument for a very small overall impact on innovation (as those that could afford it would go with better care).
I also am unconvinced that free market medicine is the current state of affairs in the United States either. We tightly regulate much of the medical market and subsidize some of the most expensive parts (care after age 65). There is a huge amount of paperwork even for a routine visit and a lot of gatekeepers.
In some ways insurance systems replicate the worst part of the single payer system in that they require rationing (HMOs) and create issues of "commons dilemmas" (once I pay for the plan, either through taxes or payroll deduction, why not maximize what I extract from it).
Given the generous exemptions in the inheritance tax, this would not solve the particular problem I am discussing.
Sure it does. The point is not to have poorer people driven out of their homes while wealthier people get undeserved government benefits. The injustice you see is that determining who gets Medicaid is done by looking at their assets, and sophisticated people are good at sheltering assets, so you get situations where the poor but honest suffer, while the sophisticated get nursing home care and to keep their houses.
Income, while not impossible to shelter, is much harder to hide than assets. If we fund nursing home care for everyone who needs to be in a nursing home out of a progressive income tax, no one in the middle class has to impoverish themselves to get aid for a spouse, and high income people end up accumulating, and passing on to their children, less wealth over the course of a lifetime. Everyone's happy, nobody loses.
Everyone's happy, nobody loses.
Except the poor, unloved "high income people." And what about Warren Buffett who has no "income," and what about taxation being theft, and rugged individualism, and personal responsibility, and the Protestant work ethic, and...
Megan, #4 seems a bit besides the point given the relevant argument. Of course any system is almost certainly going to be both over- under-inclusive. The issue being raised isn't, however, that such an arguably well-off child happens to be covered under S-CHIP expansion, its that he's the expansion supporters' own poster-child for its benefits. That suggests that, notwithstanding arguments made at other times by those supporters, the expansion is not actually targeted at currently uncovered poor children; if it were, presumably one could be found for use on C-SPAN.
I don't know enough about the proposal to say whether this critique is accurate or not, but its no answer to say that the program is always going to be over-inclusive.
Not the most even-handed use of terminology there, Megan. "Paraded?"
How is "paraded" not an appropriate word?
The consensus argument at highclearing seems to be that the president's radio address and response is some stupid thing that no one cares about and performing it shouldn't disqualify one from the privacy accorded to non-public figures. It is probably the case that no one listens (radio still exists?) but it's still an Important Event. At least Important enough that I'd vaguely heard about a 12-year-old involved in it somehow.
Anyway, what strikes me as interesting about this story is the class sensibility involved. When Howard Dean wants a poor child, he doesn't mean, y'know, a poor poor child!
expansion is not actually targeted at currently uncovered poor children;
When Howard Dean wants a poor child, he doesn't mean, y'know, a poor poor child!
Have you guys not been following the story? The expansion is based on the idea that there are families with children not below the poverty line, but still unable to afford adequate health care. You could look at the family finances and claim that they could afford adequate health care if you wanted to carp, but complaining that this kid isn't the poorest of the poor is missing the point. In the context of the expansion of SCHIP, he's not supposed to be.
Megan,
Two quick points:
1) You may prefer to rig the system such that it is too inclusive, but your argument seems to ignore the tremendous affect such a system would have on the private insurance market. Suppose you are a small employer who's been doing the right thing by providing medical coverage for your employees. Now, your employees will have coverage via S-CHIP if you drop your coverage. What do you do? Or, say you are an employee at a business that provides you with a "cafeteria benefit plan" that lets you choose the level of benefits you want to pay for via payroll deduction. Via payroll deduction, you can get coverage for your family for $1,000/month. Or, you can get coverage via S-CHIP and keep the $1,000/month. Again, what do you do? The problem with the S-CHIP expansion is that it's going to "force" many people who CURRENTLY HAVE INSURANCE onto the government program. The fear is that this expansion is a step toward universal coverage. (Early in the Clinton administration, Hillary's staff wrote a memo recommending creating a child health insurance program as a step towards universal coverage, so this fear is NOT unwarranted. Sorry, no link to the memo.) You may still rather cover too many rather than too few kids, but it'd help if you addressed this issue.
2) The Frosts are in a tough situation and I emphasize with them. However, my empathy does generate sufficient sympathy for me to be willing to cover their expenses out of my pocket. (I've got members of my own extended family that I'm helping, thank you.) Mr. and Mrs. Frost claim to be making $45,000. Yet they own a home worth close to $500,000, rental property worth $200,000, and their children attend private schools that cost $20,000 each. (Some reports say the kids get partial tuition waivers. Others say the grandparents are paying for the school.) My point is NOT that the Frosts should have to sell assets. My point is that both parents CHOOSE to work at jobs that did not provide health coverage (or they choose not to obtain coverage). They CLEARLY could have gotten coverage by making different choices. Now that they are in a bad situation, why am I expected to share the burden of their poor decisions? I don't get to work in the woodworking arena (something I'd dearly love to do). I'm a wage slave in large part because I've always felt it necessary to have a job that provided health insurance for my family. It would have galled me to turn that responsibility over to someone else. At least when someone in my family screws up, they may come to me and say, "David, I did something stupid, but I need your help." The Frosts don't admit they did anything wrong and don't want to ask for help. They demand it. That galls me, too.
MMcA writes:
[T]his actually raises important issues about benefits that no one is asking. To wit: should we expect families to sell assets in order to qualify for benefits?
It's not clear to me that this family has any assets from which they could access equity. If you have a $100K house and a $90K mortgage, you cannot as a practical matter access the remaining equity. Similarly, a profitable owner-operated small business could be treated as an asset for some purposes but may well be unsaleable. The critical claims about this family are awfully hand-wavy over these basic issues (and I have no desire to actually dig in to find out what the answer is; whether the anecdote is right or wrong, at this point it is clear that the discussion has overreached the bounds of propriety with respect to this particular family).
That said, even if Graeme Frost is basically middle-class-ish, that wouldn't be a stunning indictment of S-Chip.
Indeed, given that the whole point of the S-CHIP program -- as distinguished from Medicaid -- is to cover children who are not so poor as to be covered by Medicaid but whose families are nevertheless financially unable to afford insurance. I have no idea what insurance costs for for a family of 6 with two partially disabled children who require ongoing therapy, but even if community rating is applicable (meaning that the insurer cannot take those preexisting health conditions into account) it may well be beyond the reach of a family of 6 earning $50,000/yr.
Maybe we should "Just March Out" of Iraq and kill two birds with one stone. Stop increasing demand for Medical Services that care for our troops, and allow our medically-trained troops provide Health-Care services for Americans that could benefit from them.
That we get wrapped around the axle of the use of "paraded", in an argument about further increasing the tax-load on our productive Economy, is only more proof of how far our gaze is misdirected from said "ball".
We should ask ourselves when it was that Health-Care costs began their exponential rise, and by which means was that genie let out of the bottle.
The S-CHIP debate is about health care for POOR KIDS.
No, "POOR KIDS" are already covered. The current debate is whether to extend it to "LOWER-MIDDLE CLASS KIDS."
I have to ask conservatives and libertarians: is this really the hill you think we should die on?
Megan, weren't you hugely objecting to the prescription drug bill? Wasn't that equally popular with swing voters? Doesn't having Medicare and other programs covering drugs make a lot of sense, considering that drugs can save money over other, already-covered treatments? Hasn't Tyler Cowen pointed to quite a few studies suggesting that the cost of the prescription bill is likely to be less in the long run than projected, simply because drug treatment is more efficient than other treatments? (Not sure how much I follow them, but still.)
Of course, inconsistency is an easy thing to accuse someone of, but I'm still struck by it.
Anecdotes, no matter how photogenic, are terrible ways to make policy.
I do understand your objections to the program, but an informal survey of swing voters, in their current incarnation as my mother, indicates that this is killing you with the moderates.
Giggle. Anecdotes, no matter how much your mother, are terrible ways to argue policy too, Megan.
David Walser,
In response to 2), you're right, not all careers provide health insurance. Isn't this a good argument for something like universal coverage via a single payer system? If the only thing preventing you fromn being a world class woodworker, or Megan from being a world class Soprano, is fear you'll be unable to get health insurance, then the current system is one which would seem to restrict freedom and liberty (of career choice and job movement), rather than provide freedom and liberty (of choosing one insurer over another). So, at the end of the day, isn't the story just "a lot of people are suffering with the current system and a lot fewer people would suffer under a French-style single payer system?"
Also, the argument that the Frost's could just afford insurance if they would only sell their home and use up all their savings is not one I'd like to be making. Isn't the argument that a family making 40-50k a year should be able to insure their children WITHOUT mortgaging their future? If the right thinks that the solution for the Frost family is just to sell their home and use the money to pay for insurance I would love for them to make that explicitly.
What do you mean “we” Megan?
Also, the argument that the Frost's could just afford insurance if they would only sell their home and use up all their savings is not one I'd like to be making. Isn't the argument that a family making 40-50k a year should be able to insure their children WITHOUT mortgaging their future? If the right thinks that the solution for the Frost family is just to sell their home and use the money to pay for insurance I would love for them to make that explicitly.
Okay: I think the Frost family should sell their home and use the money to pay for insurance.
There are an awful lot of people who can't afford their own homes, let alone homes as nice as that one. (You can see a picture of the inside of it in the Baltimore Sun.) Why are the Frosts entitled to that home and health care, when other, more responsible people, chose to pay for the health care by not buying such a big house?
Indeed, after the Frost family sells their home and uses the money to pay for insurance, the Frosts' parents should sell THEIR homes and use the money to pay for insurance. If they still don't have enough, then we can talk about the welfare the Frosts want. (If their own parents don't care enough about them to pay for their health care, then why should we?)
Jeebus Megan.
This ranks with the Jena 6 post in terms of looking before you leap.
Why do you do this?
Isn't the argument that a family making 40-50k a year should be able to insure their children WITHOUT mortgaging their future? If the right thinks that the solution for the Frost family is just to sell their home and use the money to pay for insurance I would love for them to make that explicitly.
I don't know about the right, but I'm not making that argument. They are making $40-50k a year and should've been able to afford insurance. What they would have had to have done differently, I don't know. I do know there was a time when I had to skip lunches because we didn't have enough money to pay for my lunch AND my bus fare to work -- yet we always found a way to pay for insurance. Insurance was always a high priority for us, right after rent and food, before new clothes, new car, or vacations.
Perhaps my feelings are colored by the following experience: In 1984, my wife and I were living in married student housing. Things were extremely tight financially. We made just over $500/month; rent was $275 (IIRC) and our medical insurance was $125. That left about $100 for everything else -- food, utilities, tuition, books -- for our family of three. Why did we spend over 20% of your monthly income on insurance? Because we knew it was possible we'd have some medical expenses we could not otherwise afford. When the unplanned for, but not entirely unexpected, event occurred and my wife became pregnant with our second child, we were glad we had insurance to cover the costs.
Even with insurance, the birth of our child was going to be an expensive event for our young family. Our policy was a major medical policy, meaning things like doctor's appointments were not covered. Our deductible was $500 and the policy covered 80% of the insured costs above that amount with a maximum out-of-pocket cost of $2,000. The delivery was more difficult than expected and the medical costs ran into the tens of thousands of dollars. Our share, was just over $2,800 (including the costs not covered by insurance). My entire student loan for that semester, $2,500, went to cover that debt. We had good doctors who allowed us to pay the rest over time at no interest.
Contrast our situation with another couple living in the same apartment complex. They, too, were expecting their second child. They, too, were struggling to make ends meet. They, too, had a difficult delivery. They didn't have any insurance. I'd spoken with the husband about this. (We played basketball together.) He told me I should cancel our policy and use our $125 for more important things. He pointed out that the hospital could not refuse to serve us just because we didn't have insurance. He also pointed out that they'd not have been able to afford their new car if they'd had to pay for insurance.
After their delivery, they owed thousands of dollars to the hospital and doctors. In church, the minister asked my wife and I to contribute to a special fund to help the other couple with their medical bills. I asked if anyone was going to be helping us with our $2,800 in bills. He pointed out that we were in a much better situation than the other couple. Our debts weren't nearly as great. I told the minister that, if the couple hadn't been driving a new car for the past year their debts wouldn't be as large, either. In the end, the couple's debts were forgiven by the hospital and doctors and they got to keep their car and baby. We got the moral satisfaction of knowing we'd paid our own way.
I'm not in favor of creating a system that relies even more on moral satisfaction to prevent people from shifting their burdens onto others. Moral satisfaction doesn't buy much at the store.
David Walser wrote:
You might find this post from Bob Vineyard at the Insureblog(1) rather interesting:
Apparently there are also small business organizations which you can join and receive insurance at a discount. But why bother paying anything if you can get it for “free”?
(1) http://insureblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/45000-and-no-insurance.html
I second David's point from a couple posts earlier. Sell the house. Move into a cheaper bungalow and pay for the insurance yourselves.
A parent that buys an expensive house before securing their child's health is a bad parent.
1. This was a poorly chosen battle by Bush- choosing an incremental increase in a health insurance plan aimed at children as your first veto? Not a wise PR move when you've previously found a justification for expanding just about every other entitlement program.
2. As for conservatives and libertarians more generally, I don't think real libertarians (or the few real conservatives left) view this as a Last Stand type of issue; instead it's just one more fight in a laundry list of battles against entitlement programs over the years. If Bush hadn't vetoed it or if he had exercised fiscal restraint in the past, the conservative/libertarian coverage of this would be no more than any other entitlement bill.
3. I don't like the personal attacks on the Frost family- if anecdotal evidence is a bad basis for policy changes in the first place (and it is), then attacking that anecdotal evidence suffers from the same problem.
4. That said, "paraded" sounds like the right term for the use of a 12 year old kid to give a political speech. I always find things like this unseemly and exploitative- trying to find an emotional hook by using a kid who has no understanding (and, frankly, shouldn't have any understanding) whatsoever about the larger policy implications of the program at issue. Not to mention the theft of the child's innocence in the process. There is, after all, a pretty good reason why we don't let children vote, drink, smoke, etc. And for the record, I cringe just as much when Republicans use kids as props in the pro-life crusade and other political debates.
I would just like to propose we all come to an agreement that we won't exploit people for political purposes unless they're old enough to give legal consent to the exploitation.
"But that isn't the only reason people shelter assets; often they're doing it so that they can leave something to their children. This doesn't strike me as at all reasonable. You have a right to have society pay for your nursing home care if you are destitute and will otherwise suffer and die. You do not have a right to have society pay for your nursing home care so that you can leave the house and some financial assets to the kids. Aside from its rather repulsive moral logic, it's regressive; the people who benefit are upper-middle-class kids who have already benefitted quite a lot from their fortuitous choice of parents."
Many people would rather kill themselves and leave something to their kids than spend all their money on nursing home care. Since society does not want them to do this you can argue that society should pick up the cost.
"You do not have a right to have society pay for your nursing home care so that you can leave the house and some financial assets to the kids."
Clearly we need more reverse mortgages so old people can have money and their spoiled children get nothing with no government intervention needed.
1) I told y'all this was going to happen. Maybe next time you'll listen, hmmm?
You told us that conservatives would mount a scorched-earth smear campaign against any persuasive individual who appeared in public to testify for a Democratic program? After Joe Wilson, the Swift Boat thing, the Jamil Hussein thing, the TNR soldier's article thing, the Michael Fox thing, the Edwards big-house thing, and so forth, I didn't need you to tell me that. But thanks for the warning.
Let's put it this way: it's a given that the GOP will dig up some way to smear anybody who comes out in favor of a Democratic initiative. Given that fact, the best Democratic response is to pick spokespeople who are so sympathetic that the GOP smear effort exposes its own transparent hideousness. Which it does in this case.
No, "POOR KIDS" are already covered. The current debate is whether to extend it to "LOWER-MIDDLE CLASS KIDS."
Whatever. It's still not about Warren Buffett's nursing home expenses. Why did Megan go off on THAT tangent?
David Walser gives a relevant anecdote about his personal experience and how his family managed to afford insurance coverage. But I suspect that we're not getting the whole story; even in 1984, I find it doubtful that a student family of 3 could survive on $100/month after rent and insurance. I lived in student housing in 1984, BY MYSELF (in a residence hall with a roommate), and my tuition, fees and books alone were well over $2000 per semester when all was said and done (at the University of Kansas, not NYU).
I don't have all the details on the Frost's financial situation. But if we had single-payer universal health coverage, their kids' care would not be threatened by the Bush administration's actions regarding the S-CHIP program.
This was a poorly chosen battle by Bush
Has there ever been a WELL-chosen battle by Bush?
A parent that buys an expensive house before securing their child's health is a bad parent.
Apparently the house wasn't expensive when they bought it.
I second David's point from a couple posts earlier. Sell the house. Move into a cheaper bungalow and pay for the insurance yourselves.
With single-payer universal health care, they wouldn't have to sell the house and move into a cheaper bungalow (assuming that is even an option for them).
Keep trying...
4) That said, even if Graeme Frost is basically middle-class-ish, that wouldn't be a stunning indictment of S-Chip.
Graeme Frost's parents earned $45,000 last year. Median income for a family of four in Maryland is $94,000.
I guess the question is: since when did a low middle to middle class family, even a family that makes up to say 100K per year, ever really shelter their assets? The only ones that have the savvy to shelter are those in the upper income brackets. They also lobby for and contribute to political campaigns that promote legislation that helps them shelter their assets. What this amounts to is a continued war on the average US citizen.
Blogs like this are illuminating since they expose the purposeful ignorance (rationalizing) of the upper class of our great society.
Reverse mortgages for the elderly to pay for their nursing home care? The one icon of the American dream that the individual worked for all their life! Who is really winning here? Is it the corporate financial centers that profit by buying a home for a fraction of its market value? Is it the wealthy individual or corporation that overcharges for an occasional visit by a nurse and a hot meal for the elderly? We all know the answer if we look deep enough and do the math. But some of us just want to continue to blame the poor. Shame.
"How is "paraded" not an appropriate word?"
Parades have an audience.
Nobody listens to the President's Saturday radio fart, let alone the Democratic response.
"I second David's point from a couple posts earlier. Sell the house. Move into a cheaper bungalow and pay for the insurance yourselves."
Yeah, if only real life were so simple.
Given the size of the family, and what home prices have been doing over the last 3 years, it may not have been feasible to find a cheaper home that was big enough for the size of the family.
Apparently Mr. Frost has been doing renovations, and some of them are still incomplete. That wouldn't help the resale price, either.
Maybe the problem here is that Republicans aren't familiar with small businessmen who don't subsist on government pork and GOP corruption.
Not bad, Megan. Mostly sane and reasonable. Keep it up!
We should ask ourselves when it was that Health-Care costs began their exponential rise, and by which means was that genie let out of the bottle.
I'm game. According to the Department of Health & Human Services, health care spending as a percentage of GDP has risen almost every year since 1960, from 5.2% in 1960 to 16% in 2005. From the spreadsheet available from HHS the rate of increase seems linear, not exponential, though of course there are other factors such as GDP growth itself which would affect the total expenditure amount. Per-capita spending has also risen in a fairly linear way. The point is that it apparently has been consistently rising, never leveling off or falling, for the past 47 years.
http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/02_NationalHealthAccountsHistorical.asp
Challenge to the writers:
State your yearly income in dollars
State your assets worth in dollars (home, business,boat, car)
State your stance on on this SCHIPS (do you side with Bush veto of SCHIPS?)
I will start with my demographics:
Yearly income 120,000
Asset worth 100,000 (after selling three income properties and paying off loans/mortgages).
I do not side with Bush veto.
When the Frosts bought their home, they bought it for $55,000.
While their equity in the home has clearly skyrocketed as the neighborhood has gentrified (and Mr. Frost expended his effort - he is a carpenter after all - into improving the home), they likely couldn't afford the mortage payment anymore than they could afford the insurance bill (if they could even obtain insurance - another issue that seems to be ignored) if they tried to cash in on that equity.
For those claiming that independent insurance coverage can be found for a family of 5 in Maryland can be found for $450, they are delusional. I don't care what quote engine spit up, it doesn't exist in reality (i.e., a policy a typical family of 5 could actually get).
David Walser gives a relevant anecdote about his personal experience and how his family managed to afford insurance coverage. But I suspect that we're not getting the whole story; even in 1984, I find it doubtful that a student family of 3 could survive on $100/month after rent and insurance. I lived in student housing in 1984, BY MYSELF (in a residence hall with a roommate), and my tuition, fees and books alone were well over $2000 per semester when all was said and done (at the University of Kansas, not NYU).
No, you weren't getting the whole story. I attended BYU, which was (and is) a relative educational bargain. Plus, I had a scholarship that covered 50% of tuition. In addition, my parents had a ranch/farm. We would drive a couple hours south once a month (or so) and they'd fill up a small cold chest with frozen beef and lamb. In season, mom would fill up our trunk with freshly bottled peaches, apricots, apple sauce, etc. That made our grocery money go farther. Besides, as I indicated, I'm not sure I'm remembering all the numbers accurately.
I do recall that upon graduation we thought we were rich! However, after allocating my paycheck against all our needs, I only had $25 a week with which to get me to work (bus fare $1.50 each way) and to eat lunch (the firm I worked for didn't allow professionals to bring a lunch). I skipped lunch most days -- you couldn't get much with $2, even back then. Still, we paid for medical insurance. (I could have declined coverage and my paycheck would have gone up by the amount of the insurance premiums, less taxes. I don't recall how much the insurance was, but I could have eaten lunch every day if we'd declined coverage.)
Look, I don't know the Frosts' situation any better than do the rest of you. However, I have served as a volunteer financial counselor to dozens of families facing financial difficulties. It's also what I do professionally. My experience is that almost always (almost is a very important word here), financial difficulties are more a product of poor management than poor resources. (I have a client with more than $20 million in net worth. The couple is quickly spending themselves into bankruptcy -- it'll take 15 years, but they'll get there if they don't change their spending habits.)
Yes, horrible things sometimes happen to good people. The sure thing investment didn't pan out as planned, or poor health prevents someone from working, or the house needs costly repairs, and "suddenly" a family is in desperate financial shape and may not be able extricate themselves without help. I've seen it up close and personal and it can be quite ugly. However, virtually all of these things can be prevented or insured against. Is the government going to be the guarantor of every investment and the insurer against all ills that might befall us?
In addition, my parents had a ranch/farm. We would drive a couple hours south once a month (or so) and they'd fill up a small cold chest with frozen beef and lamb. In season, mom would fill up our trunk with freshly bottled peaches, apricots, apple sauce, etc. That made our grocery money go farther.
Come on, David W. You can't expect people's own families to help them when the government is out there with all that money. It would be unfair to ask parents to help support their own children.
My experience is that almost always (almost is a very important word here), financial difficulties are more a product of poor management than poor resources.
I agree, from my own experience. My experience also is that "can't afford" is almost always -- again, "almost" is an important word -- a euphemism for "don't feel like making the sacrifices to afford." (See how many people think cell phones, cable, dining out, and of course cigarettes are "necessities.")
Any criminal defense lawyer can tell you how many clients come in and ask if they can pay you the rest of the money later because they just can't put together your whole fee now. They'll cry, they'll beg. If you say yes, good luck ever getting the money. There will always be another excuse. If you stand firm and say no, magically they'll scrape it together even though there was "just no way I could afford it."
I don't get to work in the woodworking arena (something I'd dearly love to do). I'm a wage slave in large part because I've always felt it necessary to have a job that provided health insurance for my family.
So then why don't you support universal health coverage? If you had it, you wouldn't be tethered to a job you (apparently) don't like just so your family will be covered in the case of a medical emergency.
Honestly, I've never understood this. "Oh, here's a change in health care policy that would help enable me to live my life the way I'd dearly love to live it . . . buuuuuuuuuut I'm against it, since it might benefit Warren Buffett too, or it somehow represents a Corrosion of Liberty or something."
Dude, you've got one life here. You should be able to live it the way you want.
A parent that buys an expensive house before securing their child's health is a bad parent.
You mean the house they bought for 55K (yes, that's 55K, and not 550K) several years before their kids were in that car accident?
But I'm sure that being informed of the facts won't actually change your opinion in any case.
I have no problem keep S-CHIP at the present levels.
Expanding it to cover "children" up to age 25 and "poor" families earning up to 300% or 400% of the poverty rate annually is outrageous.
Pelosi and the Democrats using a 12 year old boy whose family already qualified (Note to Republicans: they qualified, get over it...) in the past for benefits is disgusting and exploitative.
Keeping S-CHIP at present levels would have still covered Graeme Frost and his sister in their accident a few years ago.
"gain the system" should be "game the system.
SCHIP was meant as a first step to bringing about nationalized health care. Either you're for it or you're against it.
My employer is spending about $4,000 for my insurance, plus the over $1,000 I chip in. I want my $4,000 in income, which is mine, and I want to be able to buy a high deductible policy, as in at least over $1,000. I can't do that in Taxachusetts, especially after the Democrats passed their hellish plan, which Romney signed off on, which requires my insurance to include things such as hair loss.
The government screw up healthcare, then the Democrats say we need more government, which screws it up more and costs more money, and the cycle repeats until we get to socialism. For the children.
I have to agree with you on the S-CHIP program, though in principle I'm against federal government programs that don't limit assistance to the truly needy.
The problem for conservatives and George Bush on the democrat expansion of the program is that Bush himself established a principle that middle income and well-to do seniors are 'entitled' to the Medicare Part D drug program that is likewise subsidized by the taxpayer to the tune of about $25 billion (though originally projected to be $35 billion) per year.
Since Bush didn't means-test this program (which I'm involved in as a volunteer Medicare counselor), he gave the opening for the expansion of S-CHIP. It's inconsistent to denounce one but not the other. In fact at least the S-CHIP program has means testing, even if somewhat generous, while even Bill Gates will be eligible for Medicare Part D one day.
And make no mistake about it, Medicare Part D has become an entitlement for many well-to-do seniors with large drug costs to the tune of between $1,000 and $3,000 on average per year, from my experience, leaving many not-at-all poor seniors with a couple of grand each year more for cruises and gambling junkets.
Medicare Part D was predicated on the belief that ensuring seniors actually take the meds they should be taking (many, especially diabetics, in the past failed to take all their meds due to cost), Medicare as a whole would see a decrease in cost (prevention over expensive surgeries down the road). It'll take years to see if Part D works as planned.
Likewise S-CHIP is predicated on preventing very costly emergency room visits that end up now being paid by the taxpayer anyway. Whether it turns out to be cost-effective we'll just have to wait and see.
Megan,
The tactic is one slice at a time.
Dan Rhiel is discussing the recent dust up about the socialized medicine poster children. I have some thoughts on the subject:
What happens when some government junk scientist discovers that eating carrots is bad for you? Carrot rationing.
Or suppose they decide pot is good for you? You will be forced to consume your daily ration in front of a government agent. To keep health care costs down.
And I f****n' hate pot prohibition.
We are on the edge of totalitarianism with this stupid government run medicine.
From:
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2007/10/medical-totolitarianism.html
Power and Control
You don't need to sell assets. You can mortgage them. That doesn't sound unreasonable or harsh, if the poster family in question has residential and commercial real property equity running into the hundreds of thousands.
It additionally doesn't harsh, when we remember that the proposed policy would tax those less financially well-off - in terms of salary + equity - to pay for the health insurance of the more well-off family.
David Nieporent | October 10, 2007 2:53 AM,
Tobacco is an anti-depressant favored by schizophrenics. I know a seriously schizophrenic person and tobacco is the only medicine his family can get him to take.
Of course they need to be punished with much higher taxes. Why? Because they are depriving the medical cartel of profits that are their due.
That's not the only choice available.
Responsible families make responsible decisions. When I worked packing trucks for UPS, the contract we had provided heath benefits. Many of the people that I worked with took that job to provide health benefits for their families, even though they could earn more money per hour working elsewhere. When my kid took a summer job with a certain beverage company, he discovered the same thing. Many of the guys were working the job for the health benefits. I have another friend who services copiers for a major office supply company. It's not what he wants to do, and the pay is pretty bad, but he does it because the family needs the health benefits.
Mr. Frost family appears to have made the decision to quit his previous job with benefits to form his own company and not get health benefits. His wife is working a job without benefits, too. That is their decision, but now they want the taxpayers to pay for their kids health insurance instead. Of course, I'll bet that they insure their business and they insure their car (or cars).
To quote PM Churchill: "We shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."
I oppose expanding this program because it is the wrong thing to do. Period. And there is a simple way to show it: look at what the Dems are doing. They can't defend the program in a free and open debate, so that hide behind a twelve-year old and tug at everyone's heart-strings. And the MSM is perfectly willing to play along and not ask any interesting questions. They'll continue to print DMC propaganda without doing any research.
And that plays well to "moderate" voters these days? Yeah, it probably does. Will we loose? Yes, we probably will - for the same reason we are about to be defeated on immigration, the environment, and trade: because the American public have been sufficiently dumbed-down that they can't think anymore - they just feel or react to what is put in front of them.
We have reached a point in this country where 51% of the population receives some direct assistance from the State. The majority of the population has figured out that they can vote themselves rich. As the population gets older, this number will increase, and the older people will think less about consequences because they won't be around when the system fails.
If "immigration reform" is passed (and it will), massive illegal voting will make elections a joke. The Dems will win every election that counts through pure fraud.
But someone has to point out why this is a bad thing. Someone has to point out that stories like this are a fraud. Someone has to point out that people need to think and not just feel. Someone has to point out that government programs always cost more than they are supposed to. Someone has to point out that this is a way to get to universal health care. (Once costs start climbing out of control, the State will blame the health insurance industry for the high costs, and the solution will, of course, be a government take-over. Because everyone knows that the way to get provide good services cheap is to get the government involved.) Because someone has to point out that when government begins taking that much money out of the private sector and into the public sector, the economic "correction" will be huge.
Anyone who thinks the Frosts live in an expensive half-million dollar home need only look at the photo gracing today's Baltimore Sun:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/health/bal-te.frosts10oct10,0,4459992.story?coll=bal_tab01_layout
You might want to read the article.
No, they don't live in a cardboard box under a bridge, but they're not well-off.
>is this really the hill you think we should die on?
Whether or not the Frosts should have provided their children with medical insurance rather than ask us (the taxpayers) to do it is hardly the point in any event.
Whether or not the Frosts should be the ones to accuse us (the taxpayers) of not doing enough for the children would be more to the point. The Frosts did receive the help they needed. Why do you suppose Harry Reid's staff didn't present a child who needed medical care and couldn't get it under the current system? THAT would have been the point.
This IS national/socialized health care.
If the government can pay for child, adult and illegal immigrant health care for anyone who is upper-middle class and below, then we already have socialized medicine.
Maybe your mother is a socialist. Maybe she can be manipulated by socialists into doing their will. If all swing voters are the same as her, then the American experiment is over and our future is a European-style socialist future.
Fishbone McGonigle says:
So then why don't you support universal health coverage? If you had it, you wouldn't be tethered to a job you (apparently) don't like just so your family will be covered in the case of a medical emergency.
Honestly, I've never understood this. "Oh, here's a change in health care policy that would help enable me to live my life the way I'd dearly love to live it . . . buuuuuuuuuut I'm against it, since it might benefit Warren Buffett too, or it somehow represents a Corrosion of Liberty or something."
Dude, you've got one life here. You should be able to live it the way you want.
It called morals. There's a saying that goes "thou shalt not steal".
He could quit providing for his family and get money from taxpayers -- money that is taken from people by force, against their will -- and then he could live on that money.
Or he could just go hold up a liquor store and cut out the middle-man.
But he's not a crook Mr. Fishbone. He's not a child either -- who naively thinks his wishes should be granted and he should be guaranteed to live "the way he wants". He's a man. He's a good, responsible man. Maybe you aren't familiar with people like that, but we're out here. We earn the money that you're trying to steal.
I have to say that all of these comments are fascinating to read.
Ooops, sorry!
Family income: Approx. $95K
Assests (after paying all debts): Approx. $150K
Stance on S-CHIP: Against expansion
Now that's out of the way, let me state categorically that I would rather liquidate my assests and have some control over my health care decisions (and my family's as well) before allowing the government to tell me what to do.
That's what too many libs here have missed. They've all said "Take government health care and live the life you want to live, do the job you want to do." So, how about this, guys?
I don't want to work at all and neither does my wife, but I'd really like you (and all the other taxpayers out there) to give me $95K/year so that I can live in the style to which I have become accustomed and live the life I wish to live.
Now, I know that you're going to say that this is a "strawman" and it has nothing to do with the discussion at hand, but surely you can see that this is the logical end to the "live how you wish to live and let the government take care of the rest" argument. No one wants to work. We do it because we must. Occassionally, we're fortunate enough to find a job we like that still pays the bills. Most of the time we don't, but what's wrong with that?
This entire debate (and indeed the larger social entitlement debate) is entirely about priorities and what we are willing to do for our families and for the future of our children. Do we really want government involved in every aspect of our lives? Health care is often intricately tied up with who we are and how we choose to live.
To answer your question Megan: I will die on this hill. I have planted my flag. On this hill, I suspect, two visions of how we should live will meet in one defining climatic battle. One of those visions shall die on this hill. If it must be my side, then I meet my enemies with my head held high, not cowering behind little children because I'm not adult enough to fight my own battles.
If conservatives needed to question the Frost's eligibility they could have always contacted the state authorities with evidence - instead they chose to stalk and terrorize a 12 year old and his family.
Many times Republicans have used children in their campaigns ("Ashley's Story" commercial) or events (That little kid promoting privatizing Soc Security & the snowflake babies) and I've never seen left wing bloggers and/or Dems attack the credibility of a kid, much less actively try to destroy their lives. There is something profoundly disturbing with the terror tactics of the right wing that cannot be found anywhere on the left.
This situation perfectly exemplifies that difference.
If we want to become the Tory Party in the UK, then by all means, support the bill, "it's for the children, after all". Then we can go back to being the "Tax collectors for the welfare state" as a party. Worked out great for Republicans all those years, didn't it? I think a better approach than surrender might be a media campaign to point out how far reaching this program really is.
IIRC Romney vetoed that portion of the health care bill (as he did the employer mandate) because he thought people should be able to buy high deductible policies that covered catastrophic illnesses but it was overridden by the Legislature.
Not quite, the original Medical Part D proposal that Republicans put up was limited to low-income seniors but Democrats threatened a filibuster which Republicans caved on. They did manage to get a provision in which seniors are charged premiums in part based on their ability to pay which Democrats opposed (and have tried to repeal since they got back in power) because they thought it would pave the way for means-testing.
Perhaps if Republicans had been willing to fight harder on the hill of Medicare Part D*, we wouldn’t be talking about expanding SCHIP to adults and people making 300%-400% of the poverty line. The fact that they didn’t fight as hard as they shouldn’t doesn’t mean that we have to compound the problem further.
* For the record, I was against the creation of SCHIP in 1997 (another product of “divided government”) and while I was opposed to Medicare Part D, I think Tyler Cowen’s point that the cost will turn out to be less than projected is probably right because drug treatments will probably end up being cheaper in the long-run than procedures that were already covered by Medicare. That doesn’t mean I favor forcing taxpayers to pay for health care for the wealthy and middle class like Democrats, but it makes more sense to cover the cheaper and more effective procedures than the more expensive and less effective ones IMO.
Why is it that there doesn't seem to be much discussion on how schip will be financed? A tax on tobacco right?
So this bill would tax smokers and give the money to a middle-class-ish family whose need appears to be somewhat questionable. Yet among smokers, the poor, uneducated and minorities are over represented. So schip would essentially take money from these groups to assist the Frosts. That just doesn't make sense to me.
Also, how is this program supposed to be sustainable? You have an ever increasing pool of children being funded by an ever decreasing pool of smokers. Unless of course, we begin a campaign to encourage smoking thus filling their depleting ranks. And, as mentioned, the poor are over reprersented among smokers. Also, it is most often children who become smokers.
So we'd have to encourage the very people we are trying to help to pick up a habit that will end up costing them their lives.
This makes no sense.
I call B.S. on this. If the Frost really were being “terrorized” by phone calls, then it’s up to their apologists to provide proof including an actual police report. Unless and until they do, it’s lie just like every time John Kerry accusing anyone who dares to disagree with him of “questioning his patriotism.”
And no, having a blogger ask the tough questions that the MSM should have been asking when the parents decided to exploit their own children to push their political agenda, isn’t “terrorizing” by any means.
If conservatives needed to question the Frost's eligibility they could have always contacted the state authorities with evidence - instead they chose to stalk and terrorize a 12 year old and his family.
"Stalk"? "Terrorize"?
If you honestly believe that, please call the police. If not, kindly refrain from hyperbole.
Many times Republicans have used children in their campaigns ("Ashley's Story" commercial) or events (That little kid promoting privatizing Soc Security & the snowflake babies)
It's irksome when the GOP does it. They shouldn't. I'm opposed to using kids for political gain. "Won't Somebody Think of the Children." is the first refuge of those with no arguments. I am consistently anti-moppet-exploitation.
and I've never seen left wing bloggers and/or Dems attack the credibility of a kid, much less actively try to destroy their lives.
Not a word has been said about Graeme's credibility. I don't think he was insincere. I don't even know what he said. All I care about is whether the taxpayers should be footing the bill for his healthcare, given his family's financial situation.
There is something profoundly disturbing with the terror tactics of the right wing that cannot be found anywhere on the left.
Oh, stop. "More arsenic please!" - the left paints the right as child murderers all the time.
Megan, you have no idea how government medical care programs work or how they effect private health care costs. I'm not talking just about the increased direct taxes to the citizens. I'm talking about how government regulations and contracting with private entities force these entities to abide by that pricing, effectively eliminates the ability to negotiate pricing outside of these entities as well as enforces procedures and other tests that are not always necessary but do raise the cost of health care.
all of this is directly passed to private citizens who either do have their own health insurance or try to pay for these services out of pocket. Every time we add a Graeme Foster to the mix, we are making it that much harder for every other private consumer to have "affordable" health care. We are killing private health care and average citizen's abilities to effect their own care and financial well being.
For a feeling.
the expansion of government programs continues to erode the ability of private citizens to actually afford their own health care.
Also, you are making serious assumptions about the processes used to establish long term in facility care for the elderly and disabled.
There is a division of assets. It is set to insure that the spouse is not left homeless. However, it is assumed and through processes of government liens, that these homes cannot be simply inherited by the family once the other spouse dies. It must be sold to pay any outstanding debts or care for the remaining spouse in the facility or even if that spouse passes, the government still gets their chunk.
Further, if the property is that valuable (10 mil), the government would not deem it causing someone to be destitute by insisting that an immediate division of assets occur and the spouse live in something less expensive in order for the spouse requiring in facility care to have those services provided and paid for.
Finally, on the "hidden assets" realm, most states have laws that search for sales or transfers of assets within the last three years. Anything done within that time requires explanation and for the recipients to produce those funds. Otherwise, any payment is reduced by those expected funds and any other income that the spouse in the facility would realize through a division of financial assets such as income from rental property, pensions or social security.
And, just a reminder, government assistance IS supposed to be for the destitute, not for every one who chooses to spend their money on luxuries (yes, cable TV, huge stereo systems and big houses in nice neighborhoods is a "luxury") and hopes that the government will pick up the tab for health care.
I distinctly recall the reasons that we instituted this government. That is that each citizen could live by and enjoy the fruits of their own labors. They never said it guaranteed everyone would have equitable income or equitable health care, just that we could work to improve our status as individuals without government interference. Every time we institute a new government program, we take that away and replace it with "don't worry if you don't make good choices, the government will fix it".
That is inherently wrong.
State your yearly income in dollars
$60k
State your assets worth in dollars (home, business,boat, car)
Home: no idea (122k tax valuation, paid 78k in 1998, still owe 66k on the mortgage and 25k in a home equity loan). Business: none. Boat: ROFL. Car: 1997 F-150 3k blue book value, 1929 Model A approx. value 10k. Minus 8k credit card debt. So that nets out to what, around 36k or so? I suppose I could throw in about 75k retirement savings in a 401(k) and IRAs but that wasn't part of the question.
State your stance on on this SCHIPS (do you side with Bush veto of SCHIPS?)
Uh, no.
So we'd have to encourage the very people we are trying to help to pick up a habit that will end up costing them their lives.
This makes no sense.
That's because it's a silly argument you constructed yourself in order to maximize its silliness, then went to great lengths to explain to us how silly it was. Mission accomplished.
I will die on this hill. I have planted my flag. On this hill, I suspect, two visions of how we should live will meet in one defining climatic battle. One of those visions shall die on this hill. If it must be my side, then I meet my enemies with my head held high, not cowering behind little children because I'm not adult enough to fight my own battles.
That's how I feel, too. I'm making a stand here.
Why? Because this debate isn't about a disabled kid, or helping needy children. It's about whether we're going to further allow the government to subsidize unproductive lifestyle choices.
Mr. Frost is a college-educated man, living in an affluent state, who comes from an affluent family, who has at least fifteen years in the labor market. There is absolutely no way that he's confined to making $45,000 per year. He can't claim racism. He can't claim lack of education. The only reason he's making $45k is because he's not putting forth the effort to make more. He's indulging his Homer-Simpson-in-the-bowling-alley "dream job in paradise," which I'm sure brings him a lot of joy and satisfaction. He could be doing almost anything else and make more money doing it, but instead he freely chose this woodworking job. Oh, and it's not just him working, it's his wife, too. Two college educated people in Maryland making $45k together? You have to try to make that little money! I live in Md, and my wife and I both made around $27k in our first year out of college (2001-02) doing extremely low-level office drone work. There's no way that the Frosts couldn't make much more than $45k if they tried. Oh, and who forced the Frosts to have four kids?
But they don't want to try. Mr. Frost wants his woodworking business. That's swell - I wish him all the best. And I never look down on the person who chooses leisure over work. There's nothing in my moral code that says working 10 hours a week and making $10k per year is more or less moral than working 40 hours a week and making $40k per year. But a consequence of Mr. Frost taking an enjoyable but low-paying job is that he has trouble paying his kids' medical bills.
It's not right for me to be forced to pay the Frost family's medical bills so that Mr. Frost can work a fun job that he enjoys and have four kids. It's not right for me to be forced to subsidize his business by paying one if its employee's health care costs. That's corporate welfare, which I thought you lefties opposed. This whole S-CHIP expansion is about whether we're going to subsidize the unproductive choices of middle class people who can find ways to pay for their kids' healthcare, but choose not to.
The Frosts aren't poor. They have a comfortable life and jobs they enjoy and don't have to work particularly hard at. It's time for them to take responsibility for their own families. They should not be allowed to force me to work for them.
Thank you liberalrob. That was constructive. Do you have anything useful to add? No?
"Adults with 16 or more years of education had the lowest smoking prevalence (11.3 percent). Adults with 9 to 11 years of education had higher smoking prevalence (36.8 percent) "
"Smoking prevalence was higher among adults living below the poverty level (32.3 percent) than those living at or above the poverty level (23.5 percent)."
"Smoking prevalence remained at the highest among American Indians/Alaska Natives at 40 percent in 1998"
"Smoking prevalence remained at the highest among American Indians/Alaska Natives at 40 percent in 1998"
"The prevalence of current smoking among African Americans is 26.7 percent, compared with 25.3 percent for Caucasians."
""About half of all nicotine users start by age 13, …nicotine addiction is a pediatric disease" - Dr. David Kessler (U.S FDA, 1996)."
You are quite right (as usual) - having the better argument is of little or no practical value here and is a surefire political loser. It's difficult to believe that the collective IQ of our elected Republican representatives in Washington approaches triple digits these days, though, so is anyone really surprised by this?
That said, I am mindful of Mencken's observation that "right is right even if no one else is doing it." The fact that there are otherwise rational people who believe that the government administration of health care (or anything, for that matter - though I accept that some services must and can only be provided by the government) could result in anything other than a colossal disaster astounds me. Then again, there was never a shortage of apologists for communism, either.
Why mankind can not learn from history is perhaps the greatest mystery of the universe>
the expansion of government programs continues to erode the ability of private citizens to actually afford their own health care.
If we had single-payer universal health care, we wouldn't be worrying about the ability of private citizens to actually afford their own health care.
Next.
I distinctly recall the reasons that we instituted this government.
Did Ben Franklin really keep falling asleep during the deliberations at the Constitutional Convention?
That is that each citizen could live by and enjoy the fruits of their own labors. They never said it guaranteed everyone would have equitable income or equitable health care, just that we could work to improve our status as individuals without government interference.
No, as *I* recall it was "to provide for the common defense, establish domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." If we choose as a nation to define single-payer universal health care as one of those "blessings of liberty," maybe even one of those "[in/un]alienable rights" such as life and the pursuit of happiness (you can't deny being sick or dying would put a crimp in those) which the Declaration of Independence cited as among the reasons governments are instituted among men, then I think it's acceptable under the Constitution to set that up as a government program. It's not government *interference*, it's a government *service*. It's government working to HELP "improve our status as individuals," by removing worrying about our health care.
You misunderstand me, smoker. I don't dispute that smoking is bad, mmmkay? What is silly is your argument that we would have to encourage smoking in order to fund SCHIP. That's nonsense.
If you're A Smoker, and you're against funding SCHIP through smoking taxes, yet you're also appalled by all the statistics on smoking you cite, how do you reconcile 1) being against a program you say would force us to encourage smoking, thereby also enabling you to continue your harmful habit, and 2) be against a program you say would make smoking so expensive to poor smokers that they would be unable to afford smoking, thus reducing tax revenues and defunding the program (and incidentally accomplishing the goal of reducing smoking, whose harms you extensively cite)?
The fact that there are otherwise rational people who believe that the government administration of health care (or anything, for that matter - though I accept that some services must and can only be provided by the government) could result in anything other than a colossal disaster astounds me.
Our current health care "system" is NOT a colossal disaster?
Why mankind can not learn from history is perhaps the greatest mystery of the universe
Indeed. All the President had to do was watch "The Princess Bride" to learn that getting involved in a land war in Asia was a bad idea. And yet here we are.
"5) Reading the comments on this, I have to ask conservatives and libertarians: is this really the hill you think we should die on? I do understand your objections to the program, but an informal survey of swing voters, in their current incarnation as my mother, indicates that this is killing you with the moderates. Save it for national health care next year, is what I'm saying. This debate is framing the issue in a way that is going to make things harder, not easier, when Hilarycare is on the table again."
HillaryCare IS on the table again, this is HillaryCare by proxy and increment.
We don't have a choice about the matter, this _will_ be the sort of issue we'll have to oppose in the election. This is basic Clintonian tactics, it's just an example of 'it's for the children!'
The Democratic Party today is simply the Clinton Machine, to a first approximation everything they do now is about the Hillary campaign. They're going to send up one symbollic, emotion-laden phony proposel after another, and they and their allies in the 'old media' will frame them as 'for the children' and opposition to it as being proof of cold hearts and indifference to the welfare of kids. That's the immediate future, get ready.
The only real defense against this tactic is the 'new media', who can produce counter-frames. That's why Hillary is also pushing the 'Fairness Doctrine' so hard, she badly needs to silence the competing voices.
But be that as it may, passing this thing won't help us any, it'll just come back in a new form, over and over, until either we've agreed to implement HillaryCare in little bites, or we eventually veto and oppose something and find ourselves hysterically acused of being against the children.
There's nothing we can do to keep the Clintons from using this tactic, we have to win in spite of it.
Shorter liberalrob: Liberty means that I have the right to take things that belong to other people if I think I need them, and I don't want to make hard choices to get them myself.
If we had universal health care, no one would have to make tough choices. If we had universal government-buying-our-food care, and universal government-paying-our-power-bill care, and government-paying-our-rent care...
Will we give welfare to rich kids to get elected?
I would argue that if the answer to that question is "yes" that socialized medicine is inevitable, as it's simply too popular to stop.
I would be all for it if I thought it could work -- what Chairman Deng said about the cat that catches mice -- I just don't think it will work.
Back to S-Chip: welfare without meaningful means-testing isn't welfare anymore, it's an institution. If stopping it is really so unpopular it will get fiscal conservatives un-elected we have to admit that the institution of socialized medicine is what people want.
So find a way to do it without screwing up the best health care system money can buy and without killing the economy. Find it now, because we're going to get it later anyway.
Then invent a perpetual motion machine and bring back cold fusion ...
Our current health care "system" is NOT a colossal disaster?
Oh, it is. Mostly because it's already a government system.
Government subsidizes health care for the elderly and poor and, as the Frosts show, the middle class. Government tax breaks for businesses that provide health benefits further distort the market. The government distorts the labor market for health care workers (particularly physicians) with antiquated and ineffecient education, training, and licensing requirements.
The left's conception of the American health care system as private or free market is unfounded. It's a government system. It's not one big government system. It's a thousand little government systems.
"Our current health care "system" is NOT a colossal disaster?" - liberalrob
No, overall it's pretty good. There are individuals problems that could be worked on, but the people pushing HillaryCare don't care about that, it's just their excuse to pursue power over individual lives.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/elections/keyraces/census/md/
Median Household Income in Maryland is $52,868
Who is claiming the median income of Maryland is 95,000 plus?
and that's a low blow in one article to include a comment from a blog as indicative...might as well ask some drunk guy ranting about Bush or something for a quote. Wake me up when Kos comments are published about Enron stories and such.
This Frost guy reminds me of that Hillary saying "I can't be responsible for every under-capitalized small business in America."
BINGO.
Any health care reform should explicitly include small businesses like this guy's to either pay their own healthcare OR have it completely become an individual choice and not a benefit, if only to let this Frost guy get the correct incentives to drop loss making business.
f we had universal government-buying-our-food care
Not all of us will need medical care this year. All of us need food. For many of us, our annual healthcare costs have often been exceeded by our annual food costs.
So why in blazes am I still buying my own food? I need food! It's not fair that I should have to work to pay for something that I need. If I want to have a woodworking job that doesn't pay well and work light hours, the government should pay for my kids' food.
And that goes for every other necessity: clothing, shelter, water, electricity.
This whole Graeme Frost ordeal is exactly why the right is going to lose big on this issue. Lost in the rush to attack the messenger rather than the message are two key facts.
1) SCHIP is a Republican program
2) The Frosts are already covered under the existing SCHIP program.
Had conservatives stayed on their original message of "Help the poor kids, but no free health care for rich kids" they would be fine. Instead they set their guns on the Frosts, who as it turns out are a borderline case with arguments going both ways. Now, it would be a good idea to discuss where the line needs to be, but the fact is that line can only go up; the Frosts are already behind the line and it's not going back down to a level that will exclude them. All this scrutiny on the Frosts is a sideshow that is damaging the conservative provision.
Instead, the Republican position should be something like "we want to cover kids whose parents aren't poor but can't afford to choose both health care and other important necessities. That's why we created SCHIP in the first place. Democrats now want to use it as an excuse to expand government handouts to people making up to $90,000 a year, people who we can all agree are not poor. This is no different than the Clinton plan to give every one $5000 for being born. We want to help people who need it, not put every kid in America on the public teat." And while you'll still get some rumbling on the edges, I think "no government health care for people who don't need it" is a much better battle cry than "no government health care for families who want to live in houses."
Frost should unionize his company. UAW workers can make US$ 75 / hour including gold-plated benefits. I'm sure his capitalist fat-cat boss could afford it!
(Sarcasm)
But seriously, he should consider raising his prices, maybe.
If we had single-payer universal health care, we wouldn't be worrying about the ability of private citizens to actually afford their own health care.
Single-payer universal health care: it's a dessert topping, AND a floor wax! It slices, it dices, it makes thousands of julienne fries! Is there anything it can't do?
This whole Graeme Frost ordeal is exactly why the right is going to lose big on this issue
No, the reason that the right is going to lose here is that the Frost are eligible for S-CHIP, despite having an income of $45,000.
The median household income in 2006 was $48,201. In other words, eligibility for being on the dole is approaching 50% of the population, and the Democrats want to put well over 50% of the population on the dole.
You know what that means? We can vote ourselves rich! Yay! That's why the GOP is going to lose. It's saying, "no, Mr. & Mrs. Majority-of-Americans, you can't be on the dole." That's not going to fly.
Income: $30k/yr, base, plus whatever overtime I can pick up
Assets: $60k, what can I say, I'm a good saver.
For S-CHIP? Of course not.
I work hard, often on days off, and spend little. When emergencies happen, the money I save will hopefully cover it.
Or I could be a liberal. You do what you wanted to do, you save nothing, and when emergencies happen...
... the money *I* saved will hopefully cover it?
Thank you no.
I love this country, but stuff like S-CHIP and part-D are making me consider moving to Dubai.
Don't want AK to feel left out...
Why? Because this debate isn't about a disabled kid, or helping needy children. It's about whether we're going to further allow the government to subsidize unproductive lifestyle choices.
Right, such as being poor or lower-middle-class, such as having a wreck, such as getting sick, such as actually BEING disabled...that sort of unproductive lifestyle choice.
There is absolutely no way that he's confined to making $45,000 per year.
How do you know?
The only reason he's making $45k is because he's not putting forth the effort to make more.
Where have I heard this before.
He could be doing almost anything else and make more money doing it, but instead he freely chose this woodworking job.
My understanding was he left his unrewarding office job to become an ENTREPRENEUR and start his own business. You know, what everyone who gripes about being stuck in a dead-end office job is counseled by Repubs to do? "You're only stuck in that dead-end office job because you're too lazy to go take a risk and start your own business." Well, he took that risk, and now you want to beat him over the head for it?
But a consequence of Mr. Frost taking an enjoyable but low-paying job is that he has trouble paying his kids' medical bills.
If we had single-payer universal health care, Mr. Frost wouldn't be having trouble paying his kids' medical bills. And he wouldn't have to slave away in an unenjoyable and in fact soul-sapping and yet still low-paying office job just so his family would have insurance coverage, which even then might still not cover all that was required.
It's not right for me to be forced to pay the Frost family's medical bills so that Mr. Frost can work a fun job that he enjoys and have four kids.
Hear hear! Mr. Frost should be forced to work the same crummy job I am! That's the American Dream!
It's simply unbelievable that anyone might suggest you contribute ONE CENT (and that's probably more than actually would be asked of you) towards Mr. Frost's kids' health care. The nerve! That cent could have bought you a gumball, a gumball that's essential that you be permitted to buy, and here people are demanding that the government confiscate your gumball money! The indignity!
It's not right for me to be forced to subsidize his business by paying one if its employee's health care costs.
I agree completely! It's just not right that I am forced to subsidize anyone other than myself, because life is all about ME! Me, me, me!
That's corporate welfare, which I thought you lefties opposed.
It's not corporate welfare, because the money doesn't go to the corporation. It is carefully targeted at the person in need, in this case, Mr. Frost's kids. I don't believe Mr. Frost can take that money and buy a new lathe with it.
This whole S-CHIP expansion is about whether we're going to subsidize the unproductive choices of middle class people who can find ways to pay for their kids' healthcare, but choose not to.
Yadda yadda yadda "lazy people" yadda yadda yadda "welfare queens" yadda yadda yadda "no work ethic" yadda yadda yadda. It's old and tired.
They have a comfortable life and jobs they enjoy and don't have to work particularly hard at.
When my dad made me strip and refinish my dresser that one summer, it seemed like pretty hard work to me (especially all the sanding). I've never built a china cabinet, but all those fiddly floral inlays and scrollwork look like they'd be pretty hard to make with a chisel and hammer, and would take skill as well as artistry. You're quick to denigrate their work, but do you really have any conception whether they "work particularly hard" or not? Or do you just assume they don't because that's more pleasing to you?
If we can't win this debate now, when it's not yet an entitlement, how would we possibly win after it is an entitlement?
S-CHIP is socialized medicine for middle class kids, and it'll just expand from there to swallow everyone. It *is* HIllarycare and written by the person who wrote her plan originally.
I work hard, often on days off, and spend little. When emergencies happen, the money I save will hopefully cover it.
And if it doesn't, and you lose your house and your car and all the assets you spent a lifetime accumulating, and you've bankrupted your parents as well and gotten loans from all your friends and STILL the bills keep coming...what happens then?
Perhaps you'll hear that tiny little liberal voice whispering, "if we had single-payer universal health care, you wouldn't have had to work on those off days, and you wouldn't have had to blow your life up along with those of your relatives and friends..."
liberalrob:
In your zeal to make us love the single-payer Canadian system, you seem to forget that the Canadians hate it. It's inefficient, overtaxed (in terms of resources), and is responsible for potentially thousands of needless deaths a year.
AND THIS IS THE SYSTEM YOU WISH TO IMPOSE ON ME?!
Further, the more you try to denigrate those who don't agree with you, the more you show us the moral laxness that typifies far too much of liberal America today. In fact, aren't you the person who suggested that if the government just took care of our health care needs, we'd all be free to pursue our dreams!!! What tripe!!! Dreams are not worth much without a certain sacrifice. I respect Mr. Frost for doing what he loves, but when the going gets tough, why should I subsidize him? My dream is to live pretty much how I live now and not work. Who's going to pay for that? You, sir? I think not. Nor should you. There are limits to everything in life. One of those limits has to be where society draws the line and states flat out, we will not help you any further. Forcing an entire society to commit suicide so that you can live your dream is not a bargain.
S-CHIP is socialized medicine for middle class kids, and it'll just expand from there to swallow everyone.
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
There is absolutely no way that he's confined to making $45,000 per year.
How do you know?
Because he's college-educated and he has more than 15 years in the labor market, and he can't use racism or his own childhood poverty as an excuse.
My understanding was he left his unrewarding office job to become an ENTREPRENEUR and start his own business. You know, what everyone who gripes about being stuck in a dead-end office job is counseled by Repubs to do? "You're only stuck in that dead-end office job because you're too lazy to go take a risk and start your own business." Well, he took that risk, and now you want to beat him over the head for it?
Life is full of choices. No one is forced to work anywhere that he doesn't want to. He chose to be an "ENTREPRENEUR." No one forced him to. He picked a job that would be more enjoyable than whatever he could be doing. Good for him. But if that means he earns less money, he has no right to expect other people to compensate him for his choices.
Hear hear! Mr. Frost should be forced to work the same crummy job I am! That's the American Dream!
If he wants my salary and the lifestyle that comes with it, he should be prepared to work the same crummy job as me. If he freely chooses to work less hard and be less stressed - which I won't begrudge him - he should not expect to have the same income and live the same lifestyle as me.
It's simply unbelievable that anyone might suggest you contribute ONE CENT (and that's probably more than actually would be asked of you) towards Mr. Frost's kids' health care.
Let's see: one cent times three hundred million people equals... three million dollars. Is that how much the expansion of S-CHIP is going to cost?
That's corporate welfare, which I thought you lefties opposed.
It's not corporate welfare, because the money doesn't go to the corporation. It is carefully targeted at the person in need, in this case, Mr. Frost's kids. I don't believe Mr. Frost can take that money and buy a new lathe with it.
It's an indirect subsidy of his business. If the government picks up the tab for his employees' health care (and he's in the position of being his own business' employee), the business doesn't have to pay it, and it can affort a new lathe.
If we had single-payer universal health care, Mr. Frost wouldn't be having trouble paying his kids' medical bills. And he wouldn't have to slave away in an unenjoyable and in fact soul-sapping and yet still low-paying office job just so his family would have insurance coverage, which even then might still not cover all that was required.
...because the money for health care would magically appear out of thin air without anyone paying for it. Or we'd just print more money. We could all enter semi-retirement, working low-paying dream jobs, with no reduction in our lifestyles. We'd all have everything we have now, PLUS health care, PLUS our souls would not be sapped.
It's just not right that I am forced to subsidize anyone other than myself, because life is all about ME! Me, me, me!
I said that I don't object to paying for the genuinely poor who cannot afford heath care. Mr. Frost is not one of them. As for the "me me me!" stuff, Mr. Frost is the one saying it. He's saying "I don't want to work hard. I want to do whatever I want, and I want other people to pay for my medicine. It's all about ME! Me, me, me!"
You're quick to denigrate their work, but do you really have any conception whether they "work particularly hard" or not? Or do you just assume they don't because that's more pleasing to you?
You just got done telling me that Mr. Frost chose to be a woodworker because the other alternatives were worse. So obviously he's not working as hard as he could.
I work hard, often on days off, and spend little. When emergencies happen, the money I save will hopefully cover it.
And if it doesn't, and you lose your house and your car and all the assets you spent a lifetime accumulating, and you've bankrupted your parents as well and gotten loans from all your friends and STILL the bills keep coming...what happens then?
The Frosts have lost their house, cars (including a gas-guzzling SUV), and they've bankrupted their parents? That's news to me. And the Frosts.
They're not poor. They've got a comfortable middle class life.
You misunderstand me, liberalrob. I'm not saying you dispute smoking is bad. mmmkay? (my god, but you are a condescending jackass.)
[i]What is silly is your argument that we would have to encourage smoking in order to fund SCHIP. That's nonsense.[/i]
What is silly is your inability to understand that when people die, they don't smoke anymore. mmmkay? That's lost revenue, mmmkay? When the price increases, some will quit, mmmkay? That's more lost revenue, mmmkay? Population grows, mmmkay? Decreasing pool of funders + increasing pool of recepients = not sustainable, mmmkay?
I'm afraid I'm not going to answer your silly questions, as they had nothing to do with the point. I never "extensively cited the harms of smoking." Try reading it again, mmmkay? I pointed out the demographics. Which should illustrate, even to someone as willfully blind as you, that the SCHIP bill represents a wealth transfer from the poor and uneducated to the middle class as represented by the Frosts.
Drop the condescension, and things would be a lot more productive, mmmkay?
hello all,
I want to thank you for what you are about to do for my family. My wife, daughter and I pay approximately $1400 a year as our portion of our medical insurance. When the Dems demagogue this into passage the first thing I am going to do is go to Human Resources and opt out of my medical insurance coverage. Yes, opt out.
I make near the top of the S-CHIP limit. After I sold my business in NY and relocated to FL I became asset heavy and income, well I guess poor. HAHAHAHA.
But the truth of the situation is I will be 100% eligible under the Upper Income Medical plan the Dems are foisting on this country. Being the good Republican I am I will take advantage of a lower income person to pay my way.
Thanks again
PS- If single payer 'Hillarycare' becomes the law of the land for you liberals out there, like in Canada, I hope you have loads of money like the rich Canadians do to go to MEXICO (they use to come to America but our health care will be overstretched and in the toilet like all single payer plans are) so you can get the procedure you need done in a timely fashion. If not, I guess that little conservative voice that was telling you, "there is no free lunch" got loud too late to help.
PPS- for all those crying you'll lose your house and everything else due to medical bills, any shyster can tell you the bankruptcy laws for medical reasons are very generous. Not ideal for an individual but certainly relevant for a societal decision.
As to the "is this the hill you want to die on" question, Megan...
I'm a gun guy. So I come at this from the perspective of one who's been down the road the healthcare debate is starting on, and who's seen where it leads.
The basic problem is that liberals are not good faith actors. There can be no detente with them, where everybody takes half a loaf and goes home happy: as can be seen in this very thread, oxygen thieves like liberalrob and brooksfoe are already concerned with the next expansion of the welfare state, the next encroachment on economic liberty, the next effort to pick the pockets of the productive, the next attempt to destroy the American tradition of self-reliance and individual responsibility, and turn more people into wards of the federal government.
In short, Republicans and libertarians who compromise on things like this are simply giving the enemy good field position. You might think you're merely keeping your powder dry for a more important battle later, but if you've declined to engage in enough of the little battles, the big ones are lost before any shooting starts. You think you're compromising; in truth, you're just giving them a ratchet.
Of course, this doesn't mean you fight stupidly. While it's amusing to show that the spokescritter for the latest liberal brain wave is a fraud, that doesn't mean you should keep harping on it once the point's been made. After all, the issue isn't the fraudulence of the spokescritter, but the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of said brain wave.
Well said, BC.
Dig your foxhole deep, though. So far liberalrob is little more than a skirmisher about to be plowed under by the tank of reason. I suspect the Dems'll break out heavy artillery right after Hillary's coronation.
In your zeal to make us love the single-payer Canadian system,
I don't believe I ever used the word "Canadian." My zeal is to make you love the "American" single-payer universal health care system.
Further, the more you try to denigrate those who don't agree with you
By pointing out why I think you are wrong, misinformed, or simply selfish,
The more you show us the moral laxness that typifies far too much of liberal America today.
Wanting to have the government pay for health care for all citizens so they can be healthy and productive regardless of their financial circumstances is morally lax?
In fact, aren't you the person who suggested that if the government just took care of our health care needs, we'd all be free to pursue our dreams!
Technically, I've been saying we'd be freeER, not having health care expenses hanging over our heads.
What tripe!!! Dreams are not worth much without a certain sacrifice.
The only way to real happiness is through sacrifice and pain? How bleak a worldview. And isn't the dream of healthcare for all Americans worth the small (SMALL!) financial sacrifice it would take to accomplish it?
In terms of the SCHIP program, A Smoker told me that the sacrifice would all be borne by smokers. Smokers subsidizing kids' health sounds like a good trade to me. If we start to run out of smokers, I'll be happy to kick in some myself.
I respect Mr. Frost for doing what he loves, but when the going gets tough, why should I subsidize him?
Me, me, me! Look, it's not YOU who is going to subsidize him (or YOU, AK, or YOU kat-missouri). It's US, all of us. And along with subsidizing Mr. Frost, we are also going to subsidize YOU, and ME, and EVERYONE ELSE. Everybody subsidizes everyone's health care. Got it? That's the idea. One great big insurance pool, and the insurance company is the government, which is not some external thing that was imposed on us against our will but something WE OURSELVES create. We still have the same hospitals, the same doctors driving Lamborghinis, all of that; just no more insurance industry leeching off profits to give their CEOs multi-million-dollar bonuses and telling us they can't pay for our health care because we were already sick (among many many other things).
I really don't understand the mentality that says it's such a bad thing to subsidize someone else's health and happiness; especially when it's something that will benefit YOU as well as THEM. It's unfathomable to me.
Who's going to pay for that? You, sir? I think not.
You think wrong. Give me your address and the check in the amount of 1 cent will be in the mail. I trust you will spend it on your health care and not on a gumball. And I further trust that you will send ME a check for 1 cent when *I* need some health care. But I fear my trust is misplaced, and you'd rather see me die without health care than send me one red cent. Such is the "moral fortitude" of American conservatives.
Forcing an entire society to commit suicide
So melodramatic.
So far liberalrob is little more than a skirmisher about to be plowed under by the tank of reason.
I love playing war. And don't forget, skirmishers nowadays sometimes carry missiles capable of knocking out the heaviest tanks. It just takes a big enough warhead. Or accurately hitting the weakest point in the armor.
I really don't understand the mentality that says it's such a bad thing to subsidize someone else's health and happiness
Cool, because I really don't understand the mentality that says it's okay to steal money from some people to make other people healthy and happy.
Drop the condescension, and things would be a lot more productive, mmmkay?
Obviously not a South Park fan or you'd have gotten the Mr. Mackey ref.
I found your argument about how we'd have to encourage smoking to finance SCHIP laughable, and therefore worthy of condescension. So I went for the Mr. Mackey joke. Sorry.
I'll leave it at "I find your argument laughable" next time.
Cool, because I really don't understand the mentality that says it's okay to steal money from some people to make other people healthy and happy.
And I really don't understand the mentality that says that is "stealing," especially when you potentially derive more benefit from being "stolen" from than if you had not been "stolen" from at all.
Over to you.
In your zeal to make us love the single-payer Canadian system,
I don't believe I ever used the word "Canadian." My zeal is to make you love the "American" single-payer universal health care system.
>>> Canadian or American, there will be little difference in the quality of care. I only use Canadian because it's the most often cited. But, if you like we can discuss the "glories" of single-payer systems, if you like.
In fact, aren't you the person who suggested that if the government just took care of our health care needs, we'd all be free to pursue our dreams!
Technically, I've been saying we'd be freeER, not having health care expenses hanging over our heads.
>>>> Actually, (and pretty sure others will back me up on this) you've been espousing that universal health care will be the panacea that allows us to truly become the happy go lucky people who could have whatever jobs we wanted. And you continue to ignore the logical endpoint of the train of thought.
What tripe!!! Dreams are not worth much without a certain sacrifice.
The only way to real happiness is through sacrifice and pain? How bleak a worldview. And isn't the dream of healthcare for all Americans worth the small (SMALL!) financial sacrifice it would take to accomplish it?
>>>> First off, working for something does not denote a bleak worldview. Nor does having the world handed to you on a silver platter denote happiness. Secondly, healthcare for all Americans will hardly be a small sacrifice. Medicare already takes nearly 15% of a person's paycheck (if you assume that the money that your employer pays into the system would otherwise have gone to you.) You're talking about the ten-fold expansion of government healthcare subsidies. It should cost quite a bit more than the so-called one penney you suggest.
I respect Mr. Frost for doing what he loves, but when the going gets tough, why should I subsidize him?
Me, me, me! Look, it's not YOU who is going to subsidize him (or YOU, AK, or YOU kat-missouri). It's US, all of us. And along with subsidizing Mr. Frost, we are also going to subsidize YOU, and ME, and EVERYONE ELSE. Everybody subsidizes everyone's health care. Got it? That's the idea. One great big insurance pool, and the insurance company is the government, which is not some external thing that was imposed on us against our will but something WE OURSELVES create. We still have the same hospitals, the same doctors driving Lamborghinis, all of that; just no more insurance industry leeching off profits to give their CEOs multi-million-dollar bonuses and telling us they can't pay for our health care because we were already sick (among many many other things).
>>>> No, sir. You misunderstand. Some of us don't want to take care of everybody else, even if it might benefit us. There are limits. Why is that so hard to understand?! I am happy with my insurance situation as it is. I don't need a change. Universal health insurance is nothing but solution in search of a problem. Of the 45M uninsured, over half make in excess of $50k per year and have access to health insurance, but chose not take advantage. Most of these are young people without children. A further 11M are eligible for government programs now and choose not use them. 12M are illegal immigrants, which is whole other can of worms altogether.
I really don't understand the mentality that says it's such a bad thing to subsidize someone else's health and happiness; especially when it's something that will benefit YOU as well as THEM. It's unfathomable to me.
>>>> Again, having everything handed to you by the government will not necessarily make you happier. I have no problem helping people get back on their feet after a disabling illness or even supporting when they are unable to work. But, I do have a problem supporting people who don't need my support. What's so hard to understand?
Who's going to pay for that? You, sir? I think not.
You think wrong. Give me your address and the check in the amount of 1 cent will be in the mail. I trust you will spend it on your health care and not on a gumball. And I further trust that you will send ME a check for 1 cent when *I* need some health care. But I fear my trust is misplaced, and you'd rather see me die without health care than send me one red cent. Such is the "moral fortitude" of American conservatives.
>>>> Where in the hell come with one penney?! Again, for the mathematically impaired, one penney times 300 million Americans is only $3M. Americans already billions each year on health care. Your penney won't even make a dent, neither will mine. And again, you fail to answer the fundamental problem with your reasoning. You send me $10K this year (the cost of my health insurance with employer subsidy) and maybe I'll consider you proposal.
Forcing an entire society to commit suicide
So melodramatic.
>>>> Just because it's meldramatic doesn't make it any less true.
I hope you have loads of money like the rich Canadians do so [they] can get the procedure [they] need done in a timely fashion.
"Need done" or "want done?" There is a difference.
As far as the "loads of money" needed please detail how this is substantially different from the "system" we currently have.
Being the good Republican I am I will take advantage of a lower income person to pay my way.
I would expect nothing less. Excelsior!
Everybody subsidizes everyone's health care. Got it? That's the idea. One great big insurance pool, and the insurance company is the government, which is not some external thing that was imposed on us against our will but something WE OURSELVES create. We still have the same hospitals, the same doctors driving Lamborghinis, all of that; just no more insurance industry leeching off profits to give their CEOs multi-million-dollar bonuses and telling us they can't pay for our health care because we were already sick (among many many other things).
Fortunately, I'm not afflicted with patronizingly superior behavior or attitude. Or I may have some nasty things to say about this fantasy.
My bet is rob, if you dropped said attitude, you may find those that you need to convince most more accommodating and willing to consider your position.
But, perhaps you like preaching to the choir. Or, perhaps you are so full of bigotry that you presume to think that any that have the temerity to disagree with you must be greedy, selfish little bastards and could not possibly appreciate your razor sharp reason?
Sorry 'bout the clarity of the above post. This is what multi-tasking will do to you.
I think that would be "need" rob.
liberalrob: I'm gonna call bull here. I lived in Canada. I worked harder (more days off), had worse health insurance than I do now, and had less money.
If I have a medical catastrophe? It's gonna be a bad day at Blue Cross. They ended up shelling out half a million bucks when my father had a medical catastrophe.
I wouldn't be bringing down everyone.
If, as I believe, lower taxes or state-run engineering schools are often positive sum, then I ought to be able to test those hypotheses experimentally. It turns out that growth, both economic and population, does happen at those places. People do move to those places, and do better there.
If, as you truly believe, socialized medicine is positive-sum, then some states would implement it, and people would flock to those states.
So far, no state has done this. Why?
The reason is obvious:
Socialized medicine is when the government raises the average citizen's taxes by a hundred bucks, and then gives him fifty dollars worth of health care and tells him he ought to be thankful.
I love playing war. And don't forget, skirmishers nowadays sometimes carry missiles capable of knocking out the heaviest tanks. It just takes a big enough warhead. Or accurately hitting the weakest point in the armor.
Too bad you keep missing the target. If the tripe you're spewing had any basis in reality, we might actually listen. Instead, we'll just delight in heaping on.
"The S-CHIP debate is about health care for POOR KIDS."
No, it isn't. Poor kids are already covered by the existing Medicaid and S-CHIP programs. The current debate is over whether S-CHIP should be expanded to kids who aren't poor, whose solidly middle-class parents prefer buying luxuries to buying health insurance for the kids.
Which is to say, if we assume health insurance is more important than luxuries, the S-CHIP expansion proposed by Democrats is about subsidizing luxury purchases by the middle class. I don't think my tax money should go to paying for cable television, beef instead of chicken, a larger car, a house that gives each kid his own room instead of requiring doubling-up, or private school tuition. If you think it should, you should honestly demand subsidies for those things, instead of pretending that money isn't fungible.
Me, me, me! Look, it's not YOU who is going to subsidize him (or YOU, AK, or YOU kat-missouri). It's US, all of us. And along with subsidizing Mr. Frost, we are also going to subsidize YOU, and ME, and EVERYONE ELSE.
I see; you're saying if I pay money to the government to fund universal health care, I will benefit. But I think I could benefit more by paying that money directly to a private health insurance agent. So why is it such a problem for you if that's the system I prefer? Since we're talking about MY benefits here.
It's one thing to make the argument that we need to be selfless and chip in to help people who really can't afford insurance. But if you're going to appeal to your opponents' self-interest, and then turn around and call them selfish if that appeal doesn't work, well, it seems a wee bit hypocritical.
And I really don't understand the mentality that says that is "stealing," especially when you potentially derive more benefit from being "stolen" from than if you had not been "stolen" from at all.
I really don't understand the mentality that says that the forcible confiscation of someone's wealth isn't theft, because, hey, the victim might actually end up better off in the long run.
Pong.
Canadian or American, there will be little difference in the quality of care.
I have not seen long lists detailing how substandard Canadian health care is compared to American. In any case, absent empirical proof (which will only come AFTER we have converted to a single-payer system) I am skeptical of claims that the American standard of care will necessarily drop. The only American example of single-payer we have, Medicare, seems largely successful at delivering good-quality care. There seems to me to be little basis for such gloomy prognostications. Other than to scare people, of course.
Actually, (and pretty sure others will back me up on this) you've been espousing that universal health care will be the panacea that allows us to truly become the happy go lucky people who could have whatever jobs we wanted.
You are reading what you want to think I wrote, not what I've actually written. But that is not surprising. All of my posts have emphasized the absence of health care cost concerns on the individual level if single-payer universal care is implemented. It is not a panacea for all the ills of society, but it would remove one source of stress and spread the "sacrifice and pain" across all of society rather than concentrating it in the small pool of people who need the care.
And you continue to ignore the logical endpoint of the train of thought.
Which is? (My guess: OH NOES, TEH SOCIALIZM!!!!11!)
First off, working for something does not denote a bleak worldview.
The statement was: "Dreams are not worth much without a certain sacrifice." The word "sacrifice" implies parting, loss, and therefore pain of some sort. The implication is that the only worthwhile dreams are those that can only be realized through pain. And I call that a bleak, almost Nietzschean (sp) outlook.
Secondly, healthcare for all Americans will hardly be a small sacrifice.
Yes it will, if done properly. ("But we can't trust the government to do it properly!" So we shouldn't even try? And aren't WE the government?) Here is ONE such proposal:
http://www.kyklosproductions.com/posts/index.php?p=59
And don't mislead people by suggesting we have to keep Medicare's 15% tax on top of whatever taxation regime we set up for single-payer; Medicare will become PART of single payer, not remain an add-on to it.
It should cost quite a bit more than the so-called one penney you suggest.
The one penny is how much of my taxes Mr. Frost would get to finance his health care. As you point out, it would probably be even less than that as I doubt he has $3 million in health care costs.
Again, having everything handed to you by the government will not necessarily make you happier.
Who said "everything" would be handed to you? I'm just talking about health care. That's all. Just that.
Some of us don't want to take care of everybody else, even if it might benefit us.
Think about that statement for a minute. Does it not strike you as particularly cold, unfeeling, and heartless? And think about it from this aspect: you're arguing against something that would benefit yourself! How is that, in a sane, rational universe, a sane, rational position to take? "Please, I prefer to not benefit! Make my life harder! Because making life harder for myself is where it's at!"
I am happy with my insurance situation as it is. I don't need a change. Universal health insurance is nothing but solution in search of a problem. Of the 45M uninsured, over half make in excess of $50k per year and have access to health insurance, but chose not take advantage. Most of these are young people without children. A further 11M are eligible for government programs now and choose not use them.
So let's make it impossible for them to make that "bad lifestyle choice," and just give them all insurance. They pay for it too, like everyone. Then you don't have to worry about the 23M+ who "choose not to take advantage," because it isn't a choice. That's not appealing to you? Or are you going to argue for people's right to make bad choices you end up paying for anyway? The best society is that which enables people to shoot themselves in the face if they feel like doing so?
12M are illegal immigrants, which is whole other can of worms altogether.
I agree. Let's fix our citizens' problem first; it may develop that we can take care of illegals as well to some minimal degree. But let's get to single-payer first, then worry about that.
But, I do have a problem supporting people who don't need my support. What's so hard to understand?
You're appointing yourself the arbiter of who does and does not need your support, and you can be wrong or biased in your decisions. The larger society of which you are a part and from which you derive the benefits of membership might determine that someone you deem unworthy of your support is in fact worthy of it; you should not be allowed to remain a member of society if you refuse to participate and abide by its decisions. In short, are you a part of society or are you not? And on a moral/ethical level, the support being asked of you is so minimal it seems petty and cruel of you to withhold it.
You send me $10K this year (the cost of my health insurance with employer subsidy) and maybe I'll consider you proposal.
Sure, just let me round up 999,999 more people to kick in a penny. In a taxpayer pool of over 200M, that shouldn't be too hard. If I can get them over the conceptual hurdle of "but why should I help him!" I've heard that a lot of us Americans think that way.
Why is your health insurance so expensive? I heard it was just $452/month in Baltimore for a family of 4.
Just because it's meldramatic doesn't make it any less true.
Adopting single-payer is the death of American culture? Absurd.
If the tripe you're spewing had any basis in reality, we might actually listen.
For someone "not listening" you're awfully verbose in response to my posts.
Fortunately, I'm not afflicted with patronizingly superior behavior or attitude. Or I may have some nasty things to say about this fantasy.
C'mon, smoker, fire away!
But keep it civil :-)
My bet is rob, if you dropped said attitude, you may find those that you need to convince most more accommodating and willing to consider your position.
Historically I have met with nothing but disappointment in that regard. So why not have some fun.
perhaps you are so full of bigotry that you presume to think that any that have the temerity to disagree with you must be greedy, selfish little bastards and could not possibly appreciate your razor sharp reason?
Rather, the soft bigotry of low expectations. Those who agree with me tend not to be here, or if they are, few seem to post. Those who disagree with me are apparently legion here. So where better to lay my liberal pearls of wisdom? As long as our hostess tolerates me, of course.
"Apparently Mr. Frost has been doing renovations, and some of them are still incomplete. That wouldn't help the resale price, either."
"While their equity in the home has clearly skyrocketed as the neighborhood has gentrified (and Mr. Frost expended his effort - he is a carpenter after all - into improving the home)"
So the Frosts spent money on renovations rather than on health insurance? C'mon already. You can make a case for S-Chip but at some point you've got to recognize that the Frosts' story doesn't further this debate one way or another. The Democrats shouldn't have tried to use these people like this.
secret aaaaaasian man:I lived in Canada. I worked harder (more days off), had worse health insurance than I do now, and had less money.
Are/were you a Canadian citizen? If so, why did you still need health insurance? In what way(s) was your health insurance "worse?"
If I have a medical catastrophe? It's gonna be a bad day at Blue Cross. They ended up shelling out half a million bucks when my father had a medical catastrophe.
I wouldn't be bringing down everyone.
Who is better able to absorb a charge of half a million bucks: Blue Cross, or the United States Government? Who is going to be better able to negotiate costs for care: Blue Cross, or the United States Government? No, you wouldn't be bringing everyone down if you had insurance that covered your needed care; but the scenario was, if the care was not covered, that people SHOULD bring down everyone before expecting government assistance, and I contend that that is exactly backwards (and needlessly so).
If, as you truly believe, socialized medicine is positive-sum, then some states would implement it, and people would flock to those states.
So far, no state has done this. Why?
First: you (and most Republicans) overestimate the mobility of citizens. Usually it's not as easy as it sounds to up sticks and move to Utah. Second: OH NOES, TEH SOCIALIZM!!!!111! Third: to a degree, states HAVE been experimenting with single-payer, but only in very limited ways to my knowledge. The CHIP program that SCHIP is supposed to supplement is one such.
Socialized medicine is when the government raises the average citizen's taxes by a hundred bucks, and then gives him fifty dollars worth of health care and tells him he ought to be thankful.
And when he needs fifty THOUSAND bucks of health care, he is.
This thread is bizarre.The Frosts clearly could have provided their children with health insurance but chose not to. They have relied on a government program, paid for in part by people poorer than they are.This is completely wrong in of itself, but then they shill for an expansion of the entitlement program at further expense to those much poorer than their own family and people actually defend them and the proposed program?
A family of two college educated adults that owns a business,the commercial property housing it,rents out said property,owns their own 500k home, drives an SUV, has children attending private schools with 20k per pupil tuition is not poor or "lower middle class" regardless of their purported taxable income. Not providing basic health insurance for their own children is reprehensibly irresponsible. I would think a lot of people,particularly "working families" of lesser means than the Frost's would be willing to fight and die on Megan's metaphorical hill.
The current debate is over whether S-CHIP should be expanded to kids who aren't poor, whose solidly middle-class parents prefer buying luxuries to buying health insurance for the kids.
The "welfare queens" argument AGAIN!
We don't have a choice about the matter, this _will_ be the sort of issue we'll have to oppose in the election. This is basic Clintonian tactics, it's just an example of 'it's for the children!'
I missed some juicy ones. I'm sorry, there's only one of me and I have to do real work too.
Run for your lives, it's HillaryCare!
For the record, I'm not a fan of "HillaryCare 2.0." Any plan that continues the involvement of the private insurance industry in health care is doomed to failure. I believe I've made my opinion of the insurance industry in general quite clear.
This thread is bizarre.The Frosts clearly could have provided their children with health insurance but chose not to.
Welfare queens!
Maybe I should do like they do in the British Parliament for Prime Minister's Questions; give the answer once, then subsequent posters can say "Number one" when they want to argue the Welfare Queens argument and I can reply "I refer the gentleman to the answer I gave some moments ago."
I have not seen long lists detailing how substandard Canadian health care is compared to American. In any case, absent empirical proof (which will only come AFTER we have converted to a single-payer system) I am skeptical of claims that the American standard of care will necessarily drop. The only American example of single-payer we have, Medicare, seems largely successful at delivering good-quality care. There seems to me to be little basis for such gloomy prognostications. Other than to scare people, of course.
And you've just pointed out one of the big problems here. You are absolutely correct. We won't what damage a single-payer system will or will not do to this country until the damage is done. We have, however, seen the disastrous results in Canada, Britain, and Germany. With those as my point of reference, I have yet to see a single-payer (or government-provided) system that has lived up to expectations. As for Medicare, it is well-documented that Medicare is rife with fraud (not to mention that it is underfunded by over $50 trillion dollars). Also, Medicare reimbursement rates are so low and so poor that the cost of treatment is passed onto everyone else. Just because the government would now be paying for the entire cost of care doesn't mean that cost will disappear. Money doesn't grow on trees (unless you're a lib.)
You are reading what you want to think I wrote, not what I've actually written. But that is not surprising. All of my posts have emphasized the absence of health care cost concerns on the individual level if single-payer universal care is implemented. It is not a panacea for all the ills of society, but it would remove one source of stress and spread the "sacrifice and pain" across all of society rather than concentrating it in the small pool of people who need the care.
You're right. You did not actually say that is, in fact, a panacea. You only implied it. My fault! Nevertheless, the sacrifice and pain of care is already borne across our entire society. (See Medicare above). Groups of individuals pay for health insurance now, spreading the cost of each member's care across the entire group. But, we also endure the cost of who simply don't pay their bill, are here illegally (again a topic for another day), or are in government health insurance programs who reimbursement policies are so bad that they don't cover the cost of treatment. I will agree that the American insurance system doesn't need improvement. But, you'll forgive me if I tinker with the current system first before I through the baby out with the bath water.
Which is? (My guess: OH NOES, TEH SOCIALIZM!!!!11!)
Do you want socialism? I've never suggested socialism, although now that I think about it, many (though not all) of the countries with a single-payer system teeter a bit too close to socialism for my tastes. But no, I doubt Americans would swallow socialism quite as wholeheartedly as our European neighbors.
The statement was: "Dreams are not worth much without a certain sacrifice." The word "sacrifice" implies parting, loss, and therefore pain of some sort. The implication is that the only worthwhile dreams are those that can only be realized through pain. And I call that a bleak, almost Nietzschean (sp) outlook.
It's not a bleak outlook at all. In fact, the view from the top is lot more rewarding if you had to struggle to reach it. What that struggle is, I guess, is self-defined. I don't if just that Protestant work ethic rearing its ugly head or knowing that my family came to this country 100 years ago dirt poor and made something of themselves without any help from the government. They believed that sacrifice was necessary in order to develop a well-rounded citizen.
Yes it will, if done properly. ("But we can't trust the government to do it properly!" So we shouldn't even try? And aren't WE the government?) Here is ONE such proposal:
http://www.kyklosproductions.com/posts/index.php?p=59
And don't mislead people by suggesting we have to keep Medicare's 15% tax on top of whatever taxation regime we set up for single-payer; Medicare will become PART of single payer, not remain an add-on to it.
I never suggested that we add to it. A single-payer system would obviously replace the entire American health insurance system. Apparently, you think I'm an idiot. My point, which you seem unwilling to acknowledge, is that Medicare has a 15% tax rate (which every American taxpayer and corporation pays) and it pays for the health insurance of roughly one-tenth of the Americans in this country. Ipso facto, a single-payer system would have a substantially higher tax rate.
The one penny is how much of my taxes Mr. Frost would get to finance his health care. As you point out, it would probably be even less than that as I doubt he has $3 million in health care costs.
No. If health care cost each person in this country one cent, then you're right. $3M would adequately cover it. But, health care costs quite a bit more. Medicare alone costs roughly $200B a year. (That's 66,000 times more the $3M you suggest it should cost).
Think about that statement for a minute. Does it not strike you as particularly cold, unfeeling, and heartless? And think about it from this aspect: you're arguing against something that would benefit yourself! How is that, in a sane, rational universe, a sane, rational position to take? "Please, I prefer to not benefit! Make my life harder! Because making life harder for myself is where it's at!"
How is a single payer system any better than I have? You are trying to prove something that is not provable, defeating your own argument. Furthermore, taken out of context you're right, it would be heartless. Except that I explained myself further.
So let's make it impossible for them to make that "bad lifestyle choice," and just give them all insurance. They pay for it too, like everyone. Then you don't have to worry about the 23M+ who "choose not to take advantage," because it isn't a choice. That's not appealing to you? Or are you going to argue for people's right to make bad choices you end up paying for anyway? The best society is that which enables people to shoot themselves in the face if they feel like doing so?
What I'm saying is that there are other, potentially better solutions to covering the uninsured than a blanket single-payer system. That's all. Nothing more. Nothing less.
You're appointing yourself the arbiter of who does and does not need your support, and you can be wrong or biased in your decisions. The larger society of which you are a part and from which you derive the benefits of membership might determine that someone you deem unworthy of your support is in fact worthy of it; you should not be allowed to remain a member of society if you refuse to participate and abide by its decisions. In short, are you a part of society or are you not? And on a moral/ethical level, the support being asked of you is so minimal it seems petty and cruel of you to withhold it.
As opposed to the government being the ultimate arbiter of what I need or don't need, I'll take me. Government is not society. Government, in fact, is often the enemy of society. Why are we going to adopt a single-payer system, which may or may not work, when that's not the problem. The problem is the uninsured population. Again, there are other ways for society to address social ills that don't rely on government to work.
Sure, just let me round up 999,999 more people to kick in a penny. In a taxpayer pool of over 200M, that shouldn't be too hard. If I can get them over the conceptual hurdle of "but why should I help him!" I've heard that a lot of us Americans think that way.
Why is your health insurance so expensive? I heard it was just $452/month in Baltimore for a family of 4.
I was including my employer's contribution over the course of an entire year. I only pay about $100/month. Of course, my employer pays for the Cadillac of health insurance plans, relatively speaking. I'm quite sure that I could find a high-deductible plan for around $400/month, if I wanted to.
liberalrob:
Are/were you a Canadian citizen? If so, why did you still need health insurance? In what way(s) was your health insurance "worse?"
I was a Landed Immigrant, and the quality and availability of care I had under Health Canada was significantly worse than the quality of care I get under Blue Cross.
Blue Cross is cheaper and better for me, and I make a pretty average salary.
Who is better able to absorb a charge of half a million bucks: Blue Cross, or the United States Government? Who is going to be better able to negotiate costs for care: Blue Cross, or the United States Government? No, you wouldn't be bringing everyone down if you had insurance that covered your needed care; but the scenario was, if the care was not covered, that people SHOULD bring down everyone before expecting government assistance, and I contend that that is exactly backwards (and needlessly so).
Blue Cross regularly absorbs this form of risk, and does so with great efficiency. It's called "insurance", and businesses exert great effort to streamlining this process.
First: you (and most Republicans) overestimate the mobility of citizens. Usually it's not as easy as it sounds to up sticks and move to Utah. Second: OH NOES, TEH SOCIALIZM!!!!111! Third: to a degree, states HAVE been experimenting with single-payer, but only in very limited ways to my knowledge. The CHIP program that SCHIP is supposed to supplement is one such.
Municipalities do regularly experiment with things like better school districts, and with results. There's a reason why states don't go for socialized medicine:
Because it doesn't work well.
And when he needs fifty THOUSAND bucks of health care, he is.
Not at all. When you need that much health care, much of the time the government will just put you on a never-ending wait list, where you die.
Whereas I have had great success getting care out of Blue Cross - middle-income, dark-skinned, no-connections me.
Socialized medicine works about as well as collectivized agriculture and Soviet bread line, and for about the same reasons.
You remind me of someone brainwashed by Soviet education, shouting "If we don't liquidate even more kulaks, collectivize even more agriculture, and institute more bread lines, MORE PEOPLE WILL STARVE!"
Of course, it was precisely the collectivized agriculture and the Soviet food distribution system that was making everyone starve in the first place, just as it is the overregulation of health care that is driving up costs.
Re: "OH NOES, TEH SOCIALIZM"
I'm puzzled why you write this.
Is socialism a bad thing? If so, why?
Is it not a bad thing, and you are mocking those who decry its historic deletirous effects?
If you think socialism is a postive good, can you explain why, since it has failed repeatedly when applied to an entire nation (e.g. USSR), and even to entire industries (British oil and gas), we should adopt it here?
Or are you just being cute?
Re: "I have not seen long lists detailing how substandard Canadian health care is compared to American."
Start here:
High-Priced Pain: What to Expect from a Single-Payer Health Care System
In any case, absent empirical proof (which will only come AFTER we have converted to a single-payer system) I am skeptical of claims that the American standard of care will necessarily drop.
So, single-payer is a faith-based program, then?
"But we can't trust the government to do it properly!" So we shouldn't even try?
No.
And aren't WE the government?
No.
Think about that statement for a minute. Does it not strike you as particularly cold, unfeeling, and heartless?
No.
Or are you going to argue for people's right to make bad choices you end up paying for anyway?
Actually, I argue for people's right to make bad choices that I don't end up paying for.
The best society is that which enables people to shoot themselves in the face if they feel like doing so?
Sure, why not?
In short, are you a part of society or are you not?
The only thing missing from the paragraph that the above sentence concluded was some reference to a "social contract". Aside from that, it was an pitch-perfect impression of a Marxist attempting to justify the imposition of his policy preferences. But, OH NOES, TEH SOCIALIZM!!!!111!, and all, so I assume it simply must have been satire.
I'm puzzled why you write this.
One of the common refrains when a liberal brings up single-payer universal health care is "we can't do that because that's Socialized Medicine, and we hate Socialism." And that's the end of it, as far as the opponents are concerned. If it's Socialism, its Evil.
If you think socialism is a postive good, can you explain why, since it has failed repeatedly when applied to an entire nation (e.g. USSR), and even to entire industries (British oil and gas), we should adopt it here?
Because I think it would be better to have the government paying for my health care than a bunch of insurance companies whose primary motivation is their own bottom line, not my health.
Or are you just being cute?
I hope to be cute AND serious, both at the same time.
Start here:
The Heritage Foundation? No thanks. Fruit of the poison tree.
Sure, just let me round up 999,999 more people to kick in a penny.
If that's what you were actually proposing, then I'd have no beef, because those 999,999 people would be contributing voluntarily.
But that's not what you're actually proposing. Rather, you're proposing to forcibly confiscate wealth from everybody, and pretend that theft on your part is actually charity on theirs.
Because I think it would be better to have the government paying for my health care than a bunch of insurance companies whose primary motivation is their own bottom line, not my health.
Wait, you think the government will care about your health?
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
>>Think about that statement for a minute. Does it not strike you as particularly cold, unfeeling, and heartless?
BC: No.
Tells me all I need to know.
Actually, I argue for people's right to make bad choices that I don't end up paying for.
Well, you end up paying for this one.
Sure, why not?
The essence of Libertarianism. Want to shoot yourself in the face? Hey, as long as it's not my bullets, knock yourself out. I could give a rat's hindquarters what you do in life as long as I don't have to see it or pay for it. Your kids are sick and you can't pay for a doctor? Tough noogies, you should've not had them. Life is nasty, brutish and short, and I've only got time to look out for numero uno!
Truly, an uplifting and progressive philosophy.
Rather, you're proposing to forcibly confiscate wealth from everybody, and pretend that theft on your part is actually charity on theirs.
I don't consider it "theft" or "charity," I consider it being a member of a larger group that looks out for its own. Paying taxes is not theft, its membership dues to society.
secret asian manI was a Landed Immigrant, and the quality and availability of care I had under Health Canada was significantly worse than the quality of care I get under Blue Cross.
Not a complete answer. Why, if Health Canada was single-payer, did you need to get Blue Cross? My conception of single-payer is that it pays for everything. If the Canadian single-payer does NOT pay for everything, then that's not the system we should implement for America. Which I remind you I never suggested doing.
In what ways were the "quality and availability" of care "significantly worse?" Would they have been better if you had been a full citizen instead of just a "landed immigrant?"
Not at all. When you need that much health care, much of the time the government will just put you on a never-ending wait list, where you die.
Assertion without proof. You're speculating. More specifically, you're trying to scare people with horror stories.
Whereas I have had great success getting care out of Blue Cross - middle-income, dark-skinned, no-connections me.
Bully for you. What about people who can't get Blue Cross?
Socialized medicine works about as well as collectivized agriculture and Soviet bread line, and for about the same reasons.
And here it comes...OH NOES!!!!11!
I refer the gentleman to the answer I gave some moments ago.
Because I think it would be better to have the government paying for my health care than a bunch of insurance companies whose primary motivation is their own bottom line, not my health.
Right. The folks who gave us the War on Drugs and slavery are our friends.
What makes you think the government is on your side?
If we had single-payer universal health care, we wouldn't be worrying about the ability of private citizens to actually afford their own health care.
this government instituted price control that effects all payers and providers across the board, means that competition and choice is eliminated. Contrary to popular belief, government involvement does not translate to "affordable" and "available". Today, in small communities and in rural areas, this has directly resulted in reducing and very often eliminating these services. Consumers must now travel to larger communities and cities to receive even basic care. Thus, increasing personal costs for travel, lodging and food that are not reimbursed by any government or non-government payer.
It is so bad, in fact, that the government has actually realized their effect and has sought to radically improve incentives for doctors and health care providers to open offices, clinics and facilities in these areas just to maintain some form of medical services to these communities. These incentives are a day late and many dollars short since all other government interference has effectively rendered the incentives moot.
To understand just how bad the situation is, for the government to recognize their impact, the data pointing to this problem has to be pretty extensive. Government entities are not known or even set up to analyze, recognize or attempt change anything that is less than "huge". It simply isn't cost effective. It isn't just Medicare or Medicaid. It is also programs like Tri-Care for military personnel. Many families of activated reservists and national guard are unable to use their Tri-Care benefits where they live for just this reason. There is no one there to accept it.
When we institute a national health care program this will not be mitigated, but will be substantially increased. Further, availability of services in larger communities will be stretched to their limits not only because smaller communities are forced to migrate to larger communities and use those resources, but, due to increasing elimination of competitive providers within the larger markets as well.
We already see this problem with specialists and other extensive, intensive treatments. Particularly within the limited market provided by HMOs and even within the Medicare and Medicaid market where general health care providers have self-selected out or been eliminated by the price fixing, cost controls. Today, we already see waits from ten(10) days all the way up to ninety (90) days. This is unlikely to decrease under a national health care program. Worse, it is likely to start occurring for general health care services and common procedures.
In many communities that are already largely populated by Medicare and Medicaid recipients, there is an ever decreasing number of general practitioners. Physicians and other health care providers cannot exist on government controlled pricing. They cannot afford their office rent, personnel or additional equipment. They have been forced out due to the over whelming market of government beneficiaries.
Right now, Medicare and Medicaid recipients already have to go on waiting lists for physicians and other providers in their communities or they have to find providers outside of their communities who are willing to take them.
Most of the people writing responses on this post are not Medicare or Medicaid recipients nor people who actually work in the health care business. Most people here have no idea what it is like to have to rely on government subsidized health benefits. It is largely hidden from you because it is actually a relatively small part of our society compared to the rest of our 300 million citizens who largely find the ability to purchase health insurance or who pay as they go.
The fact that anyone would believe that the small part of society that isn't already covered by some private offering or existing government program should cause us to institute a national health care program that is already and will continue to be destructive to actually creating "affordable" and "available" health care seems almost tragically comedic.
This also does not take into account the issue where competitive health care results in continuing innovations and improvements in treating diseases. Reducing competition does not lead to improved cost effective measures or improved treatments. In fact, based on existing government programs, the idea of even imagining doing that is legislated and regulated out of existence.
Current policies do not offer incentives for any improvements or cost effective policies. In fact, the policies that exist create distinct disincentives by penalizing anyone who would go outside of these regulations. While it was originally intended to insure standard health care practices, it has largely resulted in providers simply avoiding any innovations and adhering closely to government regulations so as not to be penalized.
This does not improve health care or reduce costs. In fact, it does the exact opposite if it doesn't simply create stagnation.
That happens right now with the current intrusion into private health care through government regulations that insist all providers who would take government beneficiaries must institute these practices and payment schemes across the board for all of their customers in order to avoid the stigma of "discrimination" due to payer source or income which would result in sanctions or penalties. It was a nice thought to try to eliminate discrimination, but it failed to take into account the other far reaching consequences.
Instead, it has created such a fear within the health care industry, even today without national health care, that providers are unwilling to move outside of the current regulations to any degree.
It will be more so when we institute national health care.
The complaints you hear drifting across the oceans or our borders might seem like individual anecdotes that do not reflect a reality within those socialized medical systems. However, the real problem is that there are many more of these complaints where they come from. you don't hear them as often because people don't believe that they have any choice in the system. They are locked in so complaining seems to be pointless, particularly when the system is slow to respond.
Some complaints may be being made, but it is also unlikely that a national health care system actually has the onus of competitive markets to respond to these complaints. They have no reason to publicize these issues or take real effective quality control measures.
In the future, if you're lucky, we might have such issues posted on a government website that few people will look at because they figure they have no real way to change the system. They can't opt out of it. They won't be able to choose another provider. They can't force a provider to recognize how bad they are providing service by effecting their revenue stream.
All of these incentives will be gone under a national health care system. Then what will you? Once such a system is in place, incrementally or in full force at one time, you will never be able to roll it back.
you will simply be forced to payer ever higher taxes with additional premiums and co-pays that the system will try to reflect back on the customer because it will discover that it is not cost effective to pay for everything either.
At which point, you might as well have stuck with privatized health care and maintained the ability to choose.
Truly, an uplifting and progressive philosophy.
Well, consider the alternatives to a society in which one is perfectly free to shoot oneself in the face. Either:
(1) A society in which people don't have the freedom to make shortsighted, stupid, or self-destructive choices; or
(2) A society in which the costs of the shortsighted, stupid, or self-destructive choices made by some are borne by innocent parties.
Unlike brooksfoe, you don't appear to be a totalitarian, so presumably you'd prefer to live in society #2. But it's not obvious that such a society has any rational claim to being governed according to an "uplifting" or "progressive" philosophy by any normal understanding of the terms.
Funny thing, too: in society #2, there invariably comes a point at which the innocent parties get sick of being treated like bottomless sacks of cash. From there it's a pretty short road to society #1.
Paying taxes is not theft, its membership dues to society.
Sure. Tell this to people who don't live in American society, who don't enjoy the benefits of American society, and yet who are still subject to taxation.
We have, however, seen the disastrous results in Canada, Britain, and Germany.
Yes, results so disastrous they rank ahead of us in the WHO health care survey, and at lower per-capita cost.
I have yet to see a single-payer (or government-provided) system that has lived up to expectations.
So we could be the first. You're saying we can't learn from the mistakes of others?
As for Medicare, it is well-documented that Medicare is rife with fraud (not to mention that it is underfunded by over $50 trillion dollars.
So are Defense contracts. Underfunding is something we will have to work out as part of the implementation process.
Also, Medicare reimbursement rates are so low and so poor that the cost of treatment is passed onto everyone else.
Under single-payer, there's no one to pass costs along to, is there? So either the government will pay the cost, or the cost will be negotiated down. These things are all fixable! You haven't brought up anything I can't see a solution for.
Nevertheless, the sacrifice and pain of care is already borne across our entire society. (See Medicare above).
Medicare doesn't cover all citizens.
Groups of individuals pay for health insurance now, spreading the cost of each member's care across the entire group.
Those individual groups are fractions of the entire citizenry. Under single-payer the costs would be spread even farther.
But, we also endure the cost of who simply don't pay their bill,
No longer an issue under single-payer,
or are in government health insurance programs who reimbursement policies are so bad that they don't cover the cost of treatment.
Which I see as fixable.
you'll forgive me if I tinker with the current system first before I through the baby out with the bath water.
We've been tinkering for decades. 45 million people have no health insurance and therefore receive substandard health care or pass excessive costs along to taxpayers. I think it's time to try something else.
Do you want socialism? I've never suggested socialism
You said I was "avoiding the inevitable endpoint" of my line of thinking. I was trying to divine what you thought that endpoint was.
In fact, the view from the top is lot more rewarding if you had to struggle to reach it.
But the struggle is unnecessary and wasteful! I realize people climb Mount Everest "because it's there" and they appreciate the challenge, but holy cow I don't need to do that to feel a sense of fulfillment in life. I have other things I'd much rather be doing and that would give me a greater sense of fulfillment than successfully figuring out how I was going to pay for my cancer treatments.
Apparently, you think I'm an idiot.
If I thought you were an idiot, I would be a lot more condescending. A smoker will back me up on that.
My point, which you seem unwilling to acknowledge, is that Medicare has a 15% tax rate (which every American taxpayer and corporation pays) and it pays for the health insurance of roughly one-tenth of the Americans in this country. Ipso facto, a single-payer system would have a substantially higher tax rate.
A can of Coke costs me $.85 out of the machine downstairs. I can buy a 12-pack at Safeway for $3.
How is a single payer system any better than I have?
Than what YOU have? Maybe it won't be, for YOU. My goal is that the single-payer system not be any WORSE for you. I don't see why it should be.
But your answer is me, me, me! What do *I* get out of it, if *I* don't get something out of it, why should I help YOU. I object to that.
Furthermore, taken out of context you're right, it would be heartless. Except that I explained myself further.
Your "further explanation" was that you were happy with what you had, so why should you give anything up just so I could have health care? My answer was that that was a heartless position to take. If you want to "revise and extend" further, go ahead, but that's what you said.
As opposed to the government being the ultimate arbiter of what I need or don't need, I'll take me.
But you're NOT the ultimate arbiter of what you need or don't need. Blue Cross or Kaiser Permanente or United Healthcare are that arbiter, unless you are independently wealthy enough that you don't need to abide by their decisions. Single-payer done the way I envision it would take them out of that equation and return the decision to you and you doctor. Where it should be. The government's role is strictly to sign the checks.
Government is not society.
Are we going to have to go back to Locke and Rousseau and the rest? Is this trip really necessary?
Why are we going to adopt a single-payer system, which may or may not work, when that's not the problem. The problem is the uninsured population.
It seems to me to be common sense that if the uninsured population is the problem, which I agree it is, then the most direct solution is to make the uninsured be insured. The most equitable way I can think of to do that is to establish that all citizens regardless of financial circumstance are entitled to the best possible health care that can be provided, and the best way to do that is through single-payer. I can and have thought of many arguments in favor of single payer, both from common sense and from the political history of this country, and I have explained them here as best I can. I think we're starting to go in circles, and it's time to move on.
Not a complete answer. Why, if Health Canada was single-payer, did you need to get Blue Cross? My conception of single-payer is that it pays for everything.
The care I receive, in America, is far better than the care I receive in Canada. Routine medical appointments like an X-ray for a busted finger cost me $60 and a half-hour wait in America. In Canada? Splint it up and hope they see you in a month.
Would they have been better if you had been a full citizen instead of just a "landed immigrant?"
Not in the slightest. My parents are dual citizens.
Assertion without proof. You're speculating. More specifically, you're trying to scare people with horror stories.
Not in the slightest. Health Care of the Canadian Rich and Famous
I have lived under both countries, as well as in western Europe and have personally experienced the abysmal level of care under government-run health care schemes compared to what I can get here in the States.
Like the economist and the Porsche, people reveal their preferences through their actions.
Canadians go to America for health care. Americans do not go the other way.
If Canadian health care is so well-run, some enterprising Canadian would set up a company providing Canadian-style health care in the states and make a killing.
The Soviets claimed all along that their cars, aircraft, and computers were the best, but when the wall fell, Aeroflot ended up buying Boeing and Airbus.
You don't seem to have any response at all to a simple assertion of mine:
If socialized medicine provided better results than private medicine, we ought to set it up in a couple states and see if people move in or out.
After all, my family, when faced with Communist oppression, moved.
Tell this to people who don't live in American society, who don't enjoy the benefits of American society, and yet who are still subject to taxation.
Unfortunately for your argument we are talking about people who DO live in American society and who DO enjoy the benefits of American society. So your statement that taxation in other countries is theft would seem to be irrelevant.
Not in the slightest. Health Care of the Canadian Rich and Famous
Ah yes, the highly regarded Pajamas Media. Truly an objective source.
If Canadian health care is so well-run, some enterprising Canadian would set up a company providing Canadian-style health care in the states and make a killing.
I'd like to see that. A foreign-run single-payer health care system. Hilarious.
If socialized medicine provided better results than private medicine, we ought to set it up in a couple states and see if people move in or out.
I believe that's the first time you expressed that "assertion" that way. Before, you simply asked why it hadn't been tried, and I answered that.
My answer to this variation is that 1) the economy of scale will be insufficient, 2) the mobility of the citizenry is still overestimated, 3) we can't just tell a state "thou shalt have single-payer as an experiment."
After all, my family, when faced with Communist oppression, moved.
I suspect they moved for other reasons than bad health care.
Unfortunately for your argument we are talking about people who DO live in American society and who DO enjoy the benefits of American society. So your statement that taxation in other countries is theft would seem to be irrelevant.
I wasn't talking about taxation in other countries. I was talking about people who aren't members of American society in any real sense -- who may not even live in the country -- yet who are nevertheless subject to American taxes.
In other words, they're not members of the club, but they're still forced to pay the dues. This is to say nothing of people who don't want to be members of the club, yet who are also forced to pay the dues.
It seems to me to be common sense that if the uninsured population is the problem, which I agree it is, then the most direct solution is to make the uninsured be insured. The most equitable way I can think of to do that is to establish that all citizens regardless of financial circumstance are entitled to the best possible health care that can be provided, and the best way to do that is through single-payer. I can and have thought of many arguments in favor of single payer, both from common sense and from the political history of this country, and I have explained them here as best I can. I think we're starting to go in circles, and it's time to move on.
Finally, we can agree on something. We can agree that the uninsured population is the problem. We arrive at solutions in a different way. You are looking for the 100% solution. Changing the equation so that the problem is eliminated, regardless of the possible worse harm that might come to society. (I know that you think it won't happen.)
I don't see this as a simple solution: there are many reasons why people don't have insurance. Some just don't feel the need to have it. Others can't afford it. But, since I respect your fundamental right to make what I consider to be a stupid decision, I don't think we need to impose solutions on everybody.
I don't think that government should be involved in the issue of insurance at all beyond imposing a requirement that everyone have health insurance. My idea is kinda like what we have with car insurance. The government of each state establishes minimum insurance requirements that your policy must meet. It better allows for individual choice (like having alternative medicine coverage or cosmetic surgery coverage). This system has worked quite well for several decades. Most states also maintain "insurance of last resort" coverage for those who can't afford it.
I think this system is equitable and maintains my own personal choice, which is what I've been trying to stress all day.
I must say I have appreciated sparring with you. The great thing about forums like this is that it helps me think through my own position.
liberalrob is what you call a true believer--single-payer will work for America, he says, because America will make it so, just by voting for it, apparently. Notice when confronted with contrary evidence he refuses even to look at it.
Just because the Heritage Foundation, for examples, collects statistics relevant to issues they have an opinion about, doesn't meant they're sources and methods aren't reliable. But liberalrob, who thinks everyone can have free health care at the current level of quality just by voting for it, it won't matter who presents the information if it contradicts what he already believes.
In the UK right now people have been denied medical treatment because of lifestyle choices. Once the government gets to run your health care, it gets to run your lifestyle, not just for your own good but to save money. We are already far enough down that road.
If it's true, as liberalrob suggests, that we can all give the government money to run our health and all be better off, then that means we are all getting out more than we all put in. By magic, apparently.
Actually, liberalrob expects "the rich" will have to kick in far more than they are paid out. He's right about that. But it may surprise him to find out how far down the income scale "rich" starts.
And when the rich all decide they'd rather move to Monaco then spend their money on the rest of us, liberalrob and his friends may resort to outright confiscation--or maybe just make it illegal for them to leave--just like Cuba and their healthcare system. Which is free, except that you have to bring your own bandages and soap, unless you are a tourist or in the Party.
(Before liberalrob brings up Cuba's "lower infant mortality", two things--only the US counts infants who die the day they are born in the infant mortality statistic. Cuba, among other countries, excludes those deaths. And Cuba, of course, makes up whatever statistics it wants--in a country where you go to prison for having an illegal library, who can challenge them?)
You guys gonna let me go home for dinner?
kat-missouri: this government instituted price control that effects all payers and providers across the board, means that competition and choice is eliminated.
The current competition to see who can provide the least health care at the least cost for the highest premiums is one I will be glad to eliminate.
Contrary to popular belief, government involvement does not translate to "affordable" and "available".
Explain this in terms of single-payer universal health care.
Today, in small communities and in rural areas, this has directly resulted in reducing and very often eliminating these services.
I seem to recall reading or hearing on NPR that rural hospitals were being closed because HMO's were not reimbursing them for care that was offered at big regional med centers. How is that "government's" fault?
Consumers must now travel to larger communities and cities to receive even basic care. Thus, increasing personal costs for travel, lodging and food that are not reimbursed by any government or non-government payer.
Which are also not reimbursed by traditional private insurance; you have to get AFLAC supplementals to get that coverage. Again, how is this "government's fault?" (Single-payer will not necessarily address this issue either, by the way).
When we institute a national health care program this will not be mitigated, but will be substantially increased.
Assertion without proof. I'll give you some credit for being in the health care industry but not this much. This is prognostication that is outside your expertise, as far as I know.
Further, availability of services in larger communities will be stretched to their limits not only because smaller communities are forced to migrate to larger communities and use those resources, but, due to increasing elimination of competitive providers within the larger markets as well.
Are services in larger communities not already stretched to their limits? Parkland Hospital here in Dallas is constantly overloaded serving uninsured and underinsured patients. It seems to me that by forcing all "private" hospitals to accept single-payer-insured patients, the load will be redistributed off of places like Parkland and back onto regional centers closer to the patients who currently migrate to Parkland because it's the only place that will take uninsured patients.
This also does not take into account the issue where competitive health care results in continuing innovations and improvements in treating diseases. Reducing competition does not lead to improved cost effective measures or improved treatments. In fact, based on existing government programs, the idea of even imagining doing that is legislated and regulated out of existence.
Thanks to 27 years of Republican howling about the excesses of scientists and their moral vacuity and how we should let the market decide which avenues of research to follow (as long as they adhered to Christian sensibility). As a result we have dozens of new cures for insomnia and erectile dysfunction and precious few for AIDS and cancer. The market decides lines of research based on profit, not morality. Again, if this is the kind of research and innovation competition is going to give us I'm happy to see it eliminated, replaced by government-led assaults on AIDS, MS, Parkinsons, and the like.
And now I'm going to dinner. Good night.
As a result we have dozens of new cures for insomnia and erectile dysfunction and precious few for AIDS and cancer. The market decides lines of research based on profit, not morality. Again, if this is the kind of research and innovation competition is going to give us I'm happy to see it eliminated, replaced by government-led assaults on AIDS, MS, Parkinsons, and the like.
Speaking of vacuous, did you ever think that it is easier to find cures for erectile dysfunction because it is largely caused by vascular occlusions, which we have already researched and found cures for in relations to heart disease and other artery related conditions?
As opposed to diseases like cancer that effect people at the cellular level. Something that is vastly more complicated than opening an artery at this stage.
Are you a scientist working on these projects? Do you have any idea of the biology or multitudes of conditions, including genetic (which we have yet to master), that can cause cancer and that need to be combated?
Do you have any idea of the leaps and bounds that have been made in the treatment of cancer that has improved life expectancy and even total remission or "cure" since the turn of the century or even since the 1950's when any cancer was a death knell?
Do you have any idea that more money is spent on the research for these diseases than any other medical condition?
Your argument there is hollow and, in fact, expects that some government institute over seen by politicians will some how effect a miracle that is out of political reach and can only rely on continuing research, innovation and inventions that you do not get in public health programs.
In fact, has any government agency actually been the agency that has produced any of the cures we have seen or the medications that have improved life expectancy for AIDS patients? That did not come from the CDC or any government agency. That came from the private health sector.
In fact, private health and AIDS organizations had to beat the government into submission in order to get the drugs approved and on government drug formularies. That's what you have to look forward to in a national health program but more so.
The idea that government controlled health care would improve these situations and some how focus funds and resources on these diseases is preposterous. The government's entire mandate would force them to even greater distribution of funds over more disciplines in order to maintain their mandate of "non-discrimination based on disability" as well as respond to the multitude of their constituencies who suffer untold numbers of diseases like diabetes, lung disease, heart disease and so many others. Government today already struggles to allocate these funds "equitably" while responding to political pressure. It is not going to improve because you think they simply haven't had the power to do more.
You think you will change that with the wave of a magic wand called national health care.
Empty rhetoric playing on people's emotions that has nothing to do with the reality of medicine and research today.
the Democrats paraded some kid name Graeme Frost in front of a camera in support of S-Chip
Oh, such compassion in your conservatism! Some kid got medical care to recover from a traumatic brain injury. It ought to be a success story, except this "some kid" did it at public expense. So now he's just some kid.
And "paraded."
So, Megan, what did you call it when Bush dragged a nine-year-old boy around with him when he was trying to steal one-third of the Social Security Trust Fund and give it to the banks? Did you object to Bush's 2004 campaign ad that exploited "some kid" as she grieves over her mother's death at the World Trade Center on Sep. 11, 2001?
I'm afraid your mask is slipping.
The current competition to see who can provide the least health care at the least cost for the highest premiums is one I will be glad to eliminate.
As opposed to the government that will provide the least health care for the highest fixed cost and doesn't care if you like it or not once you have been suckered into a single payer national health care program that you have little control of and cannot effect since it will not be you deciding what you get treated for, but a bunch of bureaucrats whose jobs will be secure whether you get treated, get better or die.
Contrary to popular belief, government involvement does not translate to "affordable" and "available". Explain this in terms of single-payer universal health care.
I did later in the argument if you did not read it thoroughly enough, I'll be rather succinct. 1) you will have no control of the costs through government fee schedules. the process used today is already rather arbitrary, does not take in enough market factors for increases that are incrementally developed based on a percentage instead of real costs of services whether those increase or decrease.
2) Government has, to date, been very slow to accept less expensive and more innovative methods of treatment which leads to continuing use of more costly and less effective, sometimes close to obsolete, treatments and procedures. This leads to continuing disease processes that, in the end, cause higher end of care costs for catastrophic health care.
3) Due to government aversion to change but also working with in the context that they will always be trying to make health care more cost effective, instead of working towards more efficient and effective care, they will do what they have always done which is to add more tests and regulations in an attempt to slow down utilization. Instead of decreasing the cost or utilization, they will simply place an additional burden on the health care system and raise costs through legislating even more health care procedures that are sometimes unnecessary or could be determined with less.
That is what happens today in Medicare and Medicaid.
4) There will be no onus to actually provide efficient health care. They will simply do as they have always done which is add additional workers to over see their extended programs to manage these additional regulations and services.
That is what happens today in Medicare and Medicaid. The only way they can offset these issues are through either totally eliminating these treatments or, as they have been doing over the last two decades, implement and increase premiums and higher co-pays. Just ask any Medicare recipient over the last two decades how their premium for part B (covering physicians services, lab tests and medical equipment) has increased by over 300% since its implementation.
Ask how many senior citizens are signing up for the drug benefit which they must pay for with a premium as well as co-pays. Some of the co-pays are actually higher than the cost of drugs themselves but they must be paid because the rules say anyone using these benefits will pay that co-pay regardless of drug cost.
5) As providers are shut out of the market through ever tightening fee schedules and rising costs, the only providers left will be those that are huge and can absorb the changes. At least for awhile. However, the burden on these few remaining entities will be so great that the only way it could continue to exist is through large in put of federal money and grants which you will supply without a by your leave through additional taxes. Either that or you will start complaining about the conditions at these facilities and the lack of services and demand that they be increased. Through federal money from your taxes.
you are just begging for the government to take half your pay check aren't you?
I had a conversation with my family physician a couple weeks ago that confirmed much of what kat-missouri says about the coming scarcity of care. He is a mid-career, highly regarded true healer who is near a tipping point of being able/unable to continue his practice because of government (Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare) price fixing. I was stunned to learn that his income was only a little more than twice what Uncle Sam (USAF retirement and Social Security) pays me to keep breathing and the guy works back-breaking hours. The situation will only get worse in the short term because of boomers coming on to Medicare. It doesn't take a genius to understand that government pricing of all care will result in a death spiral. One solution might be for government to determine which of our children and grandchildren will be forced into the medical specialties. yeah. That'll work.
I seem to recall reading or hearing on NPR that rural hospitals were being closed because HMO's were not reimbursing them for care that was offered at big regional med centers. How is that "government's" fault?
Oh, goody, you heard something on NPR and now you know everything there is to know about health care contracting, how rates are determined and how the regulations are developed that enforce the approval or denial process.
HMO products are based on ppd (per patient per diem). These rates are arrived at by allegedly taking the number of potential HMO recipients and dividing the total amount of services over a three year period by the number of enrolled recipients or expected HMO recipients.
If that HMO has a contract with Medicare to provide HMO coverage for government beneficiaries, they sign a contract that prohibits them from charging more for these beneficiaries than any other demographic even if that utilization is higher. Further, government agencies are notoriously bad at being able to provide real accurate numbers of Medicare recipients, causing the HMO to further under bid.
Thus, high costs, no returns and often intensive financial losses.
This is further intensified by regulations and policies that insist that specific diagnostics, treatments or procedures be used before the patient can receive another treatment or procedure. They have to adhere to these procedures to both qualify and rule out these services. These regulations and policies are set by Medicare and these agencies must abide by them across the board lest they be charged with discrimination based on disability or payer (ie, Medicare or medicaid).
They don't get to choose to skip or change those policies and regulations based on the patients circumstances, but are forced to adhere to them based on known or potential diagnosis codes. Another increased utilization factor.
NPR, I'm sure, did a nice job blaming it on the evil HMOs that every body hates but nobody knows how they were turned from good ideas into very bad onces through government interference.
It is a fact that CMS (center for medicare and medicaid services) has instituted a program to give incentives to physicians and other providers to go to or stay in these rural and small communities because their national fee schedule and polices have rendered that market non-profitable.
It is also a fact that this is not just happening in rural and small communities. It is happening in communities right here in our cities where the population is largely Medicare or Medicaid recipients. For the very same reasons.
Which are also not reimbursed by traditional private insurance; you have to get AFLAC supplementals to get that coverage. Again, how is this "government's fault?" (Single-payer will not necessarily address this issue either, by the way).
You took that out of context. With less government interference, the markets in these areas would be more able to regulate prices, remain somewhat profitable and maintain services. All of which would be less costly than the costs inflicted on people who must travel great distances and stay at more and more centralized locations as providers are eliminated.
It would be less costly than the continuing increased burden on centralized health facilities and providers that, even now, have to increase staff and try to use aging facilities to care for the already existing migration of health care seekers. Much less the situation they will face under a national health care system.
When we institute a national health care program this will not be mitigated, but will be substantially increased.
Assertion without proof. I'll give you some credit for being in the health care industry but not this much. This is prognostication that is outside your expertise, as far as I know.
You are quite right, Rob, I have been in the health care business for over twenty years and have watched exactly how increasing government involvement has affected, not just private health care, but patients directly. I have had the dubious pleasure of trying to help people get their services authorized and paid for, explain their benefits to them, analyze their income and try to help them get medicaid or other coverage to offset costs. I have seen what increased Medicare and Medicaid premiums have done to citizens on fixed incomes that amount to far less than "poverty level".
I don't expect that this would improve with national health care because any government program would find itself in the same boat and look to offset their financial burden by turning some of it back to the beneficiaries through premiums and additional co-pays and deductibles. Just as they do now. At which point, you will be paying taxes for health care and premiums that would be equal to the premiums you can pay today in health care industry that at least allows you some choice in coverage and treatment.
Like I said, your better off now than in this future because at least now you have choice and a say so in the cost and quality of your care.
I am no longer in that field, by the way, so please don't take this as an insider lobbying on behalf of private health care. I am simply making note of what I have found to be true in the last two decades.
As for how I arrive at the conclusion that it will be unmitigated, even a straight line analysis of current numbers without taking into account the probable increases brought on by national health care. The speed at which national health care will increase this is, of course, unknown. But the speed at which it is happening now, is not. We are losing between 2 and 4 providers in these communities every month today with a replacement ratio of 1. That is easily a negative without extrapolating over a year or more.
Unmitigated.
I also know exactly how government regulations and fee schedules, ostensibly set for government beneficiaries, have done to the ability of private citizens to negotiate for and actually afford their own health care. These rates are forced across the board by provider agreements that insist that these providers cannot charge anymore or less to government beneficiaries than to any other customer. In short, even you, the private citizen, will pay exactly what the government pays for these services. If the provider does not adhere to this agreement, they can be penalized, charged with fraud and even imprisoned.
For what? Because they can cut costs by knocking out the administrative needs enforced by government regulations and policies that enforce completion of reams of documents and requires untold number of people to submit and follow up on claims that sometimes might take up to a year to get paid by Medicare if you don't follow their rules to the letter.
Cutting out that cost and providing a direct discount to customers through direct payment should be a no brainer, but the government says otherwise.
It's discrimination you know. According to them, if you can discount a rate to a private paying citizen, you should be able to do so to government beneficiaries, even if you still have to follow their rules, complete their paperwork, obtain authorizations every other day and follow up numerous times on unpaid claims.
No business could operate like that for long. They would lose their customer base. It is only that people are locked into the health care system and providers are locked into government agreements that keeps customers coming back for more even as it is made increasingly unaffordable.
Dr: That will be $1000
Gov: nope. We will give you $150
Dr: See ya. Going to retire and start woodworking.
Rob needs to take a econ class. Single payer costs the Government nothing. It cost the people that finance the government, ie the taxpayers. Rob's solution is to just raise taxes. No doubt on just the "rich". So clearly the solution is to vote to have the rich just pay everything for us. They already pay most of the income tax, why not all. Then pick up the tab for all the SS. And for single pay. Hell, their rich! What could possibly be wrong with that plan?
Are services in larger communities not already stretched to their limits? Parkland Hospital here in Dallas is constantly overloaded serving uninsured and underinsured patients. It seems to me that by forcing all "private" hospitals to accept single-payer-insured patients, the load will be redistributed off of places like Parkland and back onto regional centers closer to the patients who currently migrate to Parkland because it's the only place that will take uninsured patients.
First, they are not nearly as stretched as they will be under a national health care program that forces providers out of business. Which a single source payer will do since these regional providers, under the burden of restrictive fee schedules, over regulated medical procedures and treatments and the "migration back" of these "uninsured" will cause them to collapse.
By the way, a one payer system is not going to eliminate "uninsured" particularly of the illegal alien kind who will continue to come into the country at faster rates than we can put them on the rolls if we so decide to expand health care programs beyond their current scope to a national health care program that pays for all.
In fact, the very idea of putting all 12 million currently in country as well as the 1 million per year that arrive on any health rolls should give everyone pause. Right now, many do not go and seek general health care because they are illegal which, to some degree has kept the real potential burden off the health system. When that is available for one and all, the costs and burden to certain regional facilities will be so great they will likely collapse within a decade or less and not be there any way.
Or, you can stand by and prepare to have taxes of the middle class incrementally raised by more than 3% (current inflation) every year.
Now that will be an economic burden you'll hear fearsome cries about. But, once a national health care program is in place, who will stop it?
Nobody.
"For the record, I'm not a fan of "HillaryCare 2.0." -- liberalrob
There is no 'HillaryCare 2.0' except as a throwaway line for the campaign. HilaryCare 1.0 is still the goal, because that's where the power over others lies. Hillary is all about power for Hillary and Hillary's technocrats.
Back from a delicious dinner of cheeseburgeritos and Diet Coke. Take heart, rugged individualists, I'll probably be dead of heart disease before I can do any real damage.
Speaking of vacuous, did you ever think that it is easier to find cures for erectile dysfunction because it is largely caused by vascular occlusions, which we have already researched and found cures for in relations to heart disease and other artery related conditions?
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a dam. There should be an Apollo-project focus on finding a cure for AIDS. The fact that there doesn't seem to be one yet every night on my teevee I see ads for insomnia and ED drugs is not a glowing testimonial to the free market's priorities. The refusal of Republican moralists to endorse broad-based stem cell research because it offends their ludicrous religious dogmas sickens me. And I've had it up to here and above with corporate interests putting their profits above my welfare and getting away with it, and people saying it's fine and dandy because what's good for business is good for me. Finally I'm tired of people calling me some sort of freak because I consider the welfare and happiness of others as well as my own.
You've spent acres of posting space laying out in mind-numbing detail why you think government intervention in the health care industry has made things worse instead of better. Is your solution to withdraw government intervention completely, and allow the market free reign to establish health care prices based on what the traffic will bear? Do you think HMOs and insurance companies will make decisions on my health care with my best interests in mind, instead of based on charts and graphs of the profitability of providing care to people with my financial profile and risk factors?
Do you have any idea that more money is spent on the research for these diseases than any other medical condition?
No, I do not. And in terms of results that are apparent to me through the popular press, which as a layman is all I have access to and is all I have on which to base my policy preferences (and therefore my voting patterns), results count more than mere dollar figures. If AIDS and cancer research are commanding the highest percentages of research dollars spent, obviously in terms of results it is not enough. It would be one thing if the scientific community were to come out and tell us definitively that cures are impossible; but they have not done this. Add to this my definitive knowledge (because I grew up in the Reagan era) of the Republican war on publicly-sponsored scientific research in all areas except those with military applications, and I cannot help but assume that the deemphasis of government sponsorship of research combined with profit-seeking prioritization of research spending on the part of the private pharmaceutical industry has crippled our research efforts to a large degree. I do not trust the free market to make finding a cure for AIDS or new cancer treatments a top priority. Individual companies may or may not do so but overall the effort will be less than a concerted one.
Your 20-year history in the health care industry (in whatever capacity, from what I can gather you were a consultant of some kind) probably has given you a closer insight into the effects of government intervention in the current system than someone like myself who has to rely on anecdotes and media stories can develop. I don't doubt your accurate reporting of what you personally experienced. But as an outsider I have to say that all of these ills took form in a system thoroughly corrupted and infiltrated by the corporate culture of big insurance companies, who through lobbying of government and bullying of the health care industry have managed to so muddle the entire operation that it's an almost hopeless morass of red tape and half-hearted attempts at regulation. It's time to clean house and start over, this time excluding the profit motive of the private insurance industry and focusing instead on the health care of patients.
Next time you are "on deadline", do us all a favor, and don't bother spewing.
Your smug obnoxious 'analysis' is effete.
And your "I told you so" attitude reeks of being disconnected from reality.
Families that make a hell of a lot more than the Frosts cannot handle catastrophic medical bills.
The system is broken, and the Frosts are a relatively benign example.
I just read this thread, I don't know why but I did.
I just have one question for LiberalRob, do you truely thinl that the government will "focusing instead on the health care of patients" and not just do what the insurance industry does which is to maximize service and minimize costs?
If you believe that line, then there is no arguing with you, and I wish the inmates fun when they are running the asylum.
-John
Has anyone else noticed the "sundowning" effect in this collection of mental masturbations and inane blather? When it gets late, and the well-to-do, blue blood East coasters hit the hay, the comments become empathetic for the plight of the poor in this country.
The rich hate the poor. The rich hate health care for the poor. The rich hate any entitlement program that might give a bit of a boot strap to an indigent person and allow that person to compete for the finite wealth available in this country. The rich want to maintain their fortune at any cost.
The rich are simply selfish kids who never learned to share their toys. As they get older they get slightly more sophisticated. They utilize tax loopholes to increase their wealth and support opportunistic politicians who will in the end create more loopholes.
In essence, the only difference between the Frost's who supposedly "work the system" and a wealthy fat cat who finds creative ways to evade taxation is.......income and assets.
The real issue is that the children of this country deserve health care. They represent the future of this nation. They trust us to care for them. We brought them into this world and now we have an obligation to care for each and every one of them.
Maybe someday it will be a midnight in this country and not just midnight on this blog. And then truly, the meek will inherit the earth.
Rob, there's nothing brave or compassionate about pursuing demonstrable stupid policies simply so you feel that you "care."
It is pure selfishness wrapped in self-righteousness.
There should be an Apollo-project focus on finding a cure for AIDS. The fact that there doesn't seem to be one yet every night on my teevee I see ads for insomnia and ED drugs is not a glowing testimonial to the free market's priorities
exactly how do you think the free market is able to get the money they need to do research into new drugs and treatments? Government funding? They do it by creating largely inexpensive drugs marketable to a wider swath of the populace. These profits go back into R&D for their other programs, including AIDS and Cancer, among the many. Not to mention the many "free samples" that doctors give out to their patients or the charitable foundations and programs funded by these companies.
Further, your aversion to these ads for ED meds are because you don't know why, in fact, it is important to treat ED. It is not, as many surmise, so that men can have more sex just for the sake of having more sex. It is clinically proven that men who are unable to have an erection are highly susceptible to severe depression. In fact, there is a serious rise in mental health diagnosis and costs every year. Over 33% of all men over the age of 50 have erectile dysfunction. That is something like 30 million men.
Not only are they at risk for depression and increasing cost of mental health, it is likely that they suffer from other diseases like vascular disease or enlarged prostates. ED drugs don't just work on vascular problems in the male reproductive system, but also work to increase blood flow in the over all vascular system which, of course, decreases the risk of other catastrophic health issues.
I'm sorry that the marketing approach to men is so offensive. The truth is, that is how the consumers respond. Whatever it takes to improve health and improve the funds available for other research. If you don't like how the ads are portrayed, talk to your fellow men who apparently can't imagine discussing ED for medical reasons because it is too embarrassing, but prefer to imagine it is all about sex because that is a manly topic. Marketing is based on market research into who responds to what. Again, don't blame it on the business, blame it on the consumer. Men. :0
*********************
While you talk about AIDS and Cancer, I talk about cost effective treatments for many other medical conditions. Both are not exclusively mutual. Without one you will not have the funds for the other. In regards to your Apollo comment, I would say that there is more money and more effort being put in to finding cures for this than any Apollo project in history. There are more resources and more people being poured into these programs daily.
I know you want results, but your demand for results are a demand for miracles, as I said before. It cannot be changed just with money. Before we can get results, other research into the ability to manage cells and boost the out put of anti-bodies must be developed and is not that simple. Money doesn't fix everything, knowledge will.
And I've had it up to here and above with corporate interests putting their profits above my welfare and getting away with it, and people saying it's fine and dandy because what's good for business is good for me. Finally I'm tired of people calling me some sort of freak because I consider the welfare and happiness of others as well as my own.
The problem isn't that you care more than "corporate types", it is what you believe the best approach is and who would be most likely to effect what you want. your approach is to give it to the government and hope that they do what you want. As I noted, they won't because they will not have the funds, nor will they have onus based on effected revenue streams, like private industry does, to change course and put together this magic Apollo project.
By the way, when you go to this magic single source payer and eliminate all the competition, giving all the money to the government, you will have given all the power to them to decide what they will or will not do. I've already explained that they have a mandate that forces them to "equitable" (they call it Non-discrimination) distribution of funds. They will no more do this AIDS Apollo project than the private industry. Possibly less.
It would be one thing if the scientific community were to come out and tell us definitively that cures are impossible; but they have not done this.
Of course not. Every day they are making progress in finding out the causes of these diseases as well as how to manipulate cells and use new medicine delivery systems that would go right to these cells to effect these cures.
They aren't going to tell you it is incurable when the potential for a cure is always on the horizon. should they actually announce they have given up on a growing segment of the world population or that we should all be prepared to be infected and die? What kind of panic that would cause?
Besides, they haven't given up and, in fact, their research and development of many drugs have helped many improve their life expectancy and conditions. If they announce they have given up, the funds and other resources that have led to where we are would be gone and so would any advancements.
Add to this my definitive knowledge (because I grew up in the Reagan era) of the Republican war on publicly-sponsored scientific research in all areas except those with military applications, and I cannot help but assume that the deemphasis of government sponsorship of research combined with profit-seeking prioritization of research spending on the part of the private pharmaceutical industry has crippled our research efforts to a large degree.
First, I grew up in the Reagan era too. That characterization of "defunding" of research except for military related programs is patently false. Although, you would probably be horribly surprised to find out some of that "military research" is actually working on treatments for diseases.
Second, the real money for research is not in the hands of the government, but in the hands of private foundations. These foundations, along with profits put into R&D, are what really fuels research, not government funding. Further, as I have explained many times, laws that we have put in place to keep from discriminating against people with disabilities or specific diseases, will keep the government from funding this Apollo project. It can't because it would be breaking the law if it could not provide the same for other diseases or conditions.
However, your aversion to making a profit off of people's illnesses and misfortune (which you wrongly surmise no one else could share because they don't support some alleged non-profit government health program) has clouded the understanding of how, in fact, it is profits that will eventually result in the cure you so eagerly await.
Not only do profits from other drugs go into this research, but the ever increasing population that requires these hoped for treatments and cures along with the huge amount of possible profit from this population is exactly what keeps money flowing into research. The potential for profits will effect the cure.
Government, beyond the laws enforcing non-discrimination, does not have any onus to effect these cures besides "cost effectiveness". Unfortunately, cost effective efforts by the government are normally only attempted when it reaches or terrible tipping point and it is hardly ever towards investing in or creating new and innovative treatments or procedures that are better.
To date, their processes and policies have been to inflict other additional existing tests and procedures to eliminate people from receiving more expensive treatments by qualifying or disqualifying them, not by providing new treatments that will actually effect a cure or expand treatment to other needy recipients.
But as an outsider I have to say that all of these ills took form in a system thoroughly corrupted and infiltrated by the corporate culture of big insurance companies, who through lobbying of government and bullying of the health care industry have managed to so muddle the entire operation that it's an almost hopeless morass of red tape and half-hearted attempts at regulation. It's time to clean house and start over, this time excluding the profit motive of the private insurance industry and focusing instead on the health care of patients.
I disagree with you because I know why these insurance companies have to lobby the government and have tried to explain that. It does roll back to government interference. I can't stress enough how government contracts infiltrate every aspect of health insurance from the contract rates they have to accept to the procedures and policies they have to enforce that creates a very big administration cost.
Payers are lobbying the government because, when congress enacts new regulations, treatments, procedures and fees, by their very agreements with Medicare and Medicaid, private insurances are forced to accept these fees, regulations, treatments and procedures, not just for that population, but for their private commercial accounts as well (under the auspices of non-discrimination; which I am not against, but I have to tell you, the way that regulation was written and enforced reflects upon the entire consumer population and effectively destroys negotiating for better pricing and services).
Of course, they are a profit making industry and yes, they have a priority to have in put into these government policies. If they don't make a profit, they don't exist. They don't exist, private health care insurance disappears.
I know, you think this is good, but it is inherently bad when one knows exactly what working with current government payers do to consumers and the industry. I don't really wish the problems that the elderly and poor have with government funded payer systems on anybody else, most certainly not even them. I certainly cannot agree that expanded government health care would be an improvement.
I just have one question for LiberalRob, do you truely thinl that the government will "focusing instead on the health care of patients" and not just do what the insurance industry does which is to maximize service and minimize costs?
You meant to say "MINIMIZE service and minimize costs." It's all about maximizing PROFITS with them.
Yes, if we elect representatives to Congress and Presidents who care more about getting reelected than pleasing the insurance lobbies. I know you're going to crow triumphantly that Hillary isn't that person and I agree with you. But Romney or Giuliani are even less that person, and in other areas they are far more inimical to my values than even compromised Hillary. So Hillary gets my vote.
they won't because they will not have the funds, nor will they have onus based on effected revenue streams, like private industry does, to change course and put together this magic Apollo project.
No, they have the onus of having to get reelected by the voters, and the revenue stream is the tax dollars we pay. They have the funds. If they bought one less 20 billion dollar F-22 and gave that money to a research facility dedicated to AIDS research I'd call it money well-spent. The problem is not that there is no money. The problem is that the priorities on how that money is spent are out of whack.
Some people are spinning this as Republicans saying that the Frosts should not be covered under SCHIP. That is not the case.
The point here is that SCHIP at present does cover people like the Frosts. Do we really need to expand it in order to cover people even higher up the income scale? That is what should be debated here.
Moreover, in the case of children, I'm perfectly content to bias the system towards including too many undeserving children
Many of the people covered by SCHIP are adults. But the logic of your statement applies eqaully well to them.
"Moreover, in the case of adults, I'm perfectly content to bias the system towards including too many undeserving adults."
You have already bought into the idea of universal government provided healthcare. The rest is details.
The S-CHIP debate is about health care for POOR KIDS.
No, it's not. SCHIP currently covers people who are not kids and are not poor. The debate is over whether it needs to be expanded to cover even more people who are not kids and are not poor.
It's curious. On the one hand we have faith that government can defend the country but on the other hand we believe government is cannot pay for healthcare. Why?
What makes the government good at one and not the other? The logical extension of the rights fear of government is to disband the arm services and let each citizen defend his own life because the government simply cannot be trust to protect the individual from external threats.
This was the best post of yours I have ever read (except for the reference to a Cubs World Series party) and I hope you will keep focusing on all of these points in the future.
crossfader:
The difference (as I perceive it) is that as an individual, I'm not capable of singlehandedly defending the country, but I am capable of providing for my (and my family's) health care.
An individual's health care lies much closer to the food, clothing, shelter end of the spectrum than the national defense, interstate highway system end, wouldn't you agree?
If so, let me turn your question around. If you believe the government should provide everyone's health care, why shouldn't it also provide everyone's food, clothing and shelter? Would that be a good idea?
I have held a high respect for the Atlantic for many decades. I especially recall an Atlantic article published in the early 1980's on Iraq. It should have been mandatory reading for anyone considering invading Iraq in 2003. Great informative reporting ahead of its time.
Your article, however, is an ill-written piece. By your own admission, "I'm on deadline, so I haven't been following the ephemera of S-Chip as closely as I might." I will not spend my time reading such lazy tripe that merely attempts to hype and turn on emotions.
The reaction to the Graeme Frost radio address, demands an informed discussion on politics and the internet.
I had to love the "on deadline" crack. It was the writer's way of distancing herself from her own article. What cheap cowardice! Oh well, I see that the Wall Street Journal has abandoned the nutcase fringe, so I suppose it will be safe for Megan McArdle to write a mea culpa.
http://tinyurl.com/2xhuww
"On the one hand we have faith that government can defend the country but on the other hand we believe government is [sic] cannot pay for healthcare. Why?"
I actually know the answer to this one: the Laffer curve.
We can afford the military. We can't afford universal health care. If we tried we'd get eaten alive, as happened with Tenncare.
Why don't you universal health care advocates see if you can get it working in one of the states first then give us a call?
And while we're at it can a legal expert tell me if a Federal system can get lawyered into bankruptcy with consent decrees as state systems are prone to? Or are Federal programs immune to that particular tactic?