The arrogance of this man. Because he's the president he's somehow more important? Pompous ass. I watched a few minutes of this dog and pony show and had to turn it. The only part I saw was Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn get two, maybe three, minutes to speak then some guy from California get what had to be ten minutes to ramble on. What the hell? Not sure why then even did this stupid thing. The plan Obama wants is going to get rammed trough. It was a farce. And how did this issue become the most important issue in America? Don't we have more pressing things to deal with?
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Chris said: And how did this issue become the most important issue in America? Don't we have more pressing things to deal with?
Not if you’re concerned about the deficit and the growing national debt. The biggest threat to our nation’s balance sheet is the skyrocketing cost of health care. If we do nothing to slow these skyrocketing costs, we will eventually be spending more on Medicare and Medicaid than every other government program combined. Our health care problem is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close.
http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=328
What do you think is more pressing than this, Chris?
Stopping terrorists from killing innocent people is more important than health care, at least it is for me, and I'm not sure how the government telling us we have to have health insurance will help that.
You can’t stop terrorists but you can mitigate the threat and I agree it’s important. But you post way more about government spending on your blog than you do about fighting terrorism so it must be important to you. Look at the CBO’s numbers in the link I provided above. The government spends more on health care than anything else and it’s only going to get worse unless we do something.
So if you’re worried about government spending then tell me what’s more important than controlling rising health care costs and reforming entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid?
You can stop terrorists. When you see them planting a bomb, instead of waiting for permission you just kill them. Anyway, the War On Terror and the government spending us into the toilet are both important, but don't misconstrue my talking more about the government as me thinking it's more important that fighting terrorism. It's not. And you can curtail government spending without forcing a health care plan that people don't want. www.cagw.org has all kinds of things the government wastes our money on.
I didn’t say government spending was more important to you than stopping terrorists I just said it must be important to you (however you prioritize it) and while wasteful government discretionary spending needs to be addressed it doesn’t come close to what we spend on entitlements – especially Medicare and Medicaid. That’s like complaining about spending all your pocket change and ignoring your credit card bill.
Okay, here's what I think. And before I do that I need to preface it with this. As I've stated before, I'm not the smartest person out there. I don't know all the details about this topic, though I really should. I go only by my feelings. The price of health care is too high. There's no denying that. I won't say how much my plan is, but it's way too high and it goes up all the time. But I don't believe government getting involved is the solution. Government intrusion tends to make things worse. Now, again, I don't know all the details, but tort reform sounds like a pretty good plan. Putting a cap on how much someone can sue for sort of makes sense to me. There's got to be some way for insurance companies to lower costs without the government stepping in. I don't have the solution, but my heart tells me that the things the government is doing isn't the right way.
The price of healthcare is too high. The price inflation is caused by govt policy to a very large extent. Federal price controls on healthcare will not work. This has been tried many times before and it has always failed. Price controls in the
1930's made the Great Depression drag on for several more years. Price controls in healthcare will lead to higher costs and lower quality care. Something must be done to improve access and costs of our healthcare delivery system. The current reforms being considered fall well short of achieving any meaningful reform and will likely make things even worse. They could even lead to rationing. Healthcare reform should NOT come from the federal govt. The feds should get out of the way. All federal regulations need to be revamped and the industry must be forced to compete again. Insurance companies have a govt mandated monopoly. You can't buy insurance across state lines and the insurance companies are protected by the federal govt. Get the feds out of this. They made a mess of it already. Let the states regulate healthcare. Allow them to try different things. Heck, maybe even give that crazy free market a try. We have not had a free market in healthcare for about 60 years.
Chris said: Government intrusion tends to make things worse. Now, again, I don't know all the details, but tort reform sounds like a pretty good plan.
Why is government intrusion into tort reform OK when you say government intrusion makes things worse?
I actually think some tort reform makes sense but this is not the primary reason health care is so expensive. Even the most optimistic estimates from the CBO put tort reform savings at $54 billion over the next decade – that’s just a fraction of the overall spending on health care.
Chris said: There's got to be some way for insurance companies to lower costs without the government stepping in.
Wishing for things to get better and ignoring the problem doesn’t usually work. I could at least respect your position, Chris, if you could make the case that the plan the Democrats have proposed is worse than doing nothing. Given what I’ve read I don’t think that’s true.
SSG E, allowing unrestricted competition across state lines would lead to a race to the bottom. The states with the weakest regulations (for example, those that allow insurance companies to deny coverage to victims of domestic violence) would set the standards for the nation as a whole.
I thought this analysis from Ezra Klein was useful:
“Selling insurance across state lines doesn't increase competition between insurers, it decreases standards.
…
The major step forward for competition is the exchanges (a Republican idea which the Democrats incorporated into their bill), which have regulators making sure the insurance is good enough to deserve the name; which allow consumers to rate the plans; which force the plans to offer standardized information so they easy to compare; which provide a large numbers of plans to choose from; which makes it easier to shop for your insurance in one place; and so on.”
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/02/competition_is_important_for_h.html
Chris and SSG E you both complain about government spending but the kind of spending you talk about is trivial compared to what the government spends on health care. The issue isn’t weather the government should get involved – that shipped has sailed. It’s already involved – deeply involved. The issue is...what do we do now?
"Selling insurance across state lines doesn't increase competition between insurers, it decreases standards."
Right, because Ezra Klein says so.
How about we give it a try anyway, just in case Ezra Klein is wrong.
We can sell insurance across state lines AND protect people with preexisting conditions. Competition NEVER decreases standards. It will increase quality, lower costs, and with proper regulation at STATE levels protect the needs of those individuals who are uninsured or have preexisting conditions.
"The issue isn’t weather the government should get involved – that shipped has sailed. It’s already involved – deeply involved. The issue is...what do we do now?'
Exactly! The govt is the problem! Get them out of it and stop letting them create more messes. The feds cannot fix this. Centralized planning an economy or healthcare system always fails. The free market with sensible state and local regulation are what needs to fix this mess that was created by federal involvement in the healthcare markets.
SSG E said: Right, because Ezra Klein says so. How about we give it a try anyway, just in case Ezra Klein is wrong.
We have given it a try. It's exactly what happened in the credit card market, and it's why a bipartisan majority voted to impose new federal regulations on credit card companies last year. Allowing credit card companies to sell across state lines didn’t result in competition driven by consumers, but a regulatory competition to have the laxest regulations so you would get the most credit card jobs in your state.
You can read about it here:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/02/selling_insurance_across_state.html
As the President stated even though this idea has some problems we should consider it. But it should come with a concession from the Republicans. Do you agree?
Get them out of it and stop letting them create more messes.
Are you saying we should end Medicare and Medicaid all together?
The free market with sensible state and local regulation are what needs to fix this mess that was created by federal involvement in the healthcare markets.
What is the point in having state and local regulations if I live in one state but can buy insurance from another?
Credit cards are not health insurance. Credit cards are a scam cooked up when America decided it was to become a nation of consumers rather than a nation of producers. That is a sad chapter of another long story.
Medicaid and medicare are unsustainable. At some point the gravy train must end. We can either do it now and gradually allow people to get off the entitlements, or we keep trying to prop it up and we all eventually crash.
For interstate insurance transactions we can still have sensible regulations. Since the Constitution allows the federal govt to regulate interstate commerce, the feds would also have to implement some sensible regulations. My state can still regulate what car insurance I buy even if I buy it out of state. I don't really see why we can't have state and local regulation and interstate insurance markets.
I do enjoy our chats. I think we agree on more than either of us would be willing to admit. Ben Franklin wrote in his autobiography: "By the collision of different sentiments, sparks of truth strike out and political light is obtained."
I think you and I could sit down and figure out this healthcare mess better than the clowns in Washington. I'm telling you that there is no trusting these politicians. Until some fundamental change occurs and we have principled leaders again we can't let them pass anything. These people are not honest, and it's both parties.
I enjoy our discussions too. Philosophically we may have our differences but as Aristotle reportedly said: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
I don’t think we have to eliminate Medicare and Medicaid to fix it. But you are correct that we will have to make some tough choices – ones that short term politics tends to discourage. Ironically, any cost cutting measures the Democrats have proposed have been demonized by Republicans as “death panels” and “pulling the plug on Grandma.” I have no doubt the same will happen if Republicans take power and try to reform entitlements.
That’s why I don’t think we can afford to wait. This is the closest we will come for probably a very long time to making some big changes. If HCR is unable to bend the cost curve and puts our government even further into debt than it would have been without reform I will willingly admit it and consider other options. But elections have consequences. I voted for a Republican administration over eight years ago and it was a disaster. I am willing to give this administration a chance.
The problem is we can't keep playing these shell games anymore. The Obama admin. has already been a disaster for this country. I am not willing to give him more time. He is surrounded by questionable characters giving him terrible advice. He is beholden to extreme far left special interests and unions. The problem with the federal govt is that it is too big and too powerful. Obama wants to make it bigger and more powerful. If we had a smaller govt that was limited in its scope and power by the Constitution (like the govt our Founders intended) it wouldn't matter so much who was president. If the govt is limited then they cannot screw up too much of the country. The damage they do is limited. If the govt is large and omnipotent they can screw everything up, and the damage done will be catastrophic. That is why it has become my position to oppose all expansionist govt policies, no matter who comes up with them.
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