Via:
Sen. Bayh: I may filibuster health care bill too if it’s not “fiscally responsible.” The public option itself, however, doesn’t seem to be a sticking point for him.
At least he’s consistent. After all, he filibustered the Iraq War because it wasn’t fiscally responsible. . . . oh, wait. Blue Dogs who didn’t bat an eye over paying for the war in Iraq should, at a minimum, have to explain why helping people not die for lack of health care requires penny pinching where blowing up a toothless dictator half a world away did not.
Dems (and some GOP’ers) also aren’t having to explain why their thousands of insurance mandates are a good idea, driving up the cost of insurance and depriving people of health insurance coverage (if not health care), messing up the risk pool, and so on. And, to Senator Bayh’s point, such reforms would be “fiscally responsible”.
Am I reading you correctly? “Messing up the risk pool” ?? I guess you mean including people who do or probably will need coverage. I am pretty sure the people who say this have perfect health and always will, just like every member of their own family and circle of friends.
Excuse me, insurance is supposed to be used, what else is it for? Oh, I forgot, it’s for skimming premiums to pay overhead and making exorbitant profits.
Mary, sorry not to have been clearer: all sorts of people– but especially healthier people– now have a very strong incentive to stay out, given the exorbitant cost of subsidized and regulated insurance…
Eric,
I don’t think you understand the plight of people who “mess up the risk pool”. I have a relative, very well educated and a very productive member of society doing a very important job every day that requires high intelligence and skills level. Makes a good, but not great, salary. Pays taxes, volunteers in the community. Has a pre-existing medical situation, needs daily medication to stay alive and always will. Without insurance the medications total $5000 or more per month. The terror is not having insurance. What are people like this supposed do if they are denied insurance? Quit working and go on Medicaid? Run a bake sale? Just die? I’m sure she regrets messing up the risk pool.
Mary, I’m sorry that I’m not being clearer. Let me try again! ;-)
I’m intending the phrase “messing up the risk pool” to go the other direction– keeping healthier people out of insurance, not unhealthier people. This goes back to claims/comments Doug has made about how govt insurance would expand coverage and lower premiums…
To your point, pre-existing conditions (PEC) are a horrible problem within the status quo. In the other thread (Health Care Opt Out), I’ve mentioned John Cochrane’s innovation that would transform insurance to take care of PECs from an insurance standpoint. But at most, the current reform proposals only band-aid the PEC problem– by trying to force insurers to cover PECs. This would help those with PECs, but would also drive up insurance rates further. Unfortunately, this works against the policy goals of increasing access to health care (for others) and reducing health insurance costs.
Why does this have to be so complicated? We are building complexities on top of a complex system when what SHOULD be done is a ripping apart of the system and a rebuild from the ground up.
Let’s get rid of the middle-men. All it does is take money away from the system and spend it, at best, on paperwork and bureaucracy. At worst, its going into the pockets of the CEO’s of insurance companies.
We need a non-profit healthcare system. Doctors should be paid salaries. Nurses (where most of the real healthcare actually happens) need to be paid more in line with their skills and given more responsibility. We need research based medicine so we aren’t throwing away 1/3rd of our medical dollars on pointless tests and treatments. Instead of encouraging the growth of these “mega hospital complexes” like we have in Fort Wayne we need to move BACK to having smaller community hospitals again. Some serious thought needs to be given to big pharma, although I don’t know what needs to be done there. (perhaps more government funded R&D that goes into the public domain instead of patents)
Point is, I have no confidence in the “new” system because not only does it not do enough, I don’t think its going to make things any easier, cheaper, or better because its just layering another layer of manure on a field already full of manure.
Sadly, to actually get that to happen in our political age, we have to completely reform campaign finance to get big medicine and big insurance out of the congress. Then we have to get the current crop of congresspeople OUT, preferably with some term limits to further reduce corruption.
In summary: we’re screwed. There is no way that this is going to be fixed until there are some really hard decisions made – not just politically beneficial ones.
With a move toward traditional insurance (coverage of rare, catastrophic events), we get what you’re asking: far less activity by middle-men. (Imagine what our experience with car insurance [companies] would look like if it covered oil changes, door dings, etc.)
Nurses should be de-regulated– a separate and modest but significant issue.
Tort reform would tweak malpractice claims/insurance, but would significantly reduce defensive medicine. Wasteful testing would further decrease if consumers faced something closer to the true cost of the services provided.
We don’t know what hospitals would look like, but there would not be “certificates of need” restricting competition for mega-hospitals.
Dave, the politically beneficial decision would be to nationalize health care. People like Mary would be happy because her relative would be cared for. Healthy people would be extended the promise of care in their time of need.
The economy would tank. But that would happen later. In the short term where virtually all political decisions live, the people would broadly be happy, and Evan Bayh would be easily re-elected.