Comments on: Dear President Obama…

By: Steve Piontek

Steve Piontek — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:34:48 +0000

Dear Konrad,
Good to know that even though you cancelled your subscription you’re still checking in.
I might remind you that there’s still a lot of time between now and November of 2010, not to mention 2012. So don’t count your smiles before you’re sure you’ve got something to smile about. Otherwise, it’s just weird.
Steve

By: Konrad Kober

Konrad Kober — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:25:20 +0000

There, you’ve admitted it in your own column, “….Case in point: Health care reform. I’ll be damned if I know—and I cover it!—…”. This is why I cancelled my subscription to this so-called trade publication.
Please, please, please, keep advising Obama with his super majority that his strategy should be to keep attacking the Republicans as the reason why he can’t get anything done. I’ll just sit back & smile in November ‘10 & ‘12.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:07:51 +0000

James sums it up best. It is nothing more than a power grab by Washington bureaucrats. They are trying to persuade us (private citizens) to give up our liberty and responsibility in order to have someone else guarantee our peace and safety. If passed THERE WILL BE: 1. Longer waits to see Dr.s (read weeks, months & worse depending on service needed, 2. Rationed care (maybe you don’t like Sarah Palin’s term “death panels” but it will amount to the same thing), 3. Higher taxes for all (you may ‘know’ the oft repeated phrase how we all work until sometime in April or May to earn enough to cover our taxes, expect this to get stretched out a few more months).

By: James

James — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:23:47 +0000

Steve:
There are a number of provisions in both the House and Senate bills that will effectively make the for-profit insurance world non-competitive. The explicit, stated goal of the President and Congressional leaders is to have a government run system. What makes any of these people, particularly the President who has never had a job in the private sector (excepting a very short stint with a law firm and some part-time law school thing), qualified to determine what is best for me?
What I do not get is why we have to destroy a system in which more than 80% are relatively satisfied in order to deal with the hard cases. It makes no sense other than as a government power grab. What is being proposed will destroy our current system.
Also, Kate, Steve, et al – please answer me this: If this is such a crisis and “people are going bankrupt and dying” then why do we wait four years before it is implemented? I will answer – to hide the real cost and because it is a government power grab.

By: Kate

Kate — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:11:23 +0000

(You can read and re-read things ten times and not see a misspeak in it until after you’ve hit “Submit.”) So I’ll rephrase my last sentence directly above.

I have some principles, too, and turning a blind eye to people being ruined to bolster the health insurance industry just isn’t one of them.

Time to don my Mao cap and head home.

By: Kate

Kate — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:56:49 +0000

In a sense, I have no dog in this fight personally. I’m employed, have coverage, and, as an early retiree from another job, would have it again even if I lost the job I presently have.

I do have a family and friends, however, and I’m concerned that with one severe (or even one not-so-severe) illness or condition, any of them could find themselves uncovered and in deep financial distress for no fault of their own.

Shawn, you seem to feel that universal health coverage would provide no solution. That said, can you demonstrate that people in, say, France, or Germany, or Switzerland are losing their life savings to medical bills? And yet those countries spend far less than we on medical care per capita. And they’re not beating down our doors to trade what they have for what we have.

I strongly suspect that the images conjured up by those who think their ox is about to get gored here is that of scores of sick people sitting on dirty benches in dreary, noisy clinic hallways and having to rub elbows with the huddled masses. None of those who would depict universal health care this way want to get into the fact that there’s a fair amount of that in this country going on right now in emergency rooms.

I still want anyone who feels that there are high principles at stake here, including upholding the Constitution (huh?), to show me how they would persuade people who have worked hard for years and then lose insurance and get sick that we can’t succumb to “emotionalism” and “there’s a Constitution to be upheld” and dadgum it, we can’t “dismantle an entire industry” “just because you’re sick!” That’s a scene I’d like to see put up on YouTube. Maybe Harry and Louise could star in it, sitting once again at their kitchen table.

If the solution involved taking the health insurance industry totally out of the picture, that would gore my ox more than you know. And while I’m not sure it would be the worst thing in the world, I’m comfortable with the industry having a role. I’d like that role to be lobbyist-free, gotta admit. Preexisting conditions-free. For starters. I have a family I care about, and frankly, I’ve seen little or nothing (other than some Madison Avenue stuff) that suggests the health insurance industry currently has my family’s welfare anywhere on its radar screen except to collect premiums and pay as few claims as is humanly possible. I have some principles, too, and seeing to it that good people aren’t ruined to bolster the health insurance industry just isn’t one of them.

By: Steve Piontek

Steve Piontek — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:32:47 +0000

Walter,
Exactly what freedoms are you relinquishing in the straw man situation you set up with the spectre of a centralized government administering the health care system. Last I heard in both the House and Senate plans the health insurance business had a nice healthy role, with the promise of lots of new customers. If you want to automatically go to Apocalypse Now over this then I think you have to admit that’s what you’re doing. It’s you that is jumping to the conclusion that either one of these bills is going to lead to a government takeover. And because you say it’s so doesn’t make it so.
Steve

By: Walter Manning

Walter Manning — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:19:14 +0000

Steve, I guess I’m a little confused. Because we are a civilized society we relinquish our freedoms to a stronger centralized government who will administer a health care system that will, as Kate wants, protect us from any unfortunate circumstances that might come up. And, if I disagree, it means I’m thinking of only of myself. As Bill Buckley once said, “that’s socialist baby talk”.

As anybody considered restricting the trial lawyers, and letting the market place work? It’s done well in just about every other facet in our lives. And another thing, Kate brought up how the statistics on life expectancy, quality of care, etc. compared to countries who have adopted Socialized Medicine. I believe if you throw out the murders, the U.S. system beats them all. There system works great, just don’t get sick, like cancer or some other trivial ailment.

By: Steve Piontek

Steve Piontek — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:54:35 +0000

Shawn,
It doesn’t seem to me that Kate is the one who is ‘emotionalizing.’ Your overly passionate defense of your right to fail or succeed seems beside the point in the context of health care reform. As a civilized society it seems to me that we have a responsibility to just more than ourselves. Otherwise, what does the concept of ‘America’ mean? If it only means me, myself and I, then I think we’ve lost the game.
Steve

By: John

John — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:39:26 +0000

Medicare does not control the lives of the seniors who get their health care through it. Seniors LOVE it. This idea that the federal gov’t is going to tell you who your doctor is, and that doctor won’t treat you until a gov’t bureaucrat signs off, is a straw man fiction. It doesn’t work that way in Medicare today.
What Medicare does is collect a small income tax to pay for hospitalization coverage (part A) and a means-tested premium to pay for physician services (part B). You can opt out of A&B for managed care (part C). You can pay a small premium and get prescription drug coverage that limits your out-of-pocket for drugs to about $3500/yr (part D). These programs are all administered by the health insurance industry, not the federal government.
Fed Gov’t is merely the funding mechanism for Medicare, and they do it by basically gathering all seniors into one giant group rather than forcing insurers to avoid high risks to protect affordability for their insureds. Insurers didn’t want to have these seniors, pre-Medicare, but insurers love making money administering Medicare for these seniors.
It is only for seniors because most Americans can be organized into groups by employer-based groups, and because the difference in expected cost of care varies so widely for seniors.
Groups are efficient because a population has a predictable health care expense, while individuals are expensive because of moral hazard anti-selection. Only those who expect large expenses will sign up.
National health care is just organizing all of us into one giant group.

Health care isn’t like flat-screen tv’s, where we ration them based upon ability to pay. It is illegal for hospitals to refuse to treat people based upon ability to pay. That’s what makes health care special. When we don’t have groups, needy people get care anyway, and the cost is passed along to those who are part of groups. Unless we are going to change the law to refuse health care based upon ability to pay, we need to face up to the fact that we (the covered) pay for it one way or another.

Simplest, lowest-cost way to do it is to organize all Americans into one giant group, and let insurers continue to administer it just like insurers do today for Medicare.

The other problem with expecting everyone to save and spend their own money for all their own health care is that if everyone saved $8000 per year, most people wouldn’t actually use the money – it would leave the consumption economy and sit in savings – which is not good for economic development. The really sick people would blow through their $8000 in no time, and become impoverished even though they ‘did the right thing’ by saving for their expenses like we expect them to save towards a flat-screen tv.