There doesn’t seem to be any point in my pretending not to be thrilled by the historic House vote that sent health care reform legislation to President Obama.
The victory is even more astounding when you consider that just a few short weeks ago health care reform was being pronounced dead upon the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, an event that denied Democrats the magic 60 votes they needed to get anything done in the dysfunctional Senate.
Credit for this amazing revivification must go to President Obama for finally—finally!–making an all-out push to get his signature issue passed into law. Part of the reason that this took more than a year of agonizing twists and turns is that the President was too reticent for far too long. Yet in the end, he can take pride in the historic victory.
Credit must equally go, however, to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who pulled off a feat that was deemed impossible—getting the House to ratify the Senate version of health care reform.
Despite the factionalization of Democrats in the House, Speaker Pelosi was able to make it happen. Bravo, Madame Speaker. Somehow your persuasiveness and doggedness did not allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good.
It is also so refreshing and even inspiring to see that in the end demagoguery and malicious falsehoods did not triumph. We shouldn’t expect that the braying from the GOP will stop any time soon, however. They see political gold in disseminating smears about the bill, but time will tell.
What this shows is that the President and Democrats need to continue pressing their story and the benefits of this bill for millions and millions of Americans.
I find it interesting that while the President used the insurance companies as whipping boys in the last stretch of his campaign to get the bill passed, those same insurers didn’t say ‘To hell with it.’ They protested the ‘vilification,’ all right, but somehow were able to keep focused on the balm of millions of new customers amid the public lashings.
This is by no means the radical bill that the right would have you believe. This is no government takeover of health care. If it was, there would be no place for private insurers in it. A government takeover would be something like Medicare for all and this legislation doesn’t even come close to that.
This bill may not be perfect but it goes a long way toward eliminating the stain of having America be the only major democracy in the world whose citizens were not guaranteed health coverage. And for that, we can hold our heads higher.
Tags: health care reform, legislation, opinion, politics
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Mr. Piontek:
The same DAY it was signed into law, 11 state Attorneys General filed suit to stop it.
Does that mean anything? These A’s G are elected in some states and are appointed by the Governor in others. I find it extremely difficult to believe that all 11 are oppositionists, and that their 11 bosses – the aforemwntioed governors – are simply right wing nuts.
Yet that’s what we’ll hear, isn’t it?
Y’all plannin’ on comin’ to visit us in the Republic of Texas?
Joe,
Does it mean anything that all 11 AGs and their governors are Republicans? I have to say it makes me a little skeptical about their motives.
As for your kind invitation to visit the Republic of Texas, as much as I love the Lone Star State, I think we’d both be more comfortable with me visiting the People’s Republic of Massachusetts.
Cheers.
Steve
Typical Democrat. All the undercover deals to get something passed that the majority of the citizens did not want in this version. Yes healthcare needs to be fixed but not to give to all including illegals and those who will not work, Obama wins again for his people.
It doesn’t take much in the way of foresight to see that ultimately there IS no place for private insurers in the FUTURE of American healthcare.
Only government-approved, government-regulated health care carriers which meet the government-generated mandates and coverage requirements will be allowed to participate in the government-controlled and promulgated exchanges and website.
Furthermore, it has already been postulated by some within the administration, specifically Lawrence Summers and Peter Orzag, that since the government will control the exchanges, and have customer service personnel available to “assist” consumers, the role of independent health insurance agents will be almost superfluous and therefore any commissions we earn should be reduced drastically to reflect the true worth of the services we provide.
I’m assuming that you HAVE read the bill and fixes, as I have. I find in the bill a gradual, creeping government takeover of our healthcare system, not by mandate, but by means of regulatory and administrative fiat in the future by the multitude of regulatory commissions and boards established by the bill.
I believe that we have needed healthcare and healthcare insurance reform in this country for years. I believe that pre-existing condition limitations should not exist. I believe that most doctors DO practice defensive medicine, leading to the rapid escalation of medical costs. I believe that rescission of insurance should only be allowed when CLEAR evidence of fraud exists. I do NOT believe that illegal immigrants should be eligible for participation in our healthcare system in ANY way. I do believe that ALL our citizens need to be provided a minimum standard level of medical coverage. I do NOT believe that the Federal government has a Constitutional right to mandate that I purchase ANYTHING. However I do not believe this law addresses almost any of these issues in a way that is sustainable and fiscally sound.
I agree that we should not allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good, but with the passage of this bill into law, we have attempted to fix a system part of which was not broken.
Yesterday the GOP via John Cornyn started backing away from a total, full frontal assault on HCR. Hmmm, that didn’t take long.
Seems they noticed their constituents aren’t all that wild about things like preexisting conditions and doughnut holes. And that’s just for starters. That may come as a shock to some here, of course.
By the time they run through the list of things people actually like about HCR, there may not be much left for them to go after. And then when the Democrats actually start pointing out how much the Massachusetts model, courtesy of Mitt Romney, is mimicked in the new legislation, it will be fascinating to watch them try to weasel out of that one.
Of course, they’ll say they always were in favor of reform, but I wonder how they’ll answer the question of why they didn’t achieve it when they had the chance.
Of course, the Roberts court may be their ace in the hole. And they can always keep encouraging the Tea Partiers and the folks who like to throw bricks through Democratic offices or spit on Congressmen in the halls of the Capitol.
I suggest ringing up your commodities brokers and seeing about investing in corn futures. There’s going to be a lot of it being popped and eaten over the next few months.
Steve,
This bill has nothing to do with lowering the cost of Health Care or reform in it. We need reform and the government needs get out of the way. You are correct that Insurance Companies became the target and it will distroy them in the future! Have you considered what this going to do to the job market. When companies cut back or stop advertising in your magainze. If you knew anything about economics and how companies make a profit you would not be so excited. If this was such a great bill the President and the Democrates would not need to continue to sell this bill.
You have the ability to put your thoughts to pen so you should have no worries!
It’s amazing to me that the people on the right who object to the bill haven’t been screaming about how Medicare turns us into a socialist hellhole. The people love Medicare; the people would love Medicare for all; this is far short of that.
Think Medicare is a gov’t take-over of health care? There a place for health insurers in Medicare. Who paid the first Medicare reimbursement? Not the federal gov’t. Aetna. Today, private health insurers sell Medigap coverage for Parts A & B, they compete with Medicare through Part C (private insurance alternative to A&B), and they sell Part D prescription drug coverage.
Medicare is the default public option for the elderly and disabled, but insurers are in the market with competitive products to keep the gov’t plan honest and to drive innovation and efficiency. Sounds like a sensible system.
If you love your current insurance with its pre-existing conditions limitations, its rescissions, and its annual and lifetime benefit caps, you must not have ever been seriously ill.
30,000 people die in America every year for lack of health coverage. So it seems the right’s position is that we don’t blink at spending $1Trillion to kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people just for living in a country that we purposely (but inaccurately) blame for the death of 3,500 people, but we can’t possibly afford to spend anything to prevent needless suffering and death here at home.
When you spend money on health care at home, that money is paid to Americans to make the lives of other Americans better. When you spend money to destroy and kill overseas, that money is poured down the drain and all you get is millions of people angry at Americans and the need for them to spend more oil revenue on rebuilding. It’s just bad economics.
Yes! is the new Cha-Ching!
Steve Piontek has exposed himself and National Underwriter as shills for the corporate healthcare industry and its insurance ancillaries.
What the Democrats have accomplished is this: they have solved the accounts receivable problem for medical and insurance industry.
Think: When did the idea of using a health care plan to pay medical bills become popular? During the Depression. Hospitals and doctors organized to offer pre-paid health care plans in order to solve the problem of unpaid bills (e.g., Blue Cross and Blue Shield).
“. . . from the beginning, the industry was [Obama's] ally because he set out to solve its biggest problem—which is not the same as America’s biggest problem,” writes Holman Jenkins Jr in the Wall Street Journal (Now, Can We Have Health-Care Reform?, 3-24-2010). “Once everyone is required by government mandate to buy insurance,” Holman continues, “the industry’s survival is no longer threatened: It can just pass its skyrocketing costs along to customers. Once customers can no longer refuse to buy the industry’s product, the problem of costs won’t be fixed, but it no longer is the insurance industry’s problem.”
Read Holman’s article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703621104575139732486806838.html?mod=rss_Today%27s_Most_Popular
Also see: http://benefitsbubble.blogspot.com/2009/06/heading-into-situation-none-of-us-want.html
Thank you, Isabel, for a giving me a really hearty belly laugh in calling me a ’shill’ for the corporate healthcare industry. Perhaps you are new to the blog and my columns and so have not read the frequent excoriations that I have experienced from readers who think that being a shill for the industry is exactly what I should be and are mad because I’m not.
It simply proves that when you put something out for public consumption you open yourself to any number of interpretations. But those interpretations depend on where the reader is coming from.
Steve
I read your column regularly Steve.
You are not as balanced as you think you are.
First – Both sides D and R seem to agree that this is only the beginning. HCR as it stands under this bill cannot be sustained. We have to go in one direction (repeal and replace with a more logical market-based solution) or the other (single payor).
The only question is who will prevail when this interim monstrosity falls apart at the seams. When competition REDUCES as companies drop from the market, rates INCREASE even faster, increased FINANCIAL INSTABILITY of insurance companies occur (too big to fail perhaps?), will the leaders (whoever is in Congress and WH then) recognize that the problem was this law, or will they see it as evidence that the insurance companies are still evil, have not learned their lesson, and so they must take further steps? If it is the latter, please be honest and just push for single payor govt takeover – don’t insult us with public options which are even more nonsensical.
If you are giddy today because you think single payor is the solution, then you are absolutely right to celebrate because this law takes us one step closer to that. But if you are celebrating because you think this bill will do good things (increase competition, reduce healthcare costs, deficit reduction, etc), then you are going to be unpleasantly disappointed.
And John – Quit with the “30,000 people die every year because of lack of healthcare” nonsense. Those are not facts – those are demogogic talking points. You can’t out of one side of your mouth claim that it won’t cost much to insure the 31 million because we are already providing healthcare in the emergency rooms, etc, and then out of the other side claim that all these people are dying in the streets because of lack of healthcare. I can just as easily nonsensically claim as fact that 30,000 people will die because our economy is going to go down the tubes because of this or because the death panels are secretly being formed as we speak.
All we really can say is that some people may get better care which might prevent (or more accurately delay – I am an actuary after all) deaths. But by the same token, rising debt, inflation that it causes, unemployment, care rationed and decisions made even more by third parties, may also cause deaths. You like to think that I don’t care that people are suffering/dying, but it just so happens that I think the latter will cause more suffering/dying than the former.
Finally, yes medicare (along with SS, the post office, et al) is a “hellhole” or more like a “black hole”. To claim that many on the right don’t say so just proves you aren’t listening (see Paul Ryan for example).
I’M WITH YOU STEVE! WHAT’S NOT TO LIKE?
Car insurance reform must be next… Why should people with repeated violations, accidents and DUI convictions be discriminated against?
Then there’s life insurance reform… Why shouldn’t someone with pancreatic cancer diagnosis be able to get a seven figure life policy? Their family needs protection, too. I’m not saying they should get preferred rates. But preferred rates in themselves mean that anyone not paying preferred rates is being discriminated against.
On to credit reform… People shouldn’t be discriminated against because of bankruptcies or slow payment history and except for the recent problem in the real estate market there’s no reason people who can’t afford half-million dollar homes should be prevented from buying them just because they don’t have enough income.
I’m looking forward to everyone being covered including visitors to our great country, legal or not. We’ll all pay lower premiums and I won’t have to worry about the costs of injuries as I engage in skiing and MMA well into my later years. My little blue pills will be free. It’s a wonderful brave new world! We can do this! As Congressman Alcee Hastings said the other day, “We make up the rules as we go along.” See how easy it is? What an inspiration Congressman Hastings is! An impeached judge can get elected as a Democrat to Congress and help his party make up rules as they go along. Soon we’ll be as progressive a Venezuela.
Chuck, if you don’t give a damn about the care that the uninsured get, that’s great. Just recognize that it’s a minority opinion.
Americans decided long ago that we would sacrafice a little individual liberty (taxes, mandates) in order to (a) pave the roads, (b) provide public education to our children, (c) have a standing military to defend our country, (d) police the street, (e) provide for a minimal income for seniors, and (f) provide health care to seniors and the poor. No serious politicians on the right are trying to undo these public programs because the vast majority of Americans understand that our society is better off as a result of them.
That’s just great that you’d rather live in an anarchy where you could make you own decisions about how those services will be purchased by you and yours, but those of us who choose to live in a society governed by the rule of law have won this most recent election and we’re going to draw the line between what problems we can address individually and what we must address collectively according to the principles and plans discussed in that election. Extending health care to the uninsured and eliminating all the heartless treatment of the sick that results from a voluntary health care insurance system was a political platform for which we’ve already had a referendum. You lost, so get over it.
John – Keep up with the demagogy, demonizing, strawman arguments, and arrogance. That’s just the long-awaited transparency we need to set things straight. Your side won an election, not a coronation.
But that all assumes that those you seem to think are on “your side” really would want to count YOU as a member of “their side”. I would challenge Steve, who seems like an honest liberal, willing to have a civil discussion, to comment on what your debate tactics bring to their side of the table, just as I would challenge similar vitriol from the right (as sadly you do not have a monopoly).
In my perfect world, people who act like you (from both the left and the right – I’ve debated from both perspectives on issues) would be put on ignore until they can learn to be civil.
You sad, sad suckers.
You will live to see this Faustian deal cost you, and the rest of America, dearly.
I look forward to witnessing what will be your rather painful disillusionment.
WOW Steve, 13 replies to your article. You’re giving Drudge a run for the money!
Chuck and John,
Civil is good.
Steve
And Mike,
Hey, even Drudge once had 13 replies.
Sounds like at least half of you have spent more time listening to Rush and Glenn than you have actually reading the bill or even a summary of it. As one matures it might be self-instructive to pay attention to one’s own tendency to think, speak and write in absolutes such as “always”, “never”, “will”, “won’t”, etc. I see way too much of that in the above comments.
Are we trusted advisers? Or just order takers and product pushers? If the former, then we should probably care primarily about the health of our clients and how to develop a national system that will most effectively deliver that health. If the latter, then I honestly hope whatever it is we’re selling becomes extinct.
If I truly believed that the demise of the health insurance industry would be the best thing for the health of Americans, then I would be in front cheering for it. If I sincerely believed that Steve Hemsley’s (United Health Care CEO) being paid $700 million was the best thing for the health of Americans, then I would be first in line to congratulate him. But you know that neither one is true.
We owe it to ourselves as professionals to do the hard homework & stop lazily propagating the seductive vicious and destructive b.s. coming out of the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. You should be embarrassed to even admit you listen to them, much less mirror them.
For some genuine facts about the bill, see my latest blog at:
http://financialmyths.blogspot.com/
Steve, you rock!
Gary – Another strawman. I did a search on this thread and it appears you were the first one to mention Rush or Beck, so exactly what point are you trying to make?
Is it that if anyone disagrees with this law, it automatically follows that we “must” be blindly following some pundit that you dislike? I think you might consider taking your own advice “as you mature”.
I took a quick look at your blog and you say some things I can agree with, but many are hardly “genuine facts”, but merely your opinions. I have no doubt that you are sincere and well-meaning in your opinions, but so am I. And IN MY OPINION, regardless of well-meaning you and others are, you are sadly very wrong about what will and won’t work in HCR on many issues. You see, I have no doubt that much of the law is written with “good intentions” and you describe the “good intentions” as if they are facts. But if you really understood how insurance (and government) works, you would begin to understand that there will likely be “unintended consequences” of such “good intentions”. I have my own educational and professional credentials and experience that I think qualifies me to have (my own) opinions without being lectured about where you somehow think my opinions must come from.
But if you want to jump to conclusion like that instead of taking the risk that we could all learn from some honest debate, then I might have to guess that you get your Kool-Aid from your own set of pundits.
Chuck
And I have no reason to believe that Steve does not in fact rock, but I just have not seen him at a dance. I definitely do not rock!
I’d like an honest answer. Why should I be happy about this bill passing?
I own a small business – an insurance agency, in fact, which is how I wound up reading this posting. I’m 45, married, and have three children. I have a high-deductible HSA compatible individual health policy which costs me about $6,000 a year.
Now that Obamacare is the law, my HSA compatible policy will no longer be offered, as the benefits aren’t “rich” enough to satisfy the IRS. I will then have to buy a comprehensive major medical policy which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will cost me between $12,000 and $15,000 per year, and the IRS will check my bank account monthly to ensure that I have purchased such a policy. I’m unlikely to be eligible for any subsidies to purchase my coverage, so that additional cost will come out of my slim profit margin.
Of course, I could simply drop my insurance coverage and pay a fine, and then wait to buy coverage until I’m sick or injured. From what I know about insurance underwriting and pricing, my health carrier won’t be in business for long if everyone did that, and I suspect many will.
This is the same scenario facing millions of small businesses in this country, those responsible for employing 70% to 80% of workers. What do you suppose will happen to the unemployment rate when they realize that they must fire some of their employees in order to remain viable? Not even this administration can expand the government workforce fast enough to absorb them all.
Again – why are we celebrating?
Tony