Glimpse of Obamacare future: 83 million would lose private coverage
B-b-b-b-but I thought the Democrats’ plan was all about enhancing “choices” and “options”…
“Democrats and President Obama have denied that the creation of a new government-run health care plan would be a Trojan Horse for single-payer health care, but a new report by the Lewin Group (comissioned by the Heritage Foundation) finds that the House Democrats’ health care bill would shift more 83.4 million Americans from private health care coverage to the government plan. To put that in perspective, that would mean that nearly half (48.4 percent) would lose their private health coverage.”
***
Related: Read Cliff Asness on health care mythology.
The government does not co-exist or compete fairly with private enterprise. It does not play well with others. The regulator cannot be a competitor at the same time. It cannot compete fairly while it owns the armed forces and courts. Finally, it cannot be a fair competitor if when the “public option” screws up (can’t pay its bills), the government implicitly or explicitly guarantees its debts. We have seen what happens in that case and don’t need a re-run.
The first thing the government does is underprice the private system. You can easily be forgiven for thinking this is a good thing. Why not, cheaper is better right? Wrong. They will underprice private enterprise by charging less to the purchaser of health insurance, not by actually creating it cheaper. Who makes up the difference? Well, you and your family do if you pay taxes, or your kids will pay taxes, or their kids will pay taxes. The government can always underprice competition, not through the old fashioned way of doing it better, they never do that, but by robbing Peter to pay for Paul. They are taking money from your left pocket and giving you a small portion of it back in your right pocket. They do it every day before breakfast, and take a victory lap for the small portion they return.
Second, the government ultimately always cheats when it’s involved in “honest” competition. Try mailing a first class letter through Fed-Ex, or placing an off-track bet with a bookie, or playing a lottery through a private company. Uh, you can’t, so please stop trying. I don’t want you to hurt yourself. Once the government discovers it cannot win, it changes the rules. You see, the government has the power to legislate, steal, imprison, and kill. Those are advantages most private firms do not have, save Google, and you didn’t hear that from me (we all know the Google guy with one eye-brow would crush your larynx for creating a competing search engine).
I have friends who say that I can’t compare doctors to postal workers or truck drivers or bookies as doctors are tireless altruists (pretty damn arrogant no?). I respect the skills of doctors, but they are the kids in college who wanted good jobs with prestige and money, and worked damn hard to attain them, but barely a one was more altruistic than the average truck driver (ever have a doctor drive you from Cleveland to Spokane for nothing but your participation in a duet?) And anyway, those who want socialism want to enslave these altruists while I want to free them, so I am not sure I need to argue this point.
Perhaps the best example of the destructive “public option” is our nation’s schools. Here we clearly have a government provided “public option” competing with (and in fact dominating in size) private schooling. But, is it fair? Does it work well? Not by a long-shot. To send your kids to private school (i.e., a school that competes with the government) you need to first pay your taxes. Absent vouchers or tax credits, the bête noirs of the “socialism in education” set, if you eschew the “public option” you have to pay for education twice. Double payment is not only unfair, but the quality of the product without competition is inhuman and a catastrophe to a generation of children the Left weeps tears over, but actively works to destroy (after all, the Left needs future customers). That the schools provided by the government pale next to the private options, which themselves pale next to what we would have with a full private system (even if publicly funded) is beyond sad, but not the direct point here. The direct point is a “public option” cannot exist without cheating – in this case making you pay for it even if you don’t use it (I’m pretty sure if a private company tried that it would be called stealing).
With a “public option” things inevitably would go the horrific way of our public schools. Instead of existing to please customers (patients and students respectively) the “public option” in schools exists largely to benefit empowered stakeholders of the system (health administrators and unionized school employees respectively), who will shamelessly pretend to give a darn about sick people and children. Watch the analogy play out if we go this route in health care. It will be like looking in a funhouse mirror and seeing a doctor where you used to see a teacher. All else will be the same.
Related: Socialized health care and the death of choice
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De Tocqueville’s “Soft Tyranny” strikes again.
Which Americans would be shifted, and why?
Always was a lie. The plan is for government control of people.
I think cap-and-tax and healthcare are just stepping stones for a much bigger agenda… the “New World Order” (as it were). We no longer have representative government as we grew up with and we are marching toward losing all national sovereignty.
I’m reminded of Epictetus, the Phrygian philosopher, who once said that appearances have four states:
1. Things are, and appear as they are
2. Things are not, and do not even appear to be
3. Things are, and do not appear to be
4. Things are not, and yet appear to be
In today’s world, I think we are dealing more and more with the fourth state. Often times, what appears to be the issue or problem on the surface, is just a distraction from the real issue or problem. It is deceptive. When those in power can make things appear to be when they are not and when people accept those appearances without questioning it, those in power can in effect, create deceptions that take away our freedoms without our even being aware of it.
We have a structure that “appears to be” our constitutional government, but the truth is… we now have an invisible government made up of czars in the executive branch, a combination of the Federal Reserve banking/financial cartel and multinational corporations for a legislature, and a supreme court that no longer hears cases that are related to the old constitutional form of government because citizens do not having “standing” (they are MIA).
All of this government spending using fiat money is just hastening the demise of this country’s sovereignty, so they can get on with bringing us a global financial system and government based on the collective/totalitarian model.
My prayer these days is that people in this country will wake up and use their God-given critical thinking ability, so they will recognize the current deceptions being foisted upon us.
Nancy Pelosi currently has no Townhall meetings scheduled in San Francisco for the “Summer District Work Period” while Congress is out of Session Aug. 3 – Sept. 4.
We need to change that!
When you call you Congressperson and Senators to protest healthcare reform, please ask them when their next Townhall meeting will be in your district!
If Congresspeople know that they will have to face their constituents in person to explain their votes, perhaps they will think about their votes more clearly!
To the statists, destroying private health insurance is a feature, not a bug.
Which raises another question. I have heard a lot of discussion over the weekend about forcing private insurers to accept people with “pre-existing conditions”. Basically, that means that private insurers will have to cover sick people who will be an even greater drag on their productivity. Level playing field my ass.
Exactly. Hear, hear!
go to a v.a. hospital and tell me if you want that “service”. go to st. anything in your neighborhood and see if that isn’t more like what you want.
They don’t want to acknowledge this because the more people go on the public option, the more expensive it will be.
If they can get away with saying that there won’t be that many people on the public option, their numbers will look better.
If more people go on the public option that reimburses hospitals and doctors at the Medicare rates, private insurance rates will skyrocket to compensate for the costs. When that happens, MORE people will be on the public plan (costing MORE money).
There will be a critical mass where hospitals and doctors go bankrupt because they can’t afford to accept the number of people on the reduced reimbursement rates and provide care.
This is the problem. If you give people health insurance that’s cheap, but they don’t have anywhere to get the actual CARE, you have destroyed everything. Health insurance never cured anyone. . . but that’s what the government wants to give you for free (after taxing the crap out of you).
The entire argument for a public option is completely disingenuous and would increase health care costs to the government exponentially.
I’m a “small business” owner. I provide a health insurance benefit to my employees at an annual cost of approximately $10k per employee. With Obama’s proposed tax plan, I expect a significant tax increase.
To sustain my business, I must reduce expenses. With the availability of a national health plan, I can no longer afford to maintain a private health insurance benefit for my employees.
If you think my actions won’t affect you, think again. When I and hundreds of thousands of small business owners like myself discontinue private health insurance plans, private health firms will cease to exist.
It would be cheaper to give the “needy” the money to buy their own, rather than have some gov. agency pay for it.
A look at how much money was wasted by the gov. trying to take care of Hurricane Katrina victims should shed some light on how efficient they were. What was the total “per person” cost? It was probably enough to buy every citizen there a new home, HO insurance , with property taxes paid for ten years or more. How’d bureaucracy work out there?
Let’s work on getting the costs to doctors and hospitals reduced, so that they can pass on the savings to us. (Perhaps eliminating “new” drug advertisements on the media would help?) We could institute a medical savings plan for those young enough, and healthy enough that insurance isn’t necessary for them right now.
Democrats, and other like-minded politicians, need to concern themselves about paying for national defense, nothing else. Let the states pay for their own infrastructure, process their natural resources for income, and stay the hell out of our pockets.
“Here, eat your spinach!” “I don’t like spinach!” “Well, you’re gonna eat it whether you like it or not!”
- Moe & Curly (ALL THE WORLD’S A STOOGE, 1941)
One gets what one pays for. Another thing socialists fail to consider is, private industry rewards (usually) competence and punishes (usually) incompetence. With our private health care system, good doctors are rewarded with lots of business, and incompetent doctors are punished with little business.
But when the Government gets it’s grubby hands in it, it’ll be like the public school. Good teachers and incompetent teachers both get the same reward. And the football and basketball programs each get $1 million a year, but the science lab gets $25 a year.
If political conduct could be extrapolated into personal conduct, would you allow your daughter to go out on a date with this man?
The term lying weasel, certainly seems merited.
It will soon be “socislized health care and the choice of death”.
Rush is saying that the House bill provides that everyone will have to prove that they have government approved health care when they file their federal taxes.
Borrowing a little more from Rush, let me say, “Yea…I’ll undertake to prove something to the IRS about my healthcare arrangements when the man occupying the White House proves that he is a citizen.”
Alexis de Tocqueville
“A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.”
“Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.”
“Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
“In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.”
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
“There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.”
“When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.”
A true visionary…or was de Tocqueville simply a historian?
Is it possible to hate that man even more than I already do? I don’t think so!
“Soylent Green” provided by a socialist/communist health care system . . . who ever thought we’d want to emulate Cuba? This is an absolute disaster contrived by fools.
Here’s the dilemma our armed forces now face… Would you take a bullet for the POTUS, when you consider all he has done to destroy this once great nation.
Would you give your life for a vision of this country that no longer exists?
After listening and watching the daily antics of POTUS, SCOTUS and the Congress, I’m beginning to wonder what here is worth fighting for?
According to the House bill, EVERYONE would eventually be shifted to one of the “approved” options. You can keep your current arrangement as long as you do not change ANYTHING, or leave your job. If you do, say goodbye to YOUR plan.
Or your employer could just say, “that’s it, I’ve had enough”, and discontinue your plan. Then you are forced into a plan.
As mentioned above, I also heard Ruch mentioning the Senate plan where if you cannot prove you have insurance when you file taxes you will be charged a huge fee and forcibly enrrolled in a random government “option”.
Land of the free, huh?
That is a very good question. Deserves some hard thought and choices.
44 million uninsured.
83 million would lose private coverage.
All for the “greater good”.
Yep, makes sense to me … bring on ObamaScare.
Here we have a much-needed example of Education AND Wisdom from an otherwise elite of our society!
I still remember the smackdown Asness gave about Obama’s Chrysler takeover…
“I wouldn’t say yes, but I couldn’t say no.” “Would you say maybe?” “I might!”
- Curly and Larry (GEM OF A JAM, A, 1943)
I don’t think comparing health insurance to schools is the most apt.
For starters education is a right, IMO, health insurance is not; hence public education is necessary to fulfill said right, as the government is the only vehicle that can provide enough financing.
Second, there are numerous reasons private schools are better. Principally because the parents are often substantially better. If the same students of failing schools all went to a private school, I’m not sure the outcomes would be substantially different. Whereas insurance can have differences is customer service and quality. Thus, is one aspect much of the onus for improvement falls on the consumer(education), whereas in insurance, the onus for improvement falls entirely on the producer side.
I dislike these apples to oranges comparisons, as I feel like they’re a distraction from specific policy details that would otherwise be a better counter to the socialized medicine issue.
If they would only put as much emphasis into enforcing immigration law.
check this site out…
http://www.defendyourhealthcare.us/
Next, these patricians will get rid of our standing army, and replace it with foreign mercenaries that have no loyalty to the U.S. except as employer.
This same army will later sack Washington D.C.
Our rights are life, liberty and the persute of happyness. If we start down the road where we list all the things we feel we have a right to the list will never end. Education is not a right anymore than food or health care. We are a nation that earns its keep. There is a Scriptural basis for that. We are free to provide for ourselves and in so doing we have provided the best health care system in the world. Our “right” to education has destroyed what that education should be.
We have a right to earn a living, to persue happyness, each in our own way. We set our own priorities in that process not the Government. Look to others to provide you your rights and you will give over your freedom to those who will then manipulate those rights and you.
My radio just told me the Mr. Steele called the ObamaCare monster a “dangerous experiment”.
It being the radio, I take that with a grain of salt, BUT…
there is NOTHING experimental about ObamaCare.
We KNOW what it would do, how it would work, and can predict what it will cost.
It is A KNOWN. It is called STATISM.
WHAT – where do you get that it’s a right?
This is a very simple way to keep all this “right” BS straight…
If you have a right to something, someone else has an obligation…enforceable in law…to provide that, or to refrain from certain conduct.
Rights/obligations are the two sides of a coin. You don’t get one without the other.
If I have a right to an education, someone has a legal obligation to provide it. Can you go to a teacher and legally make them teach you?
If I have a right to health care, I should have the ability to force a provider to give it to me.
It really is pretty simple.
lewisge: How about a Fifth State? — It appears the common man is SCREWED!
And there you have it….the Obamabot and government programs leach mentality:
“I gotta right to __________ and you gotta pay, you greedy rich person, so I can have it”
Which is especially ironic given that lots of people – mostly the elderly and the chronically ill – would be denied that “right” due to being too expensive.
What a tangled web.
But not surprising. Liberals always believe “rights” involve someone giving up something (be it their actual rights, their time, their money) in order to make liberals feel good.
I knew that Rags
I just want Taylok to tell me why it’s a right.
The more I read about this “dangerous experiment” (M.Steele) – the more I’m convinced it has way more to do with eugenics than providing the masses with healthcare.
Rags & groundhunter – both comments are hits out of the ballpark. Too bad our elected critters can’t think as critically. Guess we missed listing that in their job descriptions.
I wouldn’t go as far saying it is a right but, our founders definitely believed in education. I suggest reading the Northwest Ordinance. Not only did they believe in education they believed in religion in schools. Read Article 3 in the Northwest Ordinance.
http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestones/ordinance/text.html
Bella has a link to the yahoo poll.
http://bellalu0.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/yahoo-poll-on-healthcare-shows-lack-of-support/
I knew you knew.
I was just trying to provide a rational system of understanding the whole ambit of “rights” for several here.
It’s a right in the U.S because the country is a signateur Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, which declared primary education as a right.
And our primary education has gone in the toilet ever since.
If it is a right, there are certainly a lot of people being deprived of their rights, as they leave collectivist monopoly schools as functional illiterates.
The state has a legal obligation to teach children, unless they have been removed and given due process for some sort of infraction(i.e., expulsion).
Are you really going to put forth a declaration from the United Nations as something that trumps our U.S. Constitution?
taylork: Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, Article 17 states
I guess that means income taxes are illegal, right?
I disagree. By any measurable metric, yes education has gone down the toilet, but that’s because schools are now forced to teach everyone. It was easy to say how great the education system was when only the best, brightest, and wealthiest were receiving education.
The current statue of the educational system certainly has it’s share of blame; however, much blame resides with the parents. As we’ve seen,there are plenty of suburban schools that do quite well, whereas many urban environments turn out to be miserable failures.
Which shows us just how right the Founders were when they warned us against foreign entanglements.
Education is NOT a human right, no matter how many fools who don’t understand the concept of rights want to tell you it is.
You might argue access to being able to pay for an education is a ‘right,’ but just refer back to Rags’s guidance at 2:42pm to understand why getting an education cannot be a right.
From the UN LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Our constitution trumps ANYTHING from the UN!
Go read your history! Whatever the UN comes out with is really nothing we have to abide by!
But I thought you said education was a right?
As the country signed the document and was ratified by Congress, their is no discongruency there. It doesn’t trump the Constitution, rather the Constitution allowed for the US to legitimately sign on to said agreement.
Incorrect reading. Given that we have a system of representation that has voted for income taxes, it can’t be said that they’re arbitrary.
You are falling into the trap of worshipping the State.
States don’t teach anyone. Ever. Resources have to be seized by the State. SOMEONE ELSE is teaching the children. Not the State.
On the contrary, there are negative rights and positive rights. Education is a positive right which has been delineated by agreements that they U.S has signed on to.
I fail to see how I’m making any contradictory statement. They forced to teach everyone because education is a right.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I do not believe the U.S. Constitution gives the government the authority to give away my rights under some U.N. charter.
We have some sharp minds here. What do others think?
Politely…BULLSPIT.
The little red school house was not just a Hallmark card. It was a VERY effective means of providing primary education, and it WAS NOT PAID by taxes, except in more recent history. Most primary schooling…which was pretty universal in most of America…was paid for directly by parents.
There was never a time in American history when primary education was the sole province of “the best, brightest, and wealthiest”.
Because you think the State tells us what our rights are. The State is your God.
taylork: My comment was tongue-in-cheek.
If you want to talk about arbitrarily depriving someone of his property, how about Kelo v. City of New London?
Thank you, Roland. Saved me some time.
Nope. Perhaps you shouldn’t ascertain my disposition based on a few posts.
Look, American’s elected representatives, who then ratified an agreement that said education was a right. Given that we have a representative democracy and that we have not withdrawn from the agreement, the people have decided that education as defined by the agreement is a right to be afforded.
Not true. That you state that parents paid for education means that inherently there is a system of wealth embedded in the educational system.
Well, I don’t believe I am a fool, and I don’t agree that education is a right based on the US Constitution, but that might simply mean that the FFs expected questions like that to be handled by the states or other lower levels of government.
However, one can easily argue that education is a right. Let’s compare another right that we all believe we have: we have the right to a trial, we have a right to justice, don’t we? Doesn’t that right entail an obligation on someone to provide it? Don’t we need a judge, jury, attorneys, and a place to meet? Who provides this? Someone must. It just happens that the Constitution spells out this one and so we have a Department of Justice and a national court apparatus.
We expect the government to take care of dealing with criminals and to ensure that laws are enforced and criminals are punished.
We expect the government to provide a military to defend the nation. Again, that defense is a right that imposes an obligation on someone.
It isn’t too crazy for someone to think that providing education would be fundamental to your rights to earn a living or to pursue happiness.
Rights are a tricky subject and not nearly so cut and dried as most people think.
I think education is critical. In fact, it is so important, that I think the Department of Education should be abolished. But it might still be a right.
You are correct!
I call BS! Just because our representatives have signed on to UN declarations, I’m sure that predominantly, most of them are unconstitutional. Just check out the sea treaties that are under way that fly in the face of US sovereignity.
DougT. I think if the writers of the Constitution had intended education to be a right they would have included it as they did for the justice system. I do think you are correct that since it is not addressed in the Constitution it is a matter left to the States or to the people.
WTF…???
Do you know ANY history? I mean, real history, not that Marxist crap they shovel in most undergrad schools…
Ever hear of itinerant school teachers?
Ever read “The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow?“
As I posted before it’s not a right but, our founders were huge proponents of education and religion in our education. Read the Norewest Ordinance Article 3.
You missed my point completely. Just because the mob says something is a right doesn’t make it a right.
It doesn’t matter what method the State uses to decide something is a right. You believe the State tells us what our rights are. You worship the State.
The education of citizens was left to the states, not the US government. Since Uncle Sugar got involved it has deveolved into a massive daycare center, that neither teaches nor inspires!
Yeah, this sounds familiar. In my home county, there is a county-owned agency called the Berks County Intermediate Unit. They offer school bus service for less than their privately-owned competitors, so several school districts have naturally taken advantage of it. This obviously hurts the private companies who don’t have taxpayer backing to allow them to win contracts.
Roger that! You can chart the inverse relationship in Federal $$$ v. quality in primary education.
Education and health can not be guaranteed so they can not be a right. Even “happiness” can not be guaranteed, only the pursuit of it. access to education and health care is all anyone can guarantee. That does not mean I have to pay for yours- take care of your own.
Yes, but you will see that the article is aspirational. There was nothing MANDATED in it.
The various states, pretty early on, often set up land-grant and other secondary education systems. Primary education was a local matter, and was, as I noted, often left up to the parents of the children in an area, working collaboratively.
No. And please don’t paint me as a leftist because I disagree with you on this. This is a philosophical argument that transcends party affiliation.
Just because the mob says something is a right doesn’t make it a right.
:
I never said it was mandated nor did I say education was a right. I was merely expressing our founders were huge proponents of education in the country.
xelr8bmw – Rags saw it, too. Encouraged is the key word here. Education should be encouraged, of course. But it is not a right.
And I was agreeing. Plus clarifying.
Again, I never said it was a right!!!!!!!!!!!! But, our founders were proponents of education!
Please don;t add words that I never said.
Lgm?
chap?
Oops, forgot! On this topic they have both taken the Vow of Silence.
Omertà, I think it’s called……
lol. ok.
Socialized health care and the death of choice
That is what it is all about-Death of choice, and not just choice over health care decisions. These people control your health, that of your spouse and children and they have a big hook in you–submit or die. Go only places and do only things that are safe–the government can’t afford for you to take chances.
Some little Fascist Whitehouse Healthcare weenie was on FOX explaining they were going to pay for healthcare buy squeezing out the inefficiencies – not paying for treatments but only for outcomes–what the hell does THAT mean? I have an idea it means if you have a difficult disease you are dead.
Like they have with Medicare? Medicaid? Amtrak? The USPS? How many hundred bureaucrats are they going to interpose between me and my doc?
When HAS that worked?
Oh, yeah, when squeezing out inefficiencies is done by free people, operating in a free market.
Funny…
Just heard a little bit of an interview on a local talk show. They were interviewing a doctor’s practice that does not accept insurance. He posts his prices and you get what you pay for. He’s been doing it for several years and the practice has 5,500 patients, with a waiting list! Now, THAT is what we should be doing.
Precisely. There is no doubt how we could have a much less expensive health care system.
But this isn’t about health care. It is about control of EVERY aspect of your life.
As a Canadian suffering through universal health care, let me just tell you: be afraid … be very afraid, my American friends.