Hallelujah. The Supreme Court of our land has given Obamacare a clean constitutional bill of health, thanks to Chief Justice Roberts, who says government does have the power to tax those who can afford to buy health insurance, but won't.
Republicans framed Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, as a loss of individual freedom. But the only freedom lost is the freedom to be treated without having to pay for it, which is what the uninsured do when they have to go to emergency rooms. Most of us have health care, of course, if we have family and children to care for. Individual responsibility really means one should have to pay for their own health care, rather than taxpayers or the already insured.
So why are Republicans so adamantly against it, when they claim to believe in individual responsibility, and the constitution? It is because they might be taxed more, and of course they maintain all taxes are fundamentally evil. They say they abhor any kind of government aid or regulation as if they lived 100 years ago, when everyone had to take care of themselves -- or suffer the consequences. But that was when birth and death rates were far worse than today, and we lived shorter lives. Are there any Republicans who would like to return to those days? Please stand up!
More Americans will be healthy, both physically and financially, since medical bankruptcies will become rarer and serious disease rates should drop, since preventative health care will be encouraged. And simple math tells us that with some 30 million more insured due to the mandate requirement, health care costs will be spread among more users of health care.
So know that health care premiums will drop, since as with Medicare, administrative costs will be severely restricted -- 85 percent of premiums have to be spent on health care -- so that providers cannot as they currently do use more than 25 percent of their premiums just for marketing, which means overselling all those medicines (like erectile dysfunction aids) that choke our daily television screens.
Actually, the real results of what is not yet a universal health care system with 20 million are not being openly discussed, at least yet. It should release a surge of consumer spending, for instance, according to economists such as Robert Shiller. Consumers will no longer have to put so much aside for those sick days because they no longer have to worry so much about budget busting medical bills. They might even enjoy more vacation days to spend with their families, if they take advantage of available preventative care measures for such things as obesity and bad diets.
Yale Economist Robert Shiller has been advocating just such universal insurance for years in books such as The New Financial Order, Risk in the 21st Century, and Finance and the Good Society. It is part of his thesis that with the information age's ability to collate huge amounts of information we can level the playing field against risky outcomes, such as loss of income, or value in one's home, or even serious illness, by insuring against such outcomes.
"If firms and individuals cannot insure themselves against bad outcomes, they will be necessarily cautious; the economy will grow more slowly than it should," says a New York Times book review of Finance and The Good Society. "A company will not invest in a new factory if it cannot hedge against swings in exchange rates that might render its investment unprofitable. An individual will not consume to the full extent of his capacity if he cannot insure his house or health."
So at least we are on the way to a better health care system. It's a start.
Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: www.twitter.com/HarlanGreen
Any good totalitarian: Mao, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Castro or your ideal Obama the First (and last) knows that you have to herd your cattle, the middle class.
This will not stand, long live the republic
He had a stroke one day while driving from a volunteer job of teaching prisoners to read.
The initial treatment and the follow up therapy has almost bankrupted the couple.
It is a true travesty when people that devote their entire lives as public servants in the truest sense, have an unforeseen illness strike them and their choice is to deny themselves or their family members care or go bankrupt.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/
FRONTLINE: sick around the world |PBS
Only Britain has socialized medicine; the other four countries use social insurance like the U.S., but limit the profits on the base insurance:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/countries/
Five Capitalist Democracies & How They Do It | Sick Around The World | FRONTLINE | PBS
These graphs compare the health care systems of Japan, Britain,Switzerland, and Germany to the U.S.:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/etc/graphs.html
FRONTLINE: sick around the world: Graphs: U.S. Health Stats Compared to Other Countries | PBS
A review of "The Healing of America":
http://www.tomhull.com/ocston/books/reid-healing.php
Tom Hull: T.R. Reid: The Healing of America
"...(pp. 13-14):
The academics have a term for this approach to problem-solving:
"comparative policy analysis." The patron saint of comparative policy analysis was an American military hero who went on to become our thirty-fourth president: Dwight D. Eisenhower. That's why this book is dedicated to his memory..."
Single-Payer FAQ | Physicians for a National Health Program
"What is single payer?
Single-payer national health insurance is a system in which a single public or quasi-public agency organizes health financing, but delivery of care remains largely private. Under a single-payer system, all Americans would be covered for all medically necessary services, including: doctor, hospital, preventive, long-term care, mental health, reproductive health care, dental, vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs. Patients would regain free choice of doctor and hospital, and doctors would regain autonomy over patient care.
Is national health insurance ‘socialized medicine’?
No. Socialized medicine is a system in which doctors and hospitals work for and draw salaries from the government. Doctors in the Veterans Administration and the Armed Services are paid this way. The health systems in Great Britain and Spain are other examples. But in most European countries, Canada, Australia and Japan they have socialized health insurance, not socialized medicine. The government pays for care that is delivered in the private (mostly not-for-profit) sector. This is similar to how Medicare works in this country. Doctors are in private practice and are paid on a fee-for-service basis from government funds. The government does not own or manage medical practices or hospitals.
The term socialized medicine is often used to conjure up images of government bureaucratic interference in medical care..."
It's fine if you don't like the law, but why don't you read up a little before spewing forth? Is all the apocalyptic verbiage really necessary? The world (and indeed even the quality of our health care) will not come crashing down as a result of this law.
You would have much more credibility if you included fewer veiled insults and more substantiated facts.
The Democrats framed the statute as a penalty when they passed it, specifically rejecting any argument it was a tax. The Court rejected that argument and relied on the assertion it is tax and is constitutional under Congressional power to tax and spend.
Now that it is absolutely clear to all that (i) Obamacare is in fact the largest increase in taxes on the middle class and (ii) the Democrats defrauded the people about that fact all along, the people will either accept or reject that tactic in November.
Time will tell. That is how our Democracy works.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
Plus, there are a whole host of other provisions in the law that make sense and are good.
Perhaps if the other side had actually offered some viable alternative in the previous 8 years instead of an unpaid-for prescription coverage plan with a huge doughnut hole, you might have more credibility. As it is, nothing has been offered as a counter except heated, alarmist rhetoric.
Just call it a FEE, like Romney did in Massachusetts.
Now, I am not a freeloader and will have health insurance for as long as I can afford to do so. I do now; I always have. I am merely curious as to what happens with those who would freeload when they have the money to purchase insurance. Anyone know???????
You know the ACA covers women with breast cancer but doesn't cover men who get breast cancer?
Why are men being treated like second class citizens?
"And out of all men, the chance of getting breast cancer is about 0.1% or less."
You have a better chance of being crushed by a vending machine..
Point that out to any female and they will accuse you of hating women.
It's like they don't even know how stupid they sound, like it's just a gut reaction to any criticism of female privilege. It's the real reason I don't respect them. Because they are physically incapable of sharing or caring about the welfare of men. Nope it's just women, women, women.
It mentioned that low-income men are eligible for colonoscopies but not mammograms. So you didn't read the article or you didn't think I would?
"Under current policy, state agencies must spend at least 60 percent of program funds for screening of breast and cervical cancer and referrals for treatment, and no more than 40 percent may be spent for other purposes, including other public health approaches, such as consumer education, patient navigation, health professional education, or monitoring and evaluating these services"
So 60% of the funding goes directly to services that ONLY provide for women, and the other 40% goes to services for men? Nope. Once again men get the short end of the stick. Thanks for the link.
When I was a young man, the true tyranny was the draft, the government forcing people into very hazardous labor at very poor pay. The Tea Party types of that day were 100% behind it, and only dirty hippies like me protested it. It's still remarkable to me to think that Nixon ended the draft for all intents and purposes and we've fought several wars and not reinstated it.
And Social Security is forcing everyone into the retirement and catastrophic injury insurance business whether they like it or not.
I was a libertarian for a while in my youth. Then I met a few of you. Thanks, but no thanks.