Today, September 23, 2010, President Obama and congressional Democrats freed approximately 300 million Americans from the absolute dictatorship of insurance companies over their healthcare. The other, approximately 50 million Americans were freed in 1965 with the passage of Medicare (aka, "medical care for the aged under the Social Security system").
Republicans such as Ronald Reagan declared in TV ads that Medicare would enslave both doctors and patients, with government compelling physician relocation and making decisions that doctors should be making about healthcare. Neither, of course, occurred -- indeed, so unobtrusive is the government hand that many Republican Tea Party members have screamed to "keep government out of my Medicare." The administrative cost of Medicare is less than 5% of total expenses, and that means that more than 95 cents out of every Medicare dollar goes to pay for... wait for it... healthcare!
Nonetheless, the "Young Guns" (who are more like aged rightwing radicals) will propose, if Republicans take control of Congress, that Medicare be privatized into a "voucher" system providing people with money that will cover increasingly small percentages of private premiums and jack up the premiums for the rest of us as high-risk, expensive, patients are added to the below 65-year-old pool.
All the same tired, worn, absurd lies have been made about "Obamacare." It almost worked to derail the entire program, and it certainly reduced the benefits that could have been provided at an even lower cost. But this law planted a giant stake in the ground. The tectonic tensions that remain because of Republican Tea Party lies and control of the dialogue will have to be corrected. That is reserved for another day.
Today, insurance companies can no longer drop your coverage when you become ill. They can no longer exclude your children from coverage under your policy due to a pre-existing illness, real or imaginary. Parents, as of today, also have the right to include their children up to age 26 under their insurance policy. Insurance companies can no longer impose annual or lifetime limits on coverage.
And, small businesses will receive a tax credit (i.e., dollar-for-dollar, not just a deduction) for paying for healthcare for their employees, immediately impacting up to 16.6 million people. Moreover, these small businesses can receive direct help to provide PREVENTATIVE CARE, such as immunizations, in their health insurance policies, similar to benefits big companies sometimes provide their employees. It limits non-direct healthcare expenditures to 20-25%, with a requirement to report those percentages and refund to enrollees any amounts that exceed that limit. (Note: This is still more than 4X higher than Medicare's administrative costs).
Before today, an insurance company had dictatorial powers. It could, and often did, the following: exclude children from coverage, drop coverage once a person became ill, refuse to insure someone in the first place if they had pre-existing illnesses, refuse to include children 18 and over under their parents' insurance.
No more.
To Republicans, 9/23/10 is a day of infamy. To the American people, including many Republican voters who will benefit, it is a day of freedom and justice. (Incidentally, our Preamble talks about Liberty and Justice, and so does our pledge of allegiance. This law achieves both.)
But, this is the law the Republican Manifesto pledges to destroy. And, while they are at it, throw Medicare overboard as well -- despite the American Medical, Nurses and Hospital Associations and AARP (i.e., our doctors, nurses, hospitals and elderly -- people who just might know a bit more about these matters than "Young Guns"), favoring both this law and opposing the replacement of Medicare with vouchers.
Vote them in, and they will vote this out. And, if they do not get their way, they will shut down the government until the administration caves.
Republicans fight to maintain the absolute dictatorship of insurance companies over peoples' lives, and, when they are not doing that, apologize to oil companies.
Oh, yes. There is then John Boehner, the man who would be Speaker of the House. He not only wants to repeal this (he now pays a tanning booth tax to maintain his tan), he also wants cigarette companies to be able to enslave your children to the ill-health of smoking... and, just to be certain of support, handed out tobacco lobby checks to his fellow Republicans on the floor of the House of Representatives, forever disgracing him and the House itself.
And, Americans are seriously considering trusting these people with their livelihoods, healthcare and retirement?
By the way, I forgot to mention this: I have a bridge for sale. Want to buy it? I'll give you a really good price.
Profit also means that one's income is higher than one's expenses. If any instituition, govt, non-profit or for profit constantly loses money they will be out of business. Non-profits are allowed to make a profit. They need to use surplus from a good year to cover a down year.
Government can mask its red ink. If it loses money it can just get more from the tax payers. If a private company loses money it goes out of business.
If you think a company is not a good health care provider the private market will allow you to choose another provider. If you think none of the current providers is good or efficient, then YOU can start your own company and provide better service at a lower cost. That's the beauty of the free market.
You need to look up Wendell Potter. For-profit insurance companies are out to - surprise! - make a profit. They will choose to do so over your health. Period. There was an article last week about a Canadian lady that had a very fatal bone cancer of the hip and spine. Canada sent her to the Mayo clinic where a VERY experimental surgery saver her life. It NEVER would have been covered by an insurance company here. If you think the free market is so great, let's bring it back to police and fire departments- and let's start in your neighborhood.
http://themiddleamericanvoice.blogspot.com/
Your comments show a lack of knowledge about the working of the private market (health care or otherwise). You also imply a lack of understanding of just how the various European systems work. And there is not one, but many variations of health care in Europe.
It is an urban myth that companies drop patients when they get sick. I am sure that there are cases. How many? The few that can be documented are blown out of proportion and used as a whip on the industry. Too many dropped patients and a free market company would lose customers and go out of business. Besides, the get sued for millions. That's a deterrent to the practice.
When the government will be in charge of health care it won't drop coverage. It just won't agree to pay for the proceedure. and you won't get to sue to get the denied coverage it it isn't on the approved list. A perfect example is NICE in Great Britain. NICE is the governmental committee charged with approving the proceedures to be paid for. Many of the denied proceedures are the high-cost, cutting-edge cancer drugs and proceedures provided by private insurers in the US, but denied by NICE in GB. You may get some sort of cancer treatment in GB, but it won't be cutting-edge. For instance, look at the rate of prostate cancer survival in the US v. GB. The US is FIRST in prostate cancer survival.
I, however, am at a disadvantage when I talk about this. You see, I have actually worked in the UK health care system. Have you?
I'm thinking your elderly parents remember a time when they didn't need an insurance card to visit the doctor - in fact they probably remember a time when the doctor came to visit them. I'm not advocating chickens for checkups, but we have to get the middle man (health insurance companies) out of the business of our health. Cigna, Blue Cross and all the others provide NO healthcare service whatsoever - they are in the business of gambling that you don't get sick, and when you pay them premiums, you are gambling that you will.
That is why medical care for seniors must be an intergenerational transfer expense. Today's wage earners pay for today's medical care. And, even that has problems since wages have risen at a far lower pace than healthcare costs. But, to pay for today's healthcare with wages from the 1970s is a huge mismatch.
And, that, of course, assumes one could have paid for it one's self contemporaneously. Most people cannot, and could not. So, unless there is a large risk pool, and we all realize that someone will get sick, and I put my money in just in case it were me, then we can get much closer to paying for those who need it, when they need it.
YOU trust any government with those? Medicare is a huge ripoff to the taxpayers. 100 billion a year in fraud!
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=video&cd=2&ved=0CDsQtwIwAQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbsnews.com%2Fvideo%2Fwatch%2F%3Fid%3D5419844n&ei=Z_KbTNuxL4T6lwfMpu3zCQ&usg=AFQjCNGN49EyqcsiHo4T-_WxpRqIkbcBtw
Your link is broken
be cheaper then what we have now.
Don't count on it. If it comes to that, my quatloos are on Obama to squish them like a bug. It didn't work against Bill Clinton, so the conventional wisdom doesn't call for caving.
Democrats, if still in power in Congress, plan to work to correct the flaws in the health care bill as they are able to get the votes thru Congress. The bill was not PERFECT as it was passed the first time -- almost no MAJOR PIECE OF SOCIAL LEGISLATION is -- they all have to be fixed over time. This is what happened with Medicare and Social Security -- they didn't cover everybody in the beginning either, and now both programs are credited with keeping our parents and grandparents in the middle class, and out of poverty
If you stay home on election day, or vote for Republicans, they will try to privatize Social Security and hand out a few vouchers in place of health care to every family. The vouchers won't be enough to pay for anybody's annual insurance costs. WE KNOW WHAT WE MUST DO -- VOTE DEMOCRAT, so we can fix healthcare and eventually get our PUBLIC OPTION.
Your figure of 5% for Administration costs is WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!
It is less than 1% to Manage MediCare. That means that 99% goes to Healthcare.
Here's one large cost that is ignored and misunderstood in the public sector: profit. Profit is essentially the cost to raise capital. Medicare is a beneficiary of the governement's ability to tax. It receives whatever it needs to pay it's claims and to invest in the initial startup or any other capital cost it pays for. Medicare doesn't need to account for its capital costs as capital. A private business does and has to report its profit on its disclosure forms. That does not mean that there is no cost of capital for Medicare. It does have an implicit cost to raise capital. It means that the cost of capital to Medicare is hidden in the vastness of the government from the cost of the IRS to collect taxes to the cost of Congress to pass funding bills and enforcement bills.
Medicare loses money on its operations. The government supplies the rest and it would be treated as capital if it were a private company. The government ignores its caoital costs because it can. Your comparison of 1% or 5% is incorrect.
We need to copy and paste this into as many other blogs and Facebook groups and Twitters as we can, to get the word out.
At least the patient has a greater say now. That shifts the balance of power.
What about the other effects of monopoly: limited choices, poor service, waiting lines? The most important reason why markets work and the range of goods and services in the US is so vast is because there is a significant amount of choice. A government monopoly would severely restrict those choices.
How much more disposible income would there be if we restricted the prices paid for houses? Why don't we have one market for houses, let the government run it and restrict the price one could pay? Let's use the same reasoning used for health care: housing is a necessity, many people can't afford it and if we had only one buyer in the market, then the prices would be lower and we would all benefit, is that how it goes? I sure hope you would see that the housing market would collapse and then the only remedy would be for the government to step in, build it itself, dictate prices and ration it, kinda like the Soviet Union.