I was looking for video of this part of a speech Obama gave to the AFL-CIO on Labor Day:
This is a lie I'm particularly tired of hearing. Read about the Patients' Choice Act in yesterday's Human Events."I've got a question for all these folks who say, you know, we're going to pull the plug on Grandma, and this is all about illegal immigrants -- you've heard all the lies," Obama said, diverging from his prepared remarks. "I've got a question for all those folks: What are you going to do? What's your answer? What's your solution?
"And you know what? They don't have one," he said.
I didn't find the bit of video I wanted. What I found instead is 8 minutes of Obama in full campaign mode, relating a self-referential anecdote in desperate need of an editor.
Comments welcome.
Most recent posts here.
Okay, I'll bite.
ReplyDeleteWithout referring to the Democratic bills, explain to me what parts of S 1099 you find most complelling.
Why do you feel that bill will best address the current problems in our health care system?
Coburn's plan is just one of several examples of alternatives. The Heritage Foundation covers the various plans and lists some principles:
ReplyDelete"For our part, Heritage has long been an advocate for consumer driven, patient-centered health reform. Here are six key principles Heritage fellow Ed Haislmaier outlined just last year:
* Individuals are the key decision makers in the health care system. This would be a major departure from conventional third-party payment arrangements that dominate today’s health care financing in both the public and the private sectors. In a normal market based on personal choice and free-market competition, consumers drive the system.
* Individuals buy and own their own health insurance coverage. In a normal market, when individuals exchange money for a good or service, they acquire a property right in that good or service, but in today’s system, individuals and families rarely have property rights in their health insurance coverage. The policy is owned and controlled by a third party, either their employers or government officials. In a reformed system, individuals would own their health insurance, just as they own virtually every other type of insurance in virtually every other sector of the economy.
* Individuals choose their own health insurance coverage. Individuals, not employers or government officials, would choose the health care coverage and level of coverage that they think best. In a normal market, the primacy of consumer choice is the rule, not the exception.
* Individuals have a wide range of coverage choices. Suppliers of medical goods and services, including health plans, could freely enter and exit the health care market.
* Prices are transparent. As in a normal market, individuals as consumers would actually know the prices of the health insurance plan or the medical goods and services that they are buying. This would help them to compare the value that they receive for their money.
* Individuals have the periodic opportunity to change health coverage. In a consumer-driven health insurance market, individuals would have the ability to pick a new health plan on predictable terms. They would not be locked into past decisions and deprived of the opportunity to make future choices."
Victor Davis Hanson raises some of the basic problems with our system now.
Refreshing. I'm glad someone else caught that, I was dumbfounded when he had the nerve to say the opposition wasn't proposing anything. The last time I heard, there were over 800 amendments and bills proposed by Republicans, and all of them were rejected.
ReplyDeleteI would love to see him get attacked by as hard as Palin got hit for her "Death Panels" remark.
The Heritage goals are good goals - a healthy, free, and transparent market could improve health care in a number of areas.
ReplyDeleteBut here are two very vexing problems to the "Every insured a consumer" approach:
1) How do you deal with the current situation where regional insurers utterly dominate their market?
If I'm in Alabama - more than 70% of the market is Blue Cross Blue Shield. Sure, other companies are free to move in - but they're not likely to be eager to do so. Low ROI and there's always the possibility that BCBS will use their market share to play hardball until their competitor leaves.
2) A bigger issue is what happens when the consumer is buying insurance on the open market by themselves? Large pools of insureds can get deals on insurance - lone consumers get the shaft. See (the Commonwealth Fund's brief on CJR PDF file)
When you have no leverage, the insurance company can charge more. When you are the lone consumer in a state dominated by one company you aren't in a free market.
The price transparency issue: I agree that transparency of cost will help consumers - but we have a high degree of transparency now and it doesn't help.
My medical bills detail all the terrifyingly large sums I theoretically owe the hospital but I don't care - because my insurance is paying for all but a small slice of it. Even if I did care, I would have to spend a huge amount of time pinning down mistakes and overcharges and I'd never see a dime of what I saved my insurance company.
Portable insurance will not change this.
The reason being: I chose my hospital before I knew what treatment I needed. Even if I change insurance companies after I get my bill, it won't affect what I owe.
And I love the complaints about expense of the system.
One of the main impetuses of doing reform at all is the fact that the current system is going to break the bank.
It's like a person with heart desease that can be treated with either a transplant or a monthly perscription.
They can't afford the transplant, but they're refusing the buy the pills because they're too expensive.
There's no free solution and the cost of what we have is going to break the bank.
From Power Line:
ReplyDelete"In fact, Obama and Congressional Democrats have zero interest in increasing choice and competition. If they did, there is an easy solution. There are over 1,000 health insurance companies in the United States; why do you think it is that in Alabama, one company has 90 percent of the business? It is because there are major legal obstacles to insurance companies operating across state lines. State legislatures, and lots of the companies, like it this way. Competition is hard. But if Obama really wanted to expand "choice and competition" in health care, all he would have to do is go along with the Republican proposal to allow health insurance companies to sell on a national basis. Like, say, computer companies, beer companies, automobile companies, law firms, and pretty much everyone else. The Democrats' refusal to allow existing health insurance companies to compete against each other nationwide, more than anything else, puts the lie to their nonsense about "choice and competition."