This will come as no surprise to the RTP audience, but the Wall Street Journal is reporting on how we’re already seeing the beginnings of ObamaCare’s forcing the retraction of health care options for patients:
The health-reform law caps how much insurers can spend on expenses and take for profits. Starting next year, health plans will have a regulated “floor” on their medical-loss ratios, which is the amount of revenue they spend on medical claims. Insurers can only spend 20% of their premiums on running their plans if they offer policies directly to consumers or to small employers. The spending cap is 15% for policies sold to large employers.
This regulation is going to have its biggest impact on insurance sold directly to consumers—what’s referred to as the “individual market.” These policies cost more to market. They also have higher medical costs, owing partly to selection by less healthy consumers.
Finally, individual policies have high start-up costs. If insurers cannot spend more of their revenue getting plans on track, fewer new policies will be offered.
But didn’t the President assure us we’d all be able to keep our plans? Check off another broken promise. Again, no surprise to us. Also, no surprise is that as more information and analysis of this bill is provided – which, of course, should have been done before its passage – support continues to drop:
Americans remain divided on health reform, with 41 percent holding favorable views of the law, 44 percent holding unfavorable views and 14 percent undecided or unsure. Most Democrats still approve of it and most Republicans still oppose it. Political independents are more likely to tilt against, as are people who describe themselves as likely voters in the midterm elections.
This comes from the Kaiser Family Foundation, whose same poll showed last month a 46/40 split in support of the bill. This was basically the one reputable poll that the Left could point to for support, while the others show clear majorities against. But now even it has shifted a full nine points in the other direction, putting ObamaCare underwater and indicating an overall trend in the negative direction.
A simple word comes to mind: Repeal! Yet there still is no serious effort underway to trash this horrible legislation Americans have rejected. Contact your representatives and tell them that either they sign on to repeal the bill, or you will repeal their employment.
Here’s how the author of the “hit piece” in the WSJ is described:
“Dr. Gottlieb, a former official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a practicing internist. He’s partner to a firm that invests in health-care companies.”
Not exactly the detached, disinterested type I am sure you would agree.
The truth is that physician consolidation has been an on-going problem since the advent of capitated billing and the introduction of health care company approved lists of physicians or as they call them “preferred (make that mandatory) providers.” The only way to survive is to join a mega-group to be sure of inclusion on the list.
Second, no one knows if the cost of individual plans will rise since we cannot project the number of additional persons who will sign up. We do know that the number will rise with individual mandates so the marginal cost of marketing those policies will of course drop. We’ll just have to see. Bottom line is that individual policies will have to include preventative care reimbursement which should reduce the overall costs of these plans.
Dr. Gottlieb may be a fine internist, but as a economist and policy analyst, he leaves quit a bit to be desired.
Now, as one protecting his investment by means of unfounded rabble rousing, he is without peer.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Richmond Tea Party, F.R. Newbrough. F.R. Newbrough said: RT @LibertyProject: More Bad News for ObamaCare and Patients – http://tinyurl.com/39yg5as #teaparty #tcot #rva […]
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is right now in the process of participating in bailing out the first officially bankrupt EU state: Greece. You should know that 20% of the IMF’s money comes from the US taxpayer. You should also know that one of the conditions IMF has imposed on Greece, as terms of their loan, is that Greece scale back expenditures on its universal health care system.
Imagine that! Bail out the banks, and cut back on benefits for the citizens.
Endless free money for the banks, in this case laundered across international boundaries by the IMF, and austerity for the middle classes.
swrichmond:
“You should also know that one of the conditions IMF has imposed on Greece, as terms of their loan, is that Greece scale back expenditures on its universal health care system.”
***********************
Health care cost as percentage of GNP in 2007 of the 31 OECD Countries:
U.S. 11.0% (Rank: 1st)
Greece: 9.6% (Rank: 11th)
OECD Average: 8.9%
Health care costs per capital in 2007 of the 31 OECD Countries:
U.S. $7,290.00 (Rank: 1st)
Greece $2,727.00 (Rank: 19th)
OECD Average: $2,964.00
45,000 uninsured Americans die each year due to lack of health insurance. What’s that worth to you?
Maybe we should scale back our healthcare costs too with universal healthcare. Hey, we did that already. Facts are really fun!!
Your comments about bailing out banks who make money on our largess are right on by the way. Aren’t most of the financial fat cats Republicans?? Didn’t a Republican initiate the first bailout after ruining our economy with unbridled military spending in Iraq and squander the budget surplus he inherited from, of all things, a Democrat? I see a pattern.
“When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, ‘Who is destroying the world? You are.”
– Francisco D’Anconia
“Aren’t most of the financial fat cats Republicans??”
Facts ARE fun:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/index.php?cycle=2008
Looks to me like Dems got the money 2 to 1 against Repubs.
I like facts!
As for your facts about comparative US healthcare spending, they perfectly illustrate the fact that we spend too much on health care. We also, however, have people coming from around to world to have specialized care and procedures done here, because they are actually available.
This means putting the government in charge of health care virtually guarantees a reduction in health care expenditures. How can we do this while “giving” more people “coverage”? The answer is another simple fact: there is only one way to do that, and that is by denying and reducing care. So, by extension, you are advocating cutting care, and using Greece as an example. Is that what you meant to do?
If anything is going to cause me and my family to not get medical care, I would greatly prefer that it be my lack of money rather than some unassailable government bureaucrat’s decision.
SWRichmond:
“This means putting the government in charge of health care virtually guarantees a reduction in health care expenditures. How can we do this while “giving” more people “coverage”?”
**************
All of the OECD countries with lower per capita spending and lower expenditure of GNP on healthcare have government funded universal healthcare with higher quality than we provide. We both agree the costs need to be cut. It’s just that you and your ilk have no idea how to do it except to rely on the market that has taken us right up to this catastrophic tipping point. The other OECD nations have figured out already that the market based approach doesn’t work because of the profit motive. Back when we had charitable and public hospitals without the profit margin our healthcare costs were in line with other similarly situated nations. Once American business figured out they could charge us exorbitant rates by getting the charities out of the game, the system was doomed. We don’t just need cheaper healthcare. We need smarter people and politicians who understand our own history and can learn from those countries doing it better.
By the way, the simplest way to reduce costs of healthcare is to remove the profit margin and reduce administrative costs to 3-4% as we do in Medicare. Do you not know that the most profitable companies in the recession were healthcare providers and their insurers?
I am still interested to know what value you place on the 45,000 fellow Americans who die on account of the healthcare system you defend. I am sympathetic to the plight of your family in the scenario you describe. Why do you have no mention for the 45,000 who die because we ration this human right based on ability to pay?
SWRichmond:
““When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, ‘Who is destroying the world? You are.”
– Francisco D’Anconia”
************************
Why not quote the fictional character from “Atlas Shrugged” at length about his love of money? You missed a couple of lines:
““To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money–and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man’s mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being–the self-made man–the American industrialist.
“If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose–because it contains all the others–the fact that they were the people who created the phrase ‘to make money.’ No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity–to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality.”
I suppose he’s a hero to you, but how does one reconcile that with this little verse from a book I bet you know:
“For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”
~1 Timothy 6:10
So are you a Rand-ist? Where’s the church?
“have government funded universal healthcare with higher quality than we provide.”
“U.S. $7,290.00 (Rank: 1st)”
“Greece $2,727.00 (Rank: 19th)”
“OECD Average: $2,964.00”
“By the way, the simplest way to reduce costs of healthcare is to remove the profit margin and reduce administrative costs to 3-4% as we do in Medicare.”
Therein lie the lies. Are you trying to tell us that the difference between OECD expenditures (and I haven’t bothered to check your numbers) are completely due to profit, and that the OECD nations still get “higher quality” care? Only an ideologue could make an assertion like that.
And thank you for quoting more Rand. I especially like this part:
“For the first time, man’s mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being–the self-made man–the American industrialist.”
Do you see how Rand glorifies work, and contrasts it so clearly in her writing with the other means of obtaining wealth, through forcibly enslaving others? Here, let me point it out again:
“no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth”
Let’s add a little more from Francisco’s money speech, shall we?
“So you think that money is the root of all evil?” said Francisco d’Anconia. “Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?”
“When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor–your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil?”
“Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions–and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.”
“”To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss–the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery–that you must offer them values, not wounds–that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade–with reason, not force, as their final arbiter–it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability–and the degree of a man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?”
While we’re on the subject of facts, here are a couple of quick ones:
1) The latest quarterly report shows that Health Care Plans industry has a whopping 4.7% profit margin, which doesn’t even crack the top 100 (http://biz.yahoo.com/p/sum_qpmd.html) most profitable industries.
2) According to a 2008 study by the American Medical Association (http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/368/reportcard.pdf), the biggest denier of medical claims (better known as “rationing”) is none other than Medicare, the very government program we’re told should be a model for reforming our health care industry.
European-model socialism is financially failing; long article, well worth the read, lots of facts:
http://pensionpulse.blogspot.com/2010/05/will-pension-woes-deal-death-blow-to.html
More: save capitalism. WaPo
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/21/AR2010052101854_2.html?sid=ST2010052103072
SWRichmond:
Check all you like– the figures are accurate. I did not conflate the cost figures with the quality figures – they are checkable too. Wonder if your leap of “logic” makes you the ideologue. I never said that profit accounted for all of the difference but it obviously counts for a lot.
I used to like Ayn Rand too, ( all that pull yourself up by your bootstraps nonsense) but then I became an adult and found out that her philosophy only works if you start on third base before declaring yourself the holder of a triple. She is the patron saint of the robber barons, you know.
Still waiting on your thoughts of the 45,000 who die each year because of you and folks like you who don’t give a damn. Also wondering how you reconcile Timothy with your hero, Francisco. Like Adlai Stevenson, I’ve got lots of time.
“Still waiting on your thoughts of the 45,000 who die each year because of you and folks like you who don’t give a damn.”
Well, if you insist, I was trying to spare you the obvious embarassment from my answer. I am thinking more about the tens or hundreds of millions who have been saved by medical advances that were not imagined and brought to fruition at the point of government rifle in a closed or controlled system, but rather in the free market, where the dreamer of the idea has the profit motivation to think, create, and produce. Yes, the possibility of profit, that word you no doubt consider ugly and mean-spirited, motivates people to work hard, create, and produce. It gives them the chance to help themselves and their own families, and in the process help millions of others.
Is it corruptible? Absolutely. But only when it combines with and subsumes government rather than standing apart from it. When it combines with government it is not profit from production and innovation but rather from lying, cheating and stealing, and then getting away with it under the putative auspices of a (government) regulatory system that is supposed to “protect the public” but rather, and obviously, protects the oligarchy from exposure, investigation, and prosecution. Shall we trust the government to run our health care system, to trust it with our very lives? You are a madman, or a fool.
I care enough about humanity to give it the best chance for the future, the most creative and productive future possible, in an imperfect system that encourages creativity rather than conformity and has demonstrated its value innumerable times.
You obviously have no idea what I care about and do not care about, and you should not imagine that you do know.
Did you read the pensionpulse piece? The European socialist nanny state model is broke. The Euro is collapsing, as we speak. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. Where will the money come from for CAT scans for everyone?
Yes, I know, the Wall Street / Federal Reserve / DC oligarchy is broke, too.