Slogans and hysteria are all the rage with the Obamacare advocates. In fact, they’re all they have to offer. Not one to shirk from a debate, I immersed myself in the FACTS about government controlling costs – in anything. Government CAN control costs. But the corollary to that is, wherever government controls costs, it increases demands. Control the costs of gasoline, you get shortages, as we did in the days of Carter. Control rent, you get overdemand for apartments in cities like New York.
Contrary to the socialist, sophomoric advocates, simply pointing to medicare or medicaid as wonderful examples isn’t enough for a serious dialogue. Those are shining examples of government FAILURE to control costs. And you cannot advocate MORE of the same as a way out of the problem those created, without me wanting to run up and slap you in the back of your head and scream “Wake up!”. Nothing is easier than for governments to impose price controls. They have been doing this, off an on, for thousands of years– repeatedly resulting in (1) shortages, (2) quality deterioration and (3) black markets. Why would anyone want any of those things when it comes to medical care?
Controlling apartment rents at PC creates a shortage of (A2 − A1) apartments. For A1 apartments, consumers are willing and able to pay PB, which leads to various “backdoor” payments to apartment owners.
Try It!
A minimum wage law is another example of a price floor. Draw demand and supply curves for unskilled labor. The horizontal axis will show the quantity of unskilled labor per period and the vertical axis will show the hourly wage rate for unskilled workers, which is the price of unskilled labor.
Now, I am not saying, and never have said, that government making sure that those who are too poor to afford health insurance get medical care is a bad thing. That is already the case. What I am saying, and have always said, is that those who offer government as a way of controlling the costs of health care for those who complain about it and are making, say, $50,000 (or more) a year are like a car salesman trying to get you to sign on the line while making you forget that you’ve already seen the car test driven in other programs, and you will walk away with a lemon.
The granola bars belch and howl about how some percentage of our nation doesn’t have health insurance, ignoring that 1/3 of those are rich enough to buy it and another 1/3 are too lazy to bother who already qualify, and so why should I worry about THOSE people? More than that, why are so called progressives professing so loudly for these groups of people? Have they no shame? An old advertising slogan said, “Progress is our most important product.” With leftists politicians, confusion is their most important product. They confuse bringing down the price of medical care with bringing down the cost. And they confuse medical care with health care.
Now it is coming down to final details, and you are beginning to understand what is coming. There’ll be no universal medicare. And billions of unfunded mandates are to be passed off to the states “to be paid for later”. States will be able to opt out, or will opt themselves out with their own laws. Obamacare acolytes will not be able to say we passed Universal Coverage, because it isn’t the “lassez faire liberal” thing to do, and it isn’t even American. And people like me will eventually make their way to states that opt out.
Oh, and those bright Democrats still included end of life counseling in their fancy health care bill. How stupid is that? You have a woman in Oregon who was offered pills to help her end her life, not the prescription that might save her life, because the latter was more expensive. That’s bureaucracies idea of end of life counseling, whatever is most efficient. Nevermind Death Panel hoogie-boogie, the real argument is there are places government just don’t belong. How and when you should end it is definitely one.
Government will be doing business with the very insurance companies the coffee filter crowd speaks of as the devil, while they go off to their daily kos kook festivals. They go to see their “burning bush” that few others can see that tells them that government makes them bigger while it actually makes them smaller. And you know what those companies are telling you? You, sitting at home in your barcalounger waiting for the cable to come on… That your premiums are going to shoot up with the new health care scam. Young and healthy consumers will see the largest increases—their premiums would more than triple in some states—though average middle-class buyers will pay more too.
Take Ohio, where a young, healthy 25-year-old living in Columbus can purchase insurance from WellPoint today for about $52 per month in the individual market. WellPoint’s actuaries calculate the bill will rise to $79 because Democrats are going to require it to issue policies to anyone who applies, even if they’ve waited until they’re sick to buy insurance. Then they’ll also require the company to charge everyone nearly the same rate, bringing the premium to $134. Add in an extra $17, since Democrats will require higher benefit levels, and a share of the new health industry taxes ($6), and monthly premiums have risen to $157, a 199% boost.
Meanwhile, a 40-year-old husband and wife with two kids would see their premiums jump by 122%—to $737 from $332—while a small business with eight employees in Franklin County would see premiums climb by 86%. It’s true that the family or the individual might qualify for subsidies if their incomes are low enough, but the business wouldn’t qualify under the Senate Finance bill WellPoint examined. And even if there are subsidies, the new costs the bill creates don’t vaporize. They’re merely transferred to taxpayers nationwide—or financed with deficits, which will be financed eventually with higher taxes.
Refusing to pay the costs is not the same as bringing down the cost. That is why price controls create these problems. When developing a new pharmaceutical drug costs roughly a billion dollars, you are either going to pay the billion dollars or cause people to stop spending a billion dollars to develop new drugs.
Years ago, a study showed that Mormons live a decade longer than other Americans. Are doctors who treat Mormons so much better than the doctors who treat the rest of us? Or do Mormons avoid doing a lot of things that shorten people’s lives? The point is that health care is largely in your hands. Medical care is in the hands of doctors. Things that depend on what doctors do– cancer survival rates, for example– are already better here than in countries with government-run medical systems.
If we continue to let those who scream and bark and hate and profane to the sky about the state of life, and how they are so unhappy that they have to interfere with yours, we are all going to end up with health care that does nothing about our medical care.
Sophists delight! You have much to respond to with worthless platitudes and vicious smears that cannot be verified!
Yes, you’re right about the distortions caused by price controls. Like during WWII when to get around wage controls, employers were allowed to start providing subsidized health insurance. Now as taxpayers are subsiding those employed by big corporations I’m sure you want that to stop. Of course, these subsidies are slowly dying by themselves as big corporations whittle away at benefits and layoff anyone likely to require big payouts.
More substantive post than usual, Terry, I’ll respond to parts of it over the next day or two as I have time. For one thing, as this bill morphs and festers and more and more details of it come out, I’m not sure if I can still defend it, it’s getting so jacked up by the more corporate whore Democrats; but I’ll continue to defend single-payer and also the idea of a strong public option to force down costs even if the latter are no longer on the table this year.
The granola bars belch and howl about how some percentage of our nation doesn’t have health insurance…
I guess “granola bars” is in reference to steak eaters and whiskey drinkers like me who spend a lot of their days fighting for progress. But the uninsured are far from our only concern. Did you see Michael Moore’s “Sicko?” No, of course you didn’t. But it was not about the uninsured, it was about the plight of folks who thought they had insurance, and were screwed over anyway. (And you don’t have to watch a Michael Moore movie to know many of those people, or be one.) Half of America’s bankruptcies each year – I forget how many million – are caused by medical bills, and 3/4 of those people had insurance at the time they got sick.
Insurance companies need to make a profit to survive, but in every other civilized country it is illegal for health insurance companies to make a profit. And if the government ever were to try to control costs by starting a good public option, that would not be controlling costs by dictat as you characterize it, but really offering the American public choice and competition (this was the idea anyhow, there may be too many whores still in Congress to let that really happen this year.)
And if the current private insurance model goes out of business due to that competition that would be a good thing, we would end up with single payer like most civilized nations have. And if they figure out a way to compete and keep everybody happy and really offer some useful service, that would also be a good thing.
And there are many other factors driving up health costs, but cutting out or cutting down the huge chunk that for-profit insurance takes out is the most important step.
I’ll read your thing again when I have time and have more to say. But I’ve been wondering if you can help us all with this: What’s this new imprecation “coffee filter?” Did you make it up, or should we be expecting to hear it from Glenn and Rush and Sean and Bill? And what does it mean?
Coffee filter. Someone who lives in society with all the body and the taste and the aroma of life passing through them, and all they retain are the dreck, the grounds. They don’t have any of the coffee to speak about. When they talk politics, all they talk about is the dreck. All they point to is the dreck. And look how separate the coffee is from the dreck. And everybody else just wants to drink their coffee.
I think that’s a fairly philisophical way of looking at it. The urban slang dictionary has a filthy description, something akin to the brilliance of teabagging. But, that there is another term for my expression is not my problem.
Kind of convoluted. Your coinage then, huh? Good luck on that catching on. It really does require your long explanation.
Now, back to my heavenly cup of Peet’s. Hey, is nobody else going to fisk this article? (Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?)