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Another boring post about why i am against this health care reform effort

T

TheItinerantSon

Well-Known Member
So Greg Mankiw had an interesting post on his blog recently
https://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2011/06/next-step-on-road-to-serfdom.html
Greg Mankiw said:
The Next Step on the Road to Serfdom - Greg Mankiw's Blog
Paul Krugman writes:

But nobody is proposing that the government deny you the right to have whatever medical care you want at your own expense. We’re only talking about what medical care will be paid for by the government.
I wish that Paul were correct, but I am not convinced that he is. Chills went down my spine a few days ago when I read the following proposal from the Center for American Progress, a think tank with strong ties to the Democratic party:

Thus we also include a failsafe mechanism that would ensure significant savings. Our failsafe would be triggered if, starting in 2020, total economywide health care expenditures grow at a rate faster than the economy. Should that happen, we would empower the IPAB [the panel of experts set up by President Obama's health care law] to extend successful reforms in Medicare and other public programs to insurance plans offered in the health care exchanges and then potentially to all health care plans, such that the target is met. This will ensure that costs are constrained across the health care sector, preventing cost-shifting and maintaining access for all.*

That is, under the likely scenario that healthcare spending keeps rising faster than GDP, the Center for American Progress would give government the power to prohibit people from buying expensive health plans with their own money. That is not my idea of progress.

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*Source: Page 43-44 of this document. I put the crucial phrase in bold.
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See this is the root of my opposition to the Affordable Care Act. Its not so much that I was opposed to the measures contained in this bill, but more so that I was afraid of what the left would propose after this bill failed to lower health care costs. Because as Mankiw also pointed out a few days later

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/business/economy/19view.html?_r=1
Greg Mankiw said:
One thing that the two parties share, however, is the belief that controlling health care costs is possible. Yet many economists believe that the rise in health spending is largely the result of medical advances, which prolong and enhance life at a high cost. Perhaps health spending will inevitably, and even should, keep rising as a share of national income.
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*Another uninteresting response about the dangers of entitlement thinking, and a dis-empowered middle class*
 
This.

In a nation of folks who don't want the government involved in our bedrooms, we want the government to control everything else "for our own good".

I think what I do with my body, my food, my medicines, what doctors I speak to or permit to perform medical evaluations or procedures is nobody else's business.
 
babe said:
I think what I do with my body, my food, my medicines, what doctors I speak to or permit to perform medical evaluations or procedures is nobody else's business.
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So, you foregoing health insurance entirely (there is a small tax for that)? Or, are you saying that you would rather have your medicnes, the list of doctors you can speak to, and decision on medical evaluations and procedures controlled by an entity that answers to strangers seeking profit as opposed to elected officials seeking votes?
 
Forget about the philosophical arguments for a second:

Like millions of people my medical insurance is provided through my job. For a family plan (wife and one kid) I pay $435 a month. My wife has a pre-existing condition which requires her to go to in-network specialists about a dozen times a year ($30 co-pay). My son is 6 years old - so he gets the usual colds, bumps and bruises that often require him going to his pediatrician($20 co-pay). So on top $5,220 in payments through my job I have, easily, another $1,000 in co-pays for doctor vists and medication. The payments through my job are of course pre-tax and I have a modest HSA account which helps a little; but all in all everything costs me about $6,000 a year out of my pocket.

So then, forgetting about politics for a moment, from a standpoint of dollars and cents, tell me why it is better for my family to have private insurance as opposed to being on some type of public plan? How much will my taxes need to go up to support a plan with a public option? $1k? 2k? How about 4k? You're still not even close to what I pay now.

Before you tell me that through nationalized health care I can't choose my own doctors;, my plan (like most); have made it virtually impossible to go out of network without a huge financial hit.

Before you tell me I should find another job - go **** yourself. My insurance has no out-of-pocket expenses and a max deductible of $400 no matter what. That's huge piece of mind in case something horrible happens to one of us. That's better than at least 75% of the plans out there.
 
If the idea were to increase taxes so everyone could get more health care I would be for it.

If the idea were to double the number of nurses and doctors by 2030 so everybody could get more health care at a better price, i'd be for it.

If the plan was to de-couple employment from insurance i would say thats great. In a society with more and more job insecurity and free-lancing it makes sense to do that.

But thats not the plan. The plan is to lower the amount that we spend, as a nation, on health care. Thats really the plan, the whole plan. To bend the curve. And the idea that you can do that without cutting care just because some poorly done regressions say so, is fantasy.

The public option will not be cheaper. It just won't. If it was, why hasn't some kind-hearted billionaire created a non-profit health insurance plan that does the same thing.

The system does have some fat...but you can't really get to it without hitting the meat too.


To me - this is a technological problem. And the solutions will be technological - not legislative.
 
The-Joker said:
*Another uninteresting response about the dangers of entitlement thinking, and a dis-empowered middle class*
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Stop trying to sound like you know what the hell you're talking about.







I was just feeling left out. :)
 
candrew said:
Forget about the philosophical arguments for a second:

Like millions of people my medical insurance is provided through my job. For a family plan (wife and one kid) I pay $435 a month. My wife has a pre-existing condition which requires her to go to in-network specialists about a dozen times a year ($30 co-pay). My son is 6 years old - so he gets the usual colds, bumps and bruises that often require him going to his pediatrician($20 co-pay). So on top $5,220 in payments through my job I have, easily, another $1,000 in co-pays for doctor vists and medication. The payments through my job are of course pre-tax and I have a modest HSA account which helps a little; but all in all everything costs me about $6,000 a year out of my pocket.

So then, forgetting about politics for a moment, from a standpoint of dollars and cents, tell me why it is better for my family to have private insurance as opposed to being on some type of public plan? How much will my taxes need to go up to support a plan with a public option? $1k? 2k? How about 4k? You're still not even close to what I pay now.

Before you tell me that through nationalized health care I can't choose my own doctors;, my plan (like most); have made it virtually impossible to go out of network without a huge financial hit.

Before you tell me I should find another job - go **** yourself. My insurance has no out-of-pocket expenses and a max deductible of $400 no matter what. That's huge piece of mind in case something horrible happens to one of us. That's better than at least 75% of the plans out there.
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You'd just laugh if I said "I can feel your pain". But you don't laugh when politicians tell you that. You respond with the hope of the battle-worn believing fresh troops are coming to your rescue.

I'm sayin' those troops aren't coming to rescue you, but to thin the herd. The lobbyists who crafted the healthcare scam are workin' for shareholders values not the patient's values.
 
TroutBum said:
Stop trying to sound like you know what the hell you're talking about.
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The truth of the matter is, Trout, what the OP is talking about isn't actually that hard to grasp, the fact that your scathing (sarcasm) retort was meant to illuminate a facade of intelligence I was trying to create (I wasn't), in order to humble me, kind of goes to show that you don't really get what is going on, and might be kinda stupid (kinda). Yeah I probably couldn't conjure an interesting original post about entitlement thinking and the middle class, so I didn't. I just don't get what your problem is... because nothing I said was all that complex or elitist.

Anyway... carry on with your smart people talk, I'll be in the back widdling if anyone needs me.
 
The-Joker said:
The truth of the matter is, Trout, what the OP is talking about isn't actually that hard to grasp,
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I disagree. Most people don't have a clue what's going on with Health Care Reform other than what they hear or read on Fox News, etc. Clearly, you're no exception.

The-Joker said:
the fact that your scathing (sarcasm) retort was meant to illuminate a facade of intelligence I was trying to create (I wasn't), in order to humble me,
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Thanks for pointing out your sarcasm, I never would've figured it out. As far as your facade of intelligence, one only needs to look at "SHOW ALL POSTS BY THE-JOKER" to realize just how utterly retarded you really are. (not sarcasm) Go Hitler!

The-Joker said:
kind of goes to show that you don't really get what is going on, and might be kinda stupid (kinda).
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The only correct thing you've stated in this thread. I'm right in the middle of the health insurance world and I still don't have a clue about what's really going on.

The-Joker said:
Yeah I probably couldn't conjure an interesting original post about entitlement thinking and the middle class, so I didn't. I just don't get what your problem is... because nothing I said was all that complex or elitist.
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I have no problem, I was just pointing something out. I quite like you, Keenan, even if you are a tad bit stupid.
 
No I was just trying to troll some pos rep from the Trout haters... Health Care reform is really ****ing hard to understand. Because there are loop holes, people who deserve it, people who don't, people who take advantage of it, and people who should, but dont'. Then you throw money into the equation. And I for one, only have opinions, but no real educated stance on health care reform, i don't think anybody does and thats part of the problem


But, all good, it felt good calling you stupid, but it hurt when you agreed.


And there is only one "e" in my name.
 
The-Joker said:
No I was just trying to troll some pos rep from the Trout haters... Health Care reform is really ****ing hard to understand. Because there are loop holes, people who deserve it, people who don't, people who take advantage of it, and people who should, but dont'. Then you throw money into the equation. And I for one, only have opinions, but no real educated stance on health care reform, i don't think anybody does and thats part of the problem


But, all good, it felt good calling you stupid, but it hurt when you agreed.


And there is only one "e" in my name.
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There are none. https://jazzfanz.com/memberlist.php?order=desc&sort=reputation&pp=30
 
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