And I *MEAN* what the icon says

[trinityvixen]

I really, really really hope they get the numbers in the House to override the Shrub's veto on this.

A sure sign this country is going to Hell? Dubya can say this:

“It is estimated that if this program were to become law, one out of every three persons that would subscribe to the new expanded Schip would leave private insurance,” the president said.

and this:

that it would steer the program...toward covering children from middle-class families.

...and make it sound like a bad thing. Yes, because god forbid the few middle class people who truly exist (not the six-figure types who have to make that much to afford the "middle class life" as was) not be worried about keeping their children healthy. You know, covering their kids doesn't mean that they aren't still at the mercy of their employer and the benefits provided through their jobs. You will not have the ignorant masses getting uppity with the bosses when their own health could still suffer if they were to lose said jobs. They will still worry about that; they just want not to have to worry about their children suffering for it.

Fucking Bush. This is the guy who really cares about TEH BEBBIEZ and he does this? Shit-eating motherfucker. GET AN INOPERABLE CANCER AND DIE. Preferably after, somehow, losing the INSURANCE FOR LIFE you've gotten for being the WORST president pretty much ever.

Comments

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

One thing I don't understand about the left is this idea that the government is perfectly competent when running massive welfare programs
...well... the government DOES have a record of running the most efficient (in terms of percentage of dollars devoted to patient care, as opposed to any other administrative overhead, profit, paying lawyers to smooth things over, etc). health care plan in the country. That would get my vote. Private insurers are welcome to compete with it -- they'll just get plowed under by a vastly better product.

One thing I don't understand about the left is this idea that the government is perfectly competent when running massive welfare programs, but can't tie its own shoes when running a war.

The government ran WWII very effectively. (And an international body ran the Gulf War very effectively as well). The other wars we've been involved in since have been losing propositions from the start, with either no well-defined objectives or unachievable ones, picked for political/ideological, not military, reasons. No one can be successful under those terms.

A lot of those 45 million uninsured have no need for expensive, all-inclusive health care plans, but they really do need catastrophic health care coverage.
...what part of health are you saying people are inclined to leave out? Are you trying to propose health care plans that will cover the left side of the body, but not the right? The kidneys, but no AIDS?
If that's your proposal, it's DOA, because get this -- there is no such thing as a minor health problem. A "minor" orthopedic problem can cost tremendous amounts of money to treat -- thousands of dollars, which non-rich people don't have lying around. And yet it can have a huge impact on a person's quality of life, even without being life-threatening. And a minor problem, left untreated, will generally become a major one; minor illness is progressive.

there is no health insurance equivalent of, say, Progressive and Geico.
I don't know what you're talking about. GEICO's early efficiency came from carefully selecting the population it insured: originally Government Employees (for its Insurance COmpany), whom actuarial tables showed were much better risks and could therefore be offered preferential rates. At this point, they've dropped that selectivity, but they're still like all other auto insurance; you choose what you cover and to what extent, guided by state minimums.

That's something that cannot work with health care, because health care is so prohibitively expensive. Or rather, it does exist today, in the form of opting out of buying any health care at all; this creates a selection problem where insurance is priced as though it would be bought by only people who will need to use it.
It is essential to understand that this problem won't go away by forcing everyone to buy health insurance. People who now just-do-without and pray they don't get sick will buy catastrophic insurance (which is actually available in most states; it just doesn't cover so much that it isn't worth it to buy, because it doesn't cover those minor-health-problems-that-become-major-ones.) So health care that actually covers something will still be ridiculously expensive, except that now you've forced a lot of people to pay out of pocket for something essentially worthless. UNLESS, of course, you force everyone to buy health insurance beyond the purely catastrophic level; at which point you might as well have a not-for-profit entity with a proven track record of running efficient nationwide social programs manage it, instead of a patchwork of companies that win when they deny treatment, especially life-saving treatment.

(Oh and speaking of catastrophic insurance, have you ever investigated the claim-denial rates of people who've had cancer? You're uninsurable, the end.)

rather than having the government buy the health insurance that people don't need, typically using a large chunk of my money.
I would gladly spend your money to get treatment for kids with, say, juvenile cancers. Yours and mine both. I hope you wouldn't disagree.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

(2 of 2):


But we digress from the thread. The things that haven't been considered are the tremendous strains placed on society's available human capital by a large population of sick people. Or the strains placed on investment by a forced diversion of capital into illness-related debt (whether that gets written off through more lenient bankruptcy laws or not).

And yes, there is the moral dimension too. We as a society believe that people deserve to live healthy lives. They deserve to have their problems fixed to function as best they can. They deserve to have their lives prolonged for so long as they will enjoy a good quality of life. This necessitates a certain amount of health care, and that will cost money. We can either pay for that amount of health care, or we can pay for private companies to shuffle around responsibility for paying for it. We can cut health care costs by the kind of economies of scale that can only happen through guaranteed need and secured payments under a nationwide system—or we can cut those costs by simply denying health care to a sizable proportion of our society. Like them or not, those are the options available to us.
Personally I think that the collective good, the individual good, and the moral imperative happen all to line up together on this issue.

and for the record, yes, I pay my own health insurance. Not to mention my own Geico auto. And I spend every day reading doctors' review books about health care.