House Passes UHC

[Richard Nixon]

Yesterday the US House of Representatives passed a bill for universal health care. What do you think?

[Skooma Addict]

"No piece of legislation as complex as the health care reform bill can avoid a whole variety of unintended consequences. Elsewhere, I and others have noted (http://www.coordinationproblem.org/2010/03/dept-of-unintended-consequences-file-obamacare-will-hurt-poor-women-with-kids.html) that a provision in the law appears to create strong incentives for businesses not to hire poorer, single mothers who will need subsidies to afford family-covering health insurance. Among the other unintended consequences of the health care reform legislation are its possible effects on small health insurance providers. The support for the bill coming from the major insurers should be one piece of evidence that they expect it to be good for them, particularly due to the provision that requires Americans to buy health insurance. In addition, as is the case with almost all regulation, larger firms are better able to absorb the fixed cost of compliance than are smaller firms. Given that this bill authorizes the hiring of over 16,000 new IRS agents to enforce its tax code provisions, such compliance costs are sure to be high, which will have a higher relative burden for the smaller firms.

The bill's mandate to cover pre-existing conditions will work in a way similar to the fixed costs of bureaucratic compliance. Such coverage isn't really "insurance" as pre-existing conditions have a high probability, if not certainty, of requiring expenditures. It's as if you wanted to buy insurance on a car that was near certain to have brake failure. You aren't buying "insurance," you're getting a straight subsidy of your medical costs. In order to cover the known costs associated with such conditions, firms would normally have to raise premiums on other customers who are genuinely buying insurance. If the new law limits that, the fixed costs will have to come from elsewhere in the firm, much like the compliance costs. And it is big firms who can better absorb these costs than smaller ones.

The law's mandate that no "stand alone" company can sell dental insurance will drive small dental-only insurers out of business as well, leaving that market to the big firms. The result of all of this will be increased concentration and market power in the medical insurance industry, which is sure to lead to more questionable behavior and more complaints about insurers.

The irony, of course, is that the very same progressives who have supported this bill will be summarily outraged by the decline of small health and dental insurers and the oligopolistic behavior of the remaining large ones. Not that they will accept it, but they have no one to blame but themselves for supporting this bill as its changes will be the cause of those problems.

And sadly, you can bet that their proposed solution will not be opening up interstate competition and repealing elements of this current bill, but calling for the even worse solution of a single-payer system as the very market they destroyed continues to get more inefficient."


http://www.pbs.org/nbr/blog/2010/03/the_death_of_small_health_and.html

[Sean]

I've already heard panic stricken words from American friends, Appearantly they're going to be fined if they fall down stairs and dont report it. :\

[mollymae]

Are you guys familiar with health cooperatives? There's a very successful one here in Seattle called Group Health.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/17/AR2009081702965.html

Anyway, at one point last year during the health care ordeal, people talked about cooperatives possibly being a reform option. That is, they talked about it for less than a week and I never heard about it again.
Would you think I'm crazy if I suggested that the insurance companies intentionally silenced the idea? :unsure:

[Nolan]

Would you think I'm crazy if I suggested that the insurance companies intentionally silenced the idea? :unsure:

You crazy commie you.

As for the bill:

Eh.

[mollymae]

You crazy commie you.

ha
Not a commie, just suspicious...

[SouthernBelle82]

That it's not universal health care. A lot of people are still not covered. I was just thinking how it would have been good to pass the different elements of this bill one by one in the House and Senate and then when it goes to Obama to put it as one bill because there are some good things like pre-existing conditions.

[SouthernBelle82]

I've already heard panic stricken words from American friends, Appearantly they're going to be fined if they fall down stairs and dont report it. :\

And we're now socialist. :lol:

[Richard Nixon]

That it's not universal health care. A lot of people are still not covered. I was just thinking how it would have been good to pass the different elements of this bill one by one in the House and Senate and then when it goes to Obama to put it as one bill because there are some good things like pre-existing conditions.

Who doesn't it cover in one form or another?

[LeftSideDown]

That it's not universal health care. A lot of people are still not covered. I was just thinking how it would have been good to pass the different elements of this bill one by one in the House and Senate and then when it goes to Obama to put it as one bill because there are some good things like pre-existing conditions.

They tried this during Reagan's term as president (I forget on what, its really unimportant) but the Supreme Court shot it down as unconstitutional because it basically amounted to giving the President the power of line-item veto.

[Yazman]

It's not universal healthcare at all. All it does is give EVEN MORE money to giant insurance companies which are the PROBLEM with the american healthcare system.

It's just "universal private insurance."

[RGacky3]

Ditto on what Yazman said, without a public option of medicare buy in or single payer its just a joke.

This is giong to be an electoral disaster for the Democrats. They are gonna get their funding, sure, the health insurance companies will be dishing out the cash (as they already are). But they will loose the progressive vote, I believe.

This bill will be extremely unpopular with the electorate, the progressives will hate it because its a corporate handout, and the right will hate it because its reform. Unless they can get some sort of public plan through I doubt this will last. If the public plan goes through, it will be as hard to get rid of it as it is to get rid of medicare.

Thats why they don't even want to VOTE on any sort of public plan, because they don't want it to pass but the democrats don't want to go on reford for or against it, for it they loose funding, against it they loose votes, so they try this corporate bill isntead, and I am predicting now its gonna be a disaster, and the right wing will be up in arms about how health care reform sucked, and they will be right, what they will leave out is it would work with a public plan.

[SouthernBelle82]

They tried this during Reagan's term as president (I forget on what, its really unimportant) but the Supreme Court shot it down as unconstitutional because it basically amounted to giving the President the power of line-item veto.

That sucks cause it sucks if you're someone who wants to vote for the bill but there's something majorly bad in it that will get approved that could do a lot of harm and all the good things could be mute. Sigh so it can suck.

[Havet]

http://www.pbs.org/nbr/blog/2010/03/the_death_of_small_health_and.html

Ouch...

So much for choice, eh?

[Die Rote Fahne]

Yesterday the US House of Representatives passed a bill for universal health care. What do you think?

They didn't though.

[Bud Struggle]

It will never happen. (And yes, I know they passed it.)

[Dimentio]

Are you guys familiar with health cooperatives? There's a very successful one here in Seattle called Group Health.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/17/AR2009081702965.html

Anyway, at one point last year during the health care ordeal, people talked about cooperatives possibly being a reform option. That is, they talked about it for less than a week and I never heard about it again.
Would you think I'm crazy if I suggested that the insurance companies intentionally silenced the idea? :unsure:

Probably.

[RGacky3]

It will never happen. (And yes, I know they passed it.)

Once people get pissed enough it will (public healthcare is still very popular).

[Comrade Anarchist]

It means the government is pushing itself towards bankruptcy. Which means new taxes and heavier taxes, restricted freedoms, and probably a surge in the military so expand and protect a dwindling empire. Another thing about this bill is that it is nothing more than a reach around for corporatists that benefit from the state, the antithesis of free markets. The big Pharma deal cuts all competition and will lead to continually rising prices in medicine, while if all our borders were opened then granny would be able to retire and get her meds.

The Richmond Times dispatch in my state has a great article on how this will lead to even less checks and more growth of the government into people's personal lives,

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/opinion/columnists/article/ED-HINKLE23A_20100322-172403/332151/

[Morgenstern]

Will the healthcare bill fix things? Of course not, in a society where capitalists rules it usually doesn't go against its own interests. The capitalists will only allow universal healthcare as seen in Europe when they are ready for it. When the workers are at the verge of finally waking up they will throw a bone to distract us.

This bill only helps a few people. But even if it helped a lot of people, a slave is a slave no matter how will treated he/she is. No matter how much healthcare we get we will still be slaves.

[IcarusAngel]

The market keeps failing so the government has to come in and try and fix the mess so that the citizens don't call for too much reform.

We need to start abolishing markets in every industry.

[RGacky3]

It means the government is pushing itself towards bankruptcy. Which means new taxes and heavier taxes, restricted freedoms, and probably a surge in the military so expand and protect a dwindling empire. Another thing about this bill is that it is nothing more than a reach around for corporatists that benefit from the state, the antithesis of free markets. The big Pharma deal cuts all competition and will lead to continually rising prices in medicine, while if all our borders were opened then granny would be able to retire and get her meds.


THe healthcare reform package with the public option REDUCES THE DEFECIT dumbass.