I think when he says "health care decisions" in your initial quote, what he means is, they won't force you onto the government plan, they'll allow you to choose whichever plan you think is best for you. Hence the comma, and the statement that follows where he mentions you having the option to keep your insurance.
He says absolutely nothing about not trying to pass new legislation that will reform obvious flaws in the system.
quote:It's true that people would not be forced to give up a private plan and go with a public one. The question is whether all of those private plans would still be in place if the government entered the marketplace in a bigger way.
When reworded, that comes out as "Yes, the quote that we just pretended isn't true IS actually true, but we'd like to make a totally different point that doesn't really involve the quote at all, but talks about health care reform in general."
They wouldn't call it health care reform if it wasn't reforming something. If private insurance can't compete with government insurance, then what's all this crowing about the inefficiencies of government? The whole point is to reduce cost and improve care. Private industry has shown that they are unable to do this under the current system. Time for something else.
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Blayne Bradley
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Oh how I love being Canadian with our free care and healthier citizenry with life expectancies that go past 100 years even with our poor.
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quote: I think when he says "health care decisions" in your initial quote, what he means is, they won't force you onto the government plan, they'll allow you to choose whichever plan you think is best for you. Hence the comma, and the statement that follows where he mentions you having the option to keep your insurance.
I think what he means is
quote: In House legislation, a commission appointed by the government would determine what is and isn't covered by insurance plans offered in a new purchasing pool, including a plan sponsored by the government. The bill also holds out the possibility that, over time, those standards could be imposed on all private insurance plans, not just the ones in the pool.
Indeed, Obama went on to lay out other principles of reform that plainly show the government making key decisions in health care. He said insurance companies would be barred from dropping coverage when someone gets too sick, limits would be set on out-of-pocket expenses, and preventive care such as checkups and mammograms would be covered.
quote: They wouldn't call it health care reform if it wasn't reforming something. If private insurance can't compete with government insurance, then what's all this crowing about the inefficiencies of government? The whole point is to reduce cost and improve care. Private industry has shown that they are unable to do this under the current system. Time for something else.
Private companies can only spend the money brought into their plans. That is their only source of income. Obama can pull money from the general fund, or raise taxes on the rich, tax health care benefits on everyone, (EDIT removed the line Rabbit pointed out below) How do you compete with someone who has virtually unlimited revenue streams? You can't. Health insurance companies have to make a profit, or at the very minimum be revenue neutral, they spend what they take in. Obama has no such restriction.
quote:Simply print more money to cover any shortfalls, just like we do with Social Security
You do realize that 1. Social Security has always been in the black, in fact the general fund has been borrowing from the SS fund for decades and 2. the idea that the government can just print money to cover its debts is a myth.
[ July 24, 2009, 07:27 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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quote: You do realize that 1. Social Security has always been in the black, in fact the general funding has been borrowing from the SS fund for decades and 2. the idea that the government can just print money to its debts is a myth.
I went and removed that part...but the point still remains that the government does not have to be revenue neutral in this. In fact, using your example, they could pull money from SS fund to pay for health insurance so the overall point still remains
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quote:2. the idea that the government can just print money to its debts is a myth.
No, it really isn't. I mean, hardly anyone does it in the literal sense (though some do, see Zimbabwe), and doing it to a large degree leads to utter disaster (Zimbabwe's another great example), but lots of countries try it to some degree -- usually with long-term negative effects, though some argue that the short term effects can be worth it.
For instance, take a look at the balance sheet of the federal reserve. It holds substantial amounts of assets (the amount has shot up, and it acquired those assets by offering money that didn't previously exist. This is "printing money" in order to combat what would have been debits from the government -- bank failures, for instance). You can see some of that on the total borrowings balance sheet, which has shot up several orders of magnitude over previous levels, though it is slowly declining now.
The reason we're still seeing deflation, instead of the inflation one might think from that vast increase in the money supply, is that banks are sitting on money. That reduces the multiplier, so any additive effect is overwhelmed by the multiplicative effect's decrease. If the multiplicative effect increases before the fed can back out of its positions . . . well, things could get interesting.
posted
The Rabbit: You may also have seen this referred to as "quantitative easing" which has been popping into the news for roughly half a year now
quote:Quantitative easing, commonly called "printing money," essentially supplies more funds to the banking system than are needed to maintain the Fed's interest rate target. Prior to mid-September, the Fed had been neutralizing the impact of its new lending facilities on the target rate by selling some of its Treasury bills, which drains away the excess funds.
quote:Private companies can only spend the money brought into their plans. That is their only source of income. Obama can pull money from the general fund, or raise taxes on the rich, tax health care benefits on everyone, (EDIT removed the line Rabbit pointed out below) How do you compete with someone who has virtually unlimited revenue streams? You can't. Health insurance companies have to make a profit, or at the very minimum be revenue neutral, they spend what they take in. Obama has no such restriction.
Sure he does.
First off, private insurance makes billions and billions of dollars in profit every year. The idea that government would cost more and sell at a loss is somewhat kooky to me, given the immense profits of the industry. They make money by denying care. Sort of defeats the purpose of wellness doesn't it? Private companies have stockholders, and the government has taxpayers. There's still someone to answer to. If costs were to spiral out of control, do you really think it would take that long for someone to gut the system to bring down costs? Republicans will be waiting in the wings for the next half century to do just that. And that's actually fine with me. It'll keep the system on its toes.
The unlimited revenue stream is pointless. If private industry is cheaper, people will use private insurance. If the government option is cheaper, people will use the government option. How are unlimited funds going to make one cheaper than the other? The problem is, I think the argument you're making is that private insurance MUST deny care to people, for to approve all claims and make people as healthy as can be would bankrupt them. Near as I can tell, that's admitting a fundamental flaw in the current system.
This isn't about basic economic theory, it's about getting us a healthy nation at a price that won't break the bank. The status quo doesn't work. Maybe a public option won't either, but something's gotta give, and just trusting the market to sort it all out hasn't worked, and shows no sign of working. What would you suggest?
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posted
Governments can default on their debts a bit more easily than private citizens, because forcing them to pay may easily be more costly than just writing off the money. This is of course especially true of the US, which presumably can at least maintain its national territory against any possible combination of irate creditors, up to and including every other nation in the world, combined. (The economic effects are something else again, to be sure.) Usually, though, state bankruptcy is a bit of a disaster, so it's hidden with clever devices like inflation. It would be interesting to know how much of Britain's war debts from the Napoleonic and Great wars were really paid back, and at what rate of real interest.
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quote: They said any legislation that emerges from the talks is expected to provide for a non-profit cooperative to sell insurance in competition with private industry, rather than giving the federal government a role in the marketplace.
Medicare patients getting denied service was the part that had me really nervous about the plan. Making patients pay for coverage that won't be accepted by doctors is a really bad plan. But making people buy coverage is a good path to abuse, too. This seems like a nice compromise.
With any luck, it'll cost less than heavily regulating the industry like they do with car and home insurance. I mean, Florida's having trouble keeping home insurers. I'd hate to think what health insurance would look like with the state meddling. Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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