In Britain, even though they’re already paying for the National Health Service, six million Brits — two-thirds of citizens earning more than $78,700 — now buy private health insurance. Meanwhile, more than 50,000 travel out of the U.K. annually, spending more than $250 million, to receive treatment more readily than they can at home. — WSJ.com Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Health Insurance Reform
Another Smoking Gun on “Keep Your Coverage”
The conversation below took place more than four years ago — June 23, 2009 — at a congressional hearing on Obamacare. The topic was the keep-your-coverage promise, and the participants were Christina Romer, then chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Rep. Tom Price, who is also a doctor. The conversation plays out like one of those word puzzles where you start out with one word and change one letter at a time to get a completely different word. Watch Romer’s responses on keeping your coverage go from “Absolutely” to a stammering “I’d have to look at the specifics.” It’s also yet another reminder of what a pig in a poke Obamacare was. Even the people advocating for it had no idea what was in it. REP. PRICE: You also mentioned, as other folks have, that the president’s goal — and it’s reiterated over and over and over —… Read more →
Enough of the Mealy-Mouthed Obamacare Excuses!
I’d have a lot more respect for the president if he just came out and said, “As Otter so cogently observed in Animal House, ‘You fucked up … You trusted us!’” Read more →
Great Moments in Presidential Prevarication
“I am not a crook.” — Richard Nixon “Read my lips: no new taxes.” — George H.W. Bush “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” — Bill Clinton “If you like your plan, you can keep it.” — Barack Obama Read more →
Obama Did Not Lie
When President Obama said that he could provide health care to millions without taking any health care away from people who have already got it, he had no chance of being believed. The statement was absurd on its face. This is a law of arithmetic: If you invite a bunch of friends to share your lunch, there’s going to be less lunch for you. Everybody understands that. . . . So when the President said he could expand the availability of medical care while allowing everyone else to keep the care they’ve got, it was like saying he’d take us for a tour of England in his rocket ship. It had absolutely no chance of being believed, and therefore, it seems to me, does not count as a lie. It counts instead as an expression of contempt for the many entirely reasonable people who tried to point out that it… Read more →
ObamaCare Winners and Losers
Cindy Vinson and Tom Waschura are big believers in the Affordable Care Act. They vote independent and are proud to say they helped elect and re-elect President Barack Obama. Yet, like many other Bay Area residents who pay for their own medical insurance, they were floored last week when they opened their bills: Their policies were being replaced with pricier plans that conform to all the requirements of the new health care law. Vinson, of San Jose, will pay $1,800 more a year for an individual policy, while Waschura, of Portola Valley, will cough up almost $10,000 more for insurance for his family of four. . . . Covered California spokesman Dana Howard maintained that in public presentations the exchange has always made clear that there will be winners and losers under Obamacare. . . . “Of course, I want people to have health care,” Vinson said. “I just didn’t… Read more →
Drive Me to the Junkyard in my Cadillac
Well buddy when I die throw my body in the back And drive me to the junkyard in my Cadillac — Bruce Springsteen, “Cadillac Ranch” Say goodbye to that $500 deductible insurance plan and the $20 co-payment for a doctor’s office visit. They are likely to become luxuries of the past. . . . Then blame — or credit — the so-called Cadillac tax, which penalizes companies that offer high-end health care plans to their employees. — High-End Health Plans Scale Back to Avoid ‘Cadillac Tax’ – NYTimes.com You’re probably thinking: “So what? I don’t have a high-end health care plan. I’m a working stiff. Let the Wall Street fat cats pay their Cadillac tax.” Actually, because the plan cost that triggers the Cadillac tax is not indexed for inflation, Bradley Herring, a health economist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, estimates that as many as 75 percent… Read more →
Thomas Jefferson on Why Your Health Insurance Premium is Going Up
Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers. — Despite New Health Law, Some See Sharp Rise in Premiums – NYTimes.com That headline should not read “DESPITE new health law,” it should read “BECAUSE OF new health law.” But we were going to get things for free! We were promised better things at a lower cost! In my day, most of the citizens were farmers or merchants or tradesmen. They lived by their hands and their wits. They had horse sense and they knew when they were being sold a bill of goods. Of course, that was before television. Americans today are unfortunately rather stupid. Most of them don’t know anything about economics, science, history, government… Read more →
If Everything Goes as Intended . . .
If [Affordable Care Act] implementation goes as intended and widespread utilization and automation are achieved, providers could save about $11 billion per year. — Reducing Administrative Costs and Improving the Health Care System — New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) You really can’t dispute something as vague as that but it does raise a number of questions: What does it mean for thousands of pages of legislation affecting the entire healthcare industry as well as every man, woman and child in America to go “as intended”? It’s a circular argument. If it goes as intended, we save $11 billion. If we don’t save $11 billion, it didn’t go as intended. Is “widespread utilization and automation” part of going “as intended” or is that a separate thing? Assuming that implementation does go as intended and widespread utilization and automation are achieved, the best we can say is that providers “could” save… Read more →
The Lives of Julia and Paul
David Henderson says — accurately, I think — that Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remarks can be paraphrased as “People who are dependent on government will vote for the candidate who credibly (to them, at least) promises to keep the programs that have created that dependence.” Do you think President Obama disagrees with that? He doesn’t. If you think he does, please see The Life of Julia on the president’s web site. It lays out a “typical” woman’s cradle-to-grave dependence on government assistance and describes how Obama will keep those programs going while Mitt Romney won’t. The most insulting thing about it is that as you read about Obama funding this and Obama funding that, it sounds like he’s doing it all out of his own goddamn pocket. What a prince! There’s no acknowledgement that Obama is taking from some and giving to others, and that all of Julia’s “free” stuff… Read more →
You Don’t Say
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama told voters repeatedly during the health care debate that the overhaul legislation would bring down fast-rising health care costs and save them money. Now, he’s hemming and hawing on that. — Health care politics run into economic reality – msnbc.com Could not have seen that coming! Read more →
Thomas Jefferson on the Health Care Bill
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. — TJ My fellow Americans — This is a glorious day in our great nation! No, I’m not referring to that tragedy of a health care bill, which I’ll get to in a moment. I’m talking about Free Pastry Day at Starbucks! Who doesn’t enjoy a tasty scone with his morning coffee? Now, on a more somber note . . . Goodbye, representative democracy! Farewell, consent of the governed! President Obama today signed into law a far-reaching measure that will affect everyone living in these United States, now and in the future. It is opposed by most of the country and it is now law. I would never have believed that the government I helped to establish would one day engage in this kind… Read more →
Playing Politics
Steven Landsburg on a public healthcare option: The [General Motors] takeover started with this promise from the President: GM will be run by a private board of directors and management team…They — and not the government — will call the shots and make the decisions about how to turn this company around. Within one month, powerful lawmakers had successfully “encouraged” General Motors to retool factories in their home states, and Senator Jay Rockefeller had prevented the closing of a dealership owned by one of his wealthy constituents. Or recall what happened with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who succumbed to so many political pressure [sic] that–well, you already know the rest of that story. When you politicize an industry, be it cars, mortgage lending or health insurance, you invite interventions on behalf of the rich and powerful. The less rich and the less powerful foot the bill. Read more →
Twitter: 2009-10-08
Bentham vs. Hume – http://bit.ly/1OxVQL # Read more →
Thomas Jefferson on Obama’s Healthcare Speech
My fellow Americans — Perhaps it was unfair of me to be critical of President Obama’s healthcare speech without having heard it. There’s not much to do on a Saturday night when you’re dead, so I read the transcript: We’ve estimated that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system, a system that is currently full of waste and abuse. . . . The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies . . . Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan. And how much money are we talking about, sir? Now, add it all up, and the plan I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years. WTF?! I… Read more →
Thomas Jefferson on Healthcare Reform
My fellow Americans — Did you watch President Obama’s healthcare speech tonight? Neither did I. But I did learn from msnbc.com’s First Read that he hoped in his speech to explain to ordinary American voters — “call them Joe and Jane from Kansas City” — that his health-care reform will 1) cover nearly everyone and 2) cut costs in the long run. So let me get this straight — we’re going to spend money to save money! Does he think everyone in Kansas City is that stupid or just Joe and Jane? What — you don’t believe we can insure 50 million more people and cut costs at the same time? Well then, you’re an uninformed kook! You’re scared that those cost savings will come from drastically rationing access to care, particularly for people who are chronically ill and/or near the end of their lives? You’re un-American! Probably a Nazi!… Read more →
Appeasement
There’s a point at which realism shades over into weakness . . . It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled. — Paul Krugman As we all know, you can’t appease terrorists. Oh wait, sorry–appeasing terrorists is worth a try. It’s Republicans you can’t appease. — Best of the Web Today Read more →
Twitter: 2009-08-21
Want to buy a customized Michael Vick Eagles jersey for your dog? http://tinyurl.com/la3o36 # Obama: "We are God's partners in matters of life and death." Good mission statement for the death panels! # RT @diablocody: Obsolete memory: pushing card catalog drawers in and out at the library. Also, the tangy smell of the old cards. # Read more →
You Better Believe It
These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views–but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades. — Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, ‘Un-American’ attacks can’t derail health care debate The “facts” to which they refer turn out to be not facts at all but representations about the glories of ObamaCare: “Health insurance reform will mean more patient choice. . . . Reform will mean stability and peace of mind for the middle class. . . . Reform will mean affordable coverage for all Americans. . . . Reform will also mean higher-quality care.” What, you don’t believe it? You better believe it, or you’re un-American. — Best of the Web Today Read more →
Helping the White House Keep an Eye on Things
From the White House Blog: Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to “uncover” the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions. There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov. Right. There’s no informed opposition to health insurance reform, only “scary chain emails” and “disinformation” traveling “just below the surface,” whatever that means. It all sounds very sinister though, so as agents of the government, we are encouraging all… Read more →