Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. - Albert Einstein

Thursday, March 18, 2010

The CBO has scored the new Healthcare bill and concludes:

According to a Democratic source, CBO has finished its work and will release the official preliminary score later today. But here are the basic numbers: The bill will cost $940 billion over the first 10 years and reduce the deficit by $130 billion during that period. In the second 10 years—so, 2020 to 2029—it will reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion. The legislation will cover 32 million Americans, or 95 percent of the legal population.

It bears repeating, because the thick-headed Left can’t get this, that the CBO scores the bill they are given.  So the CBO has to take vague promises to reduce spending and cut waste as though they were actually going to happen.  In past analyses (and I’m sure in this one), the CBO has very sharply warned that spending control is fantastically unlikely.  But the new numbers may be enough to persuade Democrats who are on the fence.

(I have also been reading that the Democrats are putting their overhaul of the student loan system in the HCR bill, which is supposed to save billions, in order to increase the “savings”.  Given that I’m dubious the student loan bill will save money, I am unimpressed.)

In another interesting development, we have yet more evidence of the existence of the Religious Left.  The Catholic Nuns have endorsed healthcare.  I am not surprised at all.  One of the great untold stories of religion and politics is heavy leftward tilt of many religious people, especially those in official positions.  A colleague who was taught in catholic schools told me, “The nuns were all socialists”.  So this endorsement doesn’t surprise me.  I expect will see more of the Religious Left try to plug God into the HCR equation.  And I expect the same people who scream bloody murder every time the Catholic Church speaks out about abortion to stay utterly silent on this one.

On the flip side, the Massachusetts state treasurer has warned that Romneycare, the predecessor of Obamacare, is bankrupting the state.

The Massachusetts treasurer said Tuesday that Congress will “threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years” if it adopts a health-care overhaul modeled after the Bay State’s.

Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill – a former Democrat running as an independent for governor – said the local plan enacted in 2006 has succeeded only because of huge subsidies and favorable regulatory changes from the federal government.

...

He also gave reporters a copy of a recent state ledger sheet, showing the state’s Medicaid program ballooning from $7.5 billion to a projected $9.2 billion since the plan was adopted. Meanwhile, of the 407,000 newly insured, only 32 percent paid for private insurance wholly by themselves.

The remainder have received partial or total taxpayer subsidies to buy the insurance coverage required by the plan.

...

Cahill’s comments came as the administration launched three days of hearings on rising health care costs in Massachusetts that threaten the 2006 law.

Patrick said the state has to come up with ways to ease the burden of soaring premiums on struggling businesses, individuals and families. Insurance premiums in Massachusetts rose more than 12 percent over a two-year period.

But doesn’t he care about the poor uninsured?

So what do we do if this passes?  Unelecting the Democratic Congress is a first step.  But the bill will not be repealed while Obama is in office.  And, even if the GOP manages to retake the White House in 2012 (a prospect I deem very unlikely), it is very unlikely they will have the numbers to get it repealed, especially once it’s been entrenched for 2-6 years.

The best step to take would be to massively overhaul the insurance mandates to make it easier for people to buy high-deductible insurance and to break the employer-insurance connection, as the Wyden-Bennet bill proposes.  I have my issues with Wyden-Bennet, but it’s far superior to Obamacare.

My worst fear is this will pass, the Republicans will get elected and then proceed to make it far far worse.  As we’ve seen with Charlie Crist, the GOP likes the new spending and is fine with the pre-existing condition ban.  What they oppose is the coverage mandate, which is the only think that keeps the pre-exisiting condition ban from bankrupting the insurance companies.  The also oppose the taxes, which is the only way to pay for the subsidies. That’s a recipe for an even bigger fiscal and regulatory catastrophe.

Update: On a related note, we have yet more evidence of the idiocy of Nancy Pelosi.  She’s been claiming that HCR is really a “jobs bill” because it will create four million jobs.  Because we all know how less money flowing into a sector of the economy creates jobs.  An analysis from Americans for Tax Reform says its more likely to cost a million jobs.  Given our experience with taxes, regulation and the economy, ATR’s analysis sounds much better than the left-wing CAP’s analysis.

Obama has finally been given something other than the usual fluff stuff interview he has been getting away from the MSM for the past 2 years, and it is no surprise it happened to be done by Fox News (video1, video2). He finally sat down with a reporter that was interested in the facts, and Bret Baier grilled his ass. We finally got to see the great orator at work when he wasn’t being handed some softballs by people that get tingles in their legs about him, and Obama, in addition to getting pissed he was not being allowed to just skirt questions with stupid and meaningless talking points, scored, as I expected, a clear F- with his idiotic answers.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Congress is about to use some chicanery they term “Deem and pass” to pretend they voted for a bill, when they did not, so they can push this massively unpopular government healthcare takeover on us stupid peasants that don’t know what’s better for us. Maybe people like me that end up owing the IRS taxes every April should also come up with such a nifty rule where we pretend we send in a check to them, but don’t really do it…

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

The Commonwealth Fund has produced this graph, quoted approvingly by the usually smart Ezra Klein and Andrew Sullivan* in support of HCR.  It’s a profile in absurdity.

(*I think I’ve figured out why Sullivan is so adamant on HCR.  It’s because he’s feeling guilty for running Besty McGaughey’s article 18 years ago that inside the beltway pundits blame for killing Clinton’s healthcare reform.  I find it difficult to believe that an article that 95% of the American people never heard of single-handedly spiked that HMO-fixated piece of shit.  But whatever works, I guess.)

That’s a projection of what heath care costs would have done if Nixon, Carter or Clinton had brought down spending by 1.5% per year.

I don’t know how to say this diplomatically, so I won’t.  This is, without question, one of the stupidest points made on the healthcare debate, pro- or con.  As McCardle points out, this is essentially arguing that if we’d lowered costs, we would have lowered costs.

There is no reason—none—to believe that any of the previous healthcare reform plans would have controlled spending like this without denying care, curbing innovation or rationing.  The government healthcare plans have grown faster than the private sector average, not slower.  Budget projections have almost always been massive underestimates, Medicare especially.  Just yesterday we found out that Social Security is in the red, a decade ahead of schedule.  Need I go on?  Where in the blue fuck does anyone get the idea that government could have cut healthcare sending 1.5% per year?  Would Congress have had more will to control healthcare spending with 300 million customers as opposed to 150 million?

That graph is basically an appeal to magic.  It presupposes 40 years of hard choices from a Congress that can barely pass a budget.  It claims that the very act of placing government in charge of healthcare would bring costs down.  Supporters will point to the OECD average and say, “But it can be done!”.  Yes it can ... when you ration; when you curb innovation; when you deny care; when you have an American healthcare system to absorb the overflow from yours.

The deeper we get into this healthcare debate, the closer we get to the fundamental problem with healthcare in this country, which is this: There is a huge disconnect between the people getting healthcare and the people paying for it.  As a result, people—even those with private health insurance—have little incentive to control costs, little incentive to forego care of dubious necessity and every reason to buy into absurd fantasies like the graph above.  No one is willing to admit that controlling health care costs will entail reducing services, one way or another.  They just believe that getting the government involved will magically bring costs down.  It’s “starve the beast” all over again.

In other news, the Democrats are considering a deam and pass maneuver in which they would consider the Senate bill passed and only vote on amendments.  This would enable them to pass healthcare reform while still claiming they didn’t vote for it.  The WSJ editorial runs down the usual arguments, but I think that misses the larger point.

How fucking stupid do they think we are?

In order for “deem and pass” to work, the Democrats have to pass the amendments.  In effect, this makes the amendment votes a vote on both the amendment and the bill.  If any Democrat votes in favor of the amendments, that will be just as good as having voted for the bill itself.  The GOP will not forget that.  And I guarantee you the voters won’t.

The simple facts remains.  If this bill were popular, the Democrats would have passed it months ago.  If this bill were good, they would have passed it even in the face of public opposition, confident that the future will vindicate them.  If they are having to resort to Kerry-esque “I voted for the bill and voted agains it” bullshit, what does this tell you about the bill?

Update: Boy, the desperation of the HCR supporters is really frying their brains.  Here are Ornstein and Mann claiming that the Democrats lost the election in 1994 because they failed to pass healthcare reform.  No, I shit you not.

To be sure, there were many reasons for Democrats’ massive losses in 1994, including scandals and angry gun owners. But the failure to fulfill their responsibility for governing contributed mightily to the debacle. That was the conclusion of pollsters from both parties in the aftermath of the November contests. Two weeks after the election, Republican pollster Bill McInturff found that “one of the most important predicates for Republican success was not having health care pass.” He noted that the collapse of the plan reinforced voters’ belief that Washington was in a dysfunctional state of gridlock. At the same time, Democratic pollster Mike Donilon, who worked on the losing campaign of Pennsylvania Senator Harris Wofford, said he believed that Wofford would have won had health reform passed.

This is extraordinary historical revisionism.  The reason Democrats lost in 1994 was because they raised taxes and tried to pass a massive an unpopular healthcare reform bill.  Only in the minds of deluded Leftists did people reject the Democrats because they failed to foist Clintoncare on us.

Yeah, it was all those angry gun owners clinging to their Colts. What a bunch of condescending twerps.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Here’s a quick question.  Suppose you run a business and you’re not terribly moral.  Would you be in favor of legislation that:

(1) forces people or their employers to buy your product;

(2) forces people to buy the more expensive versions of your product;

(3) give them money to help buy your product; and

(4) creates a closed market so that they can only select from you and a few other companies?

Of course you would.  Who wouldn’t want that?  I mean, besides free market zealots.

Well, this is precisely what is happening with health insurance under Obamacare.  As Jacob Sullum points out:

If Obama’s plan works as advertised, it will be a huge boon to insurers. As he himself notes, “they’re going to have 30 million new customers” thanks to the government’s mandates and subsidies.

To distract us from the favor he is doing for insurers, Obama claims to be getting tough with them by demanding that they take all comers and charge them all the same rates, without regard to health. While abolishing risk-based pricing contradicts a basic principle of the insurance business, the industry has to weigh the loss of that freedom against the gain of government-guaranteed revenue.

Despite his talk about reining in “excessive” premium hikes, Obama’s plan commits him to keeping insurers financially sound so they can provide the coverage he is promising. Federal regulators, like their state counterparts, will find that “you can’t separate the underlying solvency of companies from the rates they charge,” as Wisconsin’s insurance commissioner recently told The New York Times. “From a consumer protection standpoint,” Kansas’ insurance commissioner agreed, “the most important thing we do is ensure the solvency of companies.”

This is why I could never be a Democrat.  This is why I sometimes get so angry listening to these jackasses on TV and the radio.  They are completely selling out our healthcare to the insurance companies on the one hand.  And then they turn around and say shit like this to established their liberal bona fides.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi concedes that Democrats allowed the health care reform debate to be “hijacked” by insurance companies and other interests set on killing the bill.

Yes, Nancy.  It’s the evil insurance companies you are beholden to that “hijacked” the bill, not your fractious dim-bulb party and the understandable nervousness Americans feel about government intrusion into any industry.

Of course, insurance companies, for all their demonization, are not the real problem with healthcare anyway, as Jeffrey Anderson points out:

According to the most recent Fortune 500 rankings, health insurers are not even among the top-30 United States industries in profit-margin. Health insurers rank 35th, with a profit-margin of just 2.2 percent — less than one-fifth the profit-margin of railroads. None of the ten largest American health insurers made profits of more than 4.5 percent, and two of them lost money. Health insurers’ collective profit-margin is less than one-eighth that of drug companies and less than one-seventh that of companies that sell medical products or equipment. It’s also less than that of medical facilities. Yet when was the last time you heard President Obama rail against greedy hospitals?

One thing at a time, my friend.  Once the Democrats have control of the insurance companies (partly by delaying the Medicare SGR fix and buying off the AMA), they will then explain the inevitable cost over-runs as the result of greedy doctors and drug companies and reign them in.  Divide and conquer.

In all, the combined profits of the 14 largest American health insurers (the ones who crack the Fortune 1000) are $8.7 billion. That’s less than 0.4 percent, or 1/250th, of overall U.S. health-care costs, which are $2.5 trillion.

The Democrat are like a football team run by morons.  They really only have one play in the book—envy.  Greedy rich insurance companies, greedy rich doctors and greedy rich Republicans are the enemies. Democrats are the nobel gallants standing between us and exploitation.  And even as they climb into bed with insurance companies, unions and “green energy” interests, they continue to peddle this myth.

Whatever works, I guess.

(In other news, the Senate Parliamentarian has limited what the Dems can do with reconciliation.  Expect outrage and bombast and demonization of man who’s just doing his job.)

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Democrats ran and won in 2006, and then again in 2008, on the bad behavior of republicans. Republicans were successfully and correctly painted as having lost their fiscal sanity for the deficit spending prior to 2006, only to have democrats gain control of congress and the spending purse after the 2006 elections, and set new spending records they then blamed Bush for. The leftwing machine’s manipulations of the facts, with big-time help from a complicit media that didn’t point out democrats were always worse at that stuff anyway when in charge, allowed them to run on the lack of fiscal responsibility of the republicans in 2008 again, using the crisis of their own making that they then blamed on Bush yet again, to win big, only to then proceed to set new deficit spending records. Here is the graph for those of you that want to dispute the deficit spending facts, so spare us the bull:

As this projection showed Obama’s deficit spending in his first year ended up being more than all 8 years of Bush. Oh sure, as I already pointed out Obama is blaming Bush for having to do so. Democrats have successfully convinced so many that the financial crisis we are in isn’t tied to those idiotic collectivist economic lending practices they forced upon the market in the last 3 decades. Even worse, they successfully have covered up the rigged games Franks and Dodd set up with Fannie and Freddie to keep those faulty economic policies afloat, and how those trading scams then led to the implosion of the housing market and then the financial sector. But that “It’s Bush’s fault” excuse is wearing thin as people are slowly seeing the truth. Almost $2 trillion of the tax payer’s dollars has been funneled to democrats and their friends, through one collectivist economic scam or another promising salvation, but delivering nothing but a drastically growing government bureaucracy, while the private sector continues to bleed jobs and contract. And the WH remains focused on tacking on trillions more in new taxes and debt so they can give government control of healthcare moneys and decisions, with a scam which purports to reign in costs and be fiscally responsible by of all things taxing us for 10 years to provide 5 or 6 years of coverage, while ignoring the economic disaster they are leaving in their wake. And the one thing they should be addressing, the lack of jobs, gets nothing but some meaningless political play. In the mean time the hole is growing deeper and the spending of money we simply don’t have continues to rise. This year is looking like it will set even higher and wasteful deficit spending records as this February’s $220.9 billion single month record is showing. This seems to be our economic future thanks to the democrats and their economics. But the fact that democrats are destroying our economy, and are trying hard to destroy healthcare, is not the thing I want to address here. I want to talk a bit about one of the other lies they told to get themselves elected.

If you have been following the whole Eric Massa fiasco, you know this stuff has turned into a soap opera writ large. Frankly I do not know if Massa is telling the truth. He is a democrat after all, and lying is second nature for them. However, I do not put it past this WH to do what Massa has accused them of doing either. Based on what I have seen them do in just this first year, I have no doubt that this bunch is probably the most corrupt crew I have ever seen. We are dealing with Chicago politics here, and this – hope & change! - is SOP for these people. My bet is that since Obama wants this monster passed, his team is going to make it happen. Even if they have to do what Massa has accused them of. In fact I do not put it past them to resort to openly committing felonies to do so considering the vested interest they have in making this the law of the lad. After all, they control the levers of power and the press, so whose gonna be able to do anything about anything bad they do? If the stuff that has been going on so far hasn’t made the case yet, I doubt anything they do will.

And that brings me to my point about this whole Massa thing. If you don’t remember Nancy promising to drain the republican swamp and end the culture of corruption back in 2006, here is just one of the instances the sympathetic press gave her words play. Unfortunately, as case after case proves – Chris Dodd, Barney Franks, Charley Rangel, and a plethora of others – Nancy lied, and the corruption and criminal behavior, like the deficit spending and the fiscal irresponsibility I talked about before, is also setting new records. Don’t take my word for it. The case with Massa is more of the same. Even more important is the fact that while Pelosi is now claiming ignorance that’s a blatant lie because Nancy knew months ago about Massa’s behavior. And while Nancy is playing dumb, just a little research would have made it all obvious from records going back to Massa’s NAVY days showing that Massa was a time bomb waiting to explode.

As is the case in all these other stories of corruption that the MSM is ignoring or down playing, we are being lied to by these democrats that want to pretend real criminal activity and serious ethics violations, stuff that makes what happens when the republicans were in charge look tame, isn’t their modus operandi. And keep in mind that it is this scandal driven congress which is ignoring the will of the people and pushing forward with an unpopular government takeover of healthcare. Why isn’t the MSM up in arms about all this corruption and the will of the people being ignored? I guess that’s more of that hope and change for you.

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

I’m not exactly a fan of Sarah Palin, as you may have noticed.  But the latest ”gotchya!” is a bit of a reach.

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, a fierce opponent of Democratic health-care reform efforts who has said America under President Obama is headed toward socialism, told a Canadian audience her family used to go to Canada to get medical care when she was growing up.

“My first five years of life we spent in Skagway, Alaska, right there by Whitehorse. Believe it or not—this was in the ‘60s—we used to hustle on over the border for health care that we would receive in Whitehorse. I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse and I think, isn’t that kind of ironic now. Zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada,” Palin said a speech Saturday night, according to the Calgary Herald.

The healthcare reform cultists are jumped up and down about this.  But as Nick Gillepsie points out:

Canada was not born with the single-payer system it currently has. In fact, the full-blown socialization of its medical sector was a long time coming and was not in anything like its current state in the 1960s. In the early ‘60s, Canada had passed laws pushing universal access to hospitals; in 1966, the Medical Care Act allowed each province to create universal coverage systems, which took years to fully implement. It was only in 1984 that the current system really came online in the Canada Health Act, which banned patient fees and billing by doctors in excess of what the government paid.

There’s yet more irony. As we’ve noted many times on this blog: when you’re talking about the healthcare system we have now, there is no question which way the traffic is going.  Canadians who can afford to do so are streaming across our borders to pay for healthcare.  Need I bring up my uncle who would get cash in exchange for his services from Canadians?  Yes, I think I do.

But I’d like to trowel on another layer of irony that Gillespie dances around.  Sarah Palin’s story perfectly illustrates why we need to oppose Obamacare.  Canada’s system was not created as the rationed controlled system it is today.  It was moved there gradually, step by step, over the course of a couple of decades.  In Canada, we see the fully played-out incrementalism that went from a system that Sarah Palin happily used in the 1960’s to a system that few Americans would use now.  So, as usual, the debate proves the precise opposite point of the one the Left is trying to make.

Point, Palin.  For once.

Update: Speaking of Canadian healthcare…

Thursday, March 04, 2010

The usual suspects in the MSM are all aflutter about some kids on a “take-your-child-to-work-day” being allowed by their father to direct air traffic. It’s a huge scandalous thing! Have these morons been paying attention to who’s pushing for and running the government healthcare takeover? These kids doing air traffic control has a much lower probability of ending in disaster, and fewer people would be affected, when all things are considered. Yet the MSM morons are telling us we should let government take over healthcare. The great majority of the American people get it, though.

Monday, March 01, 2010

Mitch Daniels, one of the few governors in the nation to control his state’s spending, has a great op-ed on healthcare reform today.  When he took office, he created an HSA for state employees.  It has now expanded to encompass 70% of the state employees.

State employees enrolled in the consumer-driven plan will save more than $8 million in 2010 compared to their coworkers in the old-fashioned preferred provider organization (PPO) alternative. In the second straight year in which we’ve been forced to skip salary increases, workers switching to the HSA are adding thousands of dollars to their take-home pay. (Even if an employee had health issues and incurred the maximum out-of-pocket expenses, he would still be hundreds of dollars ahead.) HSA customers seem highly satisfied; only 3% have opted to switch back to the PPO.

The state is saving, too. In a time of severe budgetary stress, Indiana will save at least $20 million in 2010 because of our high HSA enrollment. Mercer calculates the state’s total costs are being reduced by 11% solely due to the HSA option.

Most important, we are seeing significant changes in behavior, and consequently lower total costs. In 2009, for example, state workers with the HSA visited emergency rooms and physicians 67% less frequently than co-workers with traditional health care. They were much more likely to use generic drugs than those enrolled in the conventional plan, resulting in an average lower cost per prescription of $18. They were admitted to hospitals less than half as frequently as their colleagues. Differences in health status between the groups account for part of this disparity, but consumer decision-making is, we’ve found, also a major factor.

Overall, participants in our new plan ran up only $65 in cost for every $100 incurred by their associates under the old coverage. Are HSA participants denying themselves needed care in order to save money? The answer, as far as the state of Indiana and Mercer Consulting can find, is no. There is no evidence HSA members are more likely to defer needed care or common-sense preventive measures such as routine physicals or mammograms.

...

By contrast, the prevalent model of health plans in this country in effect signals individuals they can buy health care on someone else’s credit card. A fast-food meal costs most Americans more out of pocket than a visit to the doctor. What seems free will always be overconsumed, compared to the choices a normal consumer would make. Hence our plan’s immense savings.

The Democrats have utterly rejected any move toward consumer-controlled healthcare.  This puts the lie to their continued claims that they believe in free markets.  No true believer in free markets would close out one of the biggest advantages free markets have—the efficient limits it places on consumption.

To give you a real life example of how HSA’s might save money: A few years ago, I started getting PVCs—annoying but harmless variations in my heart rhythm (they’ve since gone away; mostly).  Since I had good comprehensive insurance, I could have easily gotten a full cardiac workup without worrying about price.  By contrast, a relative on an HSA who had the same problem got a less thorough workup and negotiated the prices down—even below the price the insurance company had already negotiated.  Same problem; same result; less money spent by the person on the HSA.

There’s also evidence that HSA customers do not forgo routine care but do forego quackery and bullshit like therapeutic touch (which magically found its way into the evidence-based Democratic comprehensive healthcare plan).

Now contrast Daniels’ words and deeds against those of the worst governor in America, Charlie Crist.  His response to Obama’s healthcare plan is that it needs to scrap the tax hike, the Medicare cuts and the insurance rate rise. In short, get rid of any measures that might balance out the spending.  No taxes or spending cuts—just spend, spend spend!

You will not find a starker illustration of the difference between Republicans who have a clue and Republicans who don’t than these two men.

Despite the failure of that WH PR stunt around the government takeover of healthcare last week, it looks like, at least to Pelosi, the donkeys are thinking they should move ahead and force that monstrosity on the people. According to Nancy, the problem is the republicans, not the fact that the majority of the people do not want this thing.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Sunday that Republicans have left their mark on the healthcare bill and should accept that the bill will go forward. “They’ve had plenty of opportunity to make their voices heard,” she said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning. “Bipartisanship is a two-way street. A bill can be bipartisan without bipartisan votes. Republicans have left their imprint.” The public option, for example, has been stripped from the bill because Republicans were so adamantly against it, she said. “They’ve had a field day going out and misrepresenting what the bill says,” Pelosi said. “But that’s what they do.”

I especially loved that bipartisan bit. As I have always contended, to democrats bipartisan means “you choose to do it my way”. Queen Nancy has decreed that the problem isn’t the cost or all the lies from the people pushing this disastrous proposal, and it certainly isn’t the objection by the people to it and other costly and insane collectivist policies pushed by congress and the WH, as the last 3 elections culminating with the Scott Brown victory for what once passed as a given democrat senatorial seat, but the republicans! They have had their say. Heck, the left even gave up the immediate government takeover option – the public option – and settled for a long term approach that will produce the same anyway. So there!

These collectivist have literally calculated that while this move will crush them in November, that nobody will dare roll this crap back. Thus in the end, they win, as the social expansion takes the biggest jump it has in decades and even more people become accustomed to the “free ride”. I think the idiot donkeys forget that this monster isn’t supposed to do anything but steal more of our money for the next 4 years before it delivers a single service. If they lose big enough though, that assumption might prove erroneous. But they are gambling that they are not going to lose big enough, and that even more importantly, there will be nobody with the guts to roll this back in the next 4 years, especially with Obama c*ck-blocking for them, it looks like. Lets hope they fail either way. Not because I hate this sort of colelctivist crap, but for the sake of the American people which have already beeen badly screwed over by these demcorats in but 1 year.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Here’s the Conservative Hope De Jour, Paul Ryan:

In the end, I think we are fighting an uphill battle against both parties, however.  The Republicans have essentially conceded that insurance companies should not be able to “discriminate” against people based on pre-existing conditions.  I don’t have to rehash what a black hole that is for insurance companies.  Conceding that point basically ends the whole debate and sends us somewhere near Obamacare.  Because to prevent people from not buying insurance until they are sick, you have to have a mandate.  And if you’re not going to allow major medical insurance—i.e., cheap insurance with high deductibles and copays—you have to subsidize.  And if you’re giving people discounted insurance, the costs are going to explode until an external constraint—rationing—is applied.  When you concede the pre-existing condition part, the opposition to Obamacare becomes mostly partisanship.

The fundamental problem is that too many Americans—and way too many politicians—don’t understand what health insurance is.  They literally think it’s a way to get free healthcare; a magical money generator.  The idea that it is simply a way of distributing healthcare costs—over the span of your life and among your fellow insured—does not compute.  I can still remember, when I was in grad school, the puzzled look on students’ faces when they were told that adding birth control pill coverage to their insurance would increase their insurance rates by the amount the pills cost.  They literally could not wrap their minds around the idea that they couldn’t get free birth control pills out of the insurance company.

However, there is a way around this bullshit which Paul Ryan and others are trying to find.  Mostly, you need to do is to sever the link between insurance and employment and encourage—not outlaw—high deductible insurance.  This will make it far easier for people to get insured and stay insured in the first place.  You could buy a policy out of college and it would last you, with some changes, until retirement.  High-deductible policies would bring consumer pressure to bear on prices.  And over time, such a program would massively reduce the pre-existing condition problem by keeping people from having to change insurance every time they turn.  (Read this for a great piece of personal policies vs. employer policies).

But that reform wouldn’t allow for a yearly pageant of promising more spending and “efficiency” during the State of the Union Address.  It wouldn’t allow the parties to accuse each other of gutting the healthcare system.  So it’s out.

(I am disappointed to learn that Ryan voted for Medicare Part D.  I would like to hear him comment on this and explain his reasons.  But the hysterical cries of “hypocrite!” in some corners are overblown.  Of all the hypocrisy, lying and numbers juggling going on, Ryan’s ranks very low on the scale.  No one else has a real proposal to cut long-term Medicare costs.  And the alternative to Ryan would be a Republican or a Democrat who supports Medicare Part D and has no plan for constraining the long-term deficits.)

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Our friends on the left that want to have government take over healthcare often site the Canadian system as an example of how it should be. Of course, people also point out how many Canadians are forced to jump the border to get quality and timely car they can not get when government bureaucracy runs healthcare. Now we seem to have the case of Newfoundland and Labrador Premier, Danny Williams, whom opted to come to the US for care (while it is still possible). When questioned by the press about why he did something like that his answer was “My heart, my choice”. Funny that how the collectivist healthcare system that the left wants to straddle us here with tends to deny everyone but the elite that choice, as this case again proves.

The 60-year-old Williams said doctors detected a heart murmur last spring and told him that one of his heart valves wasn’t closing properly, creating a leakage. He said he was told at the time that the problem was “moderate” and that he should come back for a checkup in six months. Eight months later, in December, his doctors told him the problem had become severe and urged him to get his valve repaired immediately or risk heart failure, he said. His doctors in Canada presented him with two options - a full or partial sternotomy, both of which would’ve required breaking bones, he said.

So in order to save some cash they send him home and told him to come back in 6 months. When he did, they diagnosed him with a critical condition and offered him 20 year old surgical procedures as the solution. Faced with that dilemma he then opted to…

He said he spoke with and provided his medical information to a leading cardiac surgeon in New Jersey who is also from Newfoundland and Labrador. He advised him to seek treatment at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami.

And his choice faced with this limitation of his country’s healthcare system was to go to the US - where I should add that the government had not taken over control of healthcare yet and turned the thing into a disaster - to get the surgery he needed, without having to endure a 20 year old painful and dangerous medical procedure. You know why the Canooks had to offer him that 20 year old chest cracking procedure, right? Because in order to control the skyrocketing cost of “free healthcare”, innovation and technological advancements have to be abandoned. Not to mention that he was probably worried that something as complex as that procedure might have a low survival probability, to save costs, you know. OK, I was just kidding about that last part there, but the humor is in the fact that that’s not too far from the truth.

Anyway, that’s the system we will soon have if Obama and the democrats get their way. One for them, and something like the Canadians have for us peasants.

Monday, February 22, 2010

The Democrats continue to put the lie to the idea that what they really want for health insurance is enhanced competition.  Viz:

President Obama will propose on Monday giving the federal government new power to block excessive rate increases by health insurance companies, as he rolls out comprehensive legislation to revamp the nation’s health care system, White House officials said Sunday.

The president’s legislation aims to bridge differences between the bills adopted by the House and Senate late last year, and to frame his debate with Republicans over health policy at a televised meeting on Thursday.

By focusing on the effort to tighten regulation of insurance costs, a new element not included in either the House or Senate bills, Mr. Obama is seizing on outrage over recent premium increases of up to 39 percent announced by Anthem Blue Cross of California and moving to portray the Democrats’ health overhaul as a way to protect Americans from profiteering insurers.

...

The legislation would call on the secretary of health and human services to work with state regulators to develop an annual review of rate increases, and if increases are deemed “unjustified” the secretary or the state could block the increase, order the insurer to change it, or even issue a rebate to beneficiaries.

The new rate board would be composed of seven members, including consumer representatives, an insurance industry representative, a physician and other experts like health economists and actuaries, the White House said. The board’s annual report would offer guidance to the public and states on whether rate increases should be approved.

What’s driving this is the screaming anger over Wellpoint raising their rates by 39%.  But this the exact wrong way to approach legislation.  It should not be informed by individual horror stories and outrages.  Healthcare markets should not be tipped and twisted based on the behavior of a single company.  The reality of healthcare needs to be found in the data, not in whoever happens to grab a microphone and complain about their insurer.

And in the case of Wellpoint, there are specific reasons not to inform legislation from this:

He ought to subpoena California’s political class because Wellpoint’s rate hikes are the direct result of the Golden State’s insurance regulations—the kind that Democrats want to impose on all 50 states. Under federal Cobra rules, the unemployed are allowed to keep their job-related health benefits for 18 to 36 months. California then goes further and bars Anthem from dropping these customers even after they have exhausted Cobra. California also caps what Anthem can charge these post-Cobra customers.

Most other states direct these customers to high-risk pools that are partly subsidized, but California requires the individual market to absorb the customers and their costs. Even as California insurers have had to keep insuring these typically older and sicker patients, the recession has driven many younger, healthier policy holders to drop their insurance—leaving fewer customers to fund a more expensive insurance pool.

This explains why Anthem lost $58 million in California on its post-Cobra customers in 2009. If WellPoint didn’t raise premiums amid these losses, it would soon be under assault from its shareholders, if not out of business.

Read the whole thing.  The WSJ also points out that Wellpoint was the company that release a study last October indicating the Obamacare would massively raise insurance premiums.  So they were already in the gunsights of the Democrats.  The rate hike—a rate hike forced on them by California regulations—is being use as an excuse for political revenge.

This is a preview of what is to come under Obamacare.  Weekly shrieking about some vile insurer who hasn’t broken the law but is “greedy”.  Daily bleats about rising insurance rates.  Monthly assault on companies that are unpopular or have made bad political gambles.  No actual competition in the healthcare marketplace.  All leading, the Democrats hope, to a thunderous push toward socialized medicine.

There is no need for the GOP to cooperate with this piece of shit.  They don’t need to become an instruments of the Democrats’ perverse desire to micromanage the economy.

Update: A great quote from one of McArdle’s commenters on the popularity of some of the provisions of the healthcare bill vs. the unpopularity of the bill as a whole:

If someone offers me a deal where I get a house, a car, a nice vacation and a shopping spree but at the end of one year my eyes are pecked out by crows I am going to decline even though 4 of the 5 provisions are awesome.

That’s how I feel.  Sure, I’d love to get rid of pre-existing condition screenings and get subsidies for my health insurance.  But that doesn’t come without a whole bunch of taxes and regulations.  I wised up to the “put the yucky pill in ice cream” trick by the time I was three.

Well, as I suspected, the Obama Administration’s plan to revive the bloated and vile government takeover of healthcare money and decision making, isn’t about fixing the differences and actually fixing healthcare at all, because the WH strategy is to double down on the same crap. If you needed more proof that these leftist elitists think we are all morons and not smart enough to make our own choices, look at this. After the Scott Brown loss in MA, and the obvious looming disasters at the polls in the elections this coming November, you would figure that the collectivist would figure out they over played their hand and that the people didn’t want any more of the destructive stuff they have given us for the last year. You would expect them to work on getting the economy going and getting people employed. Instead they are using smoke and mirrors and hoping their partners in the MSM can make the republicans out like the bad guys without any ideas of their own. Talk about projection, huh? To me it is not clear that the democrat agenda is to pass this behemoth in order to so drastically shift the balance of those that work for a living vs. those that vote for a living in their favor that they are willing to take the hit for another decade or two, if it then buys them perpetual power. Of course, at this rate, there will not be much of a country in even a decade worth ruling, but then again, marxists think they can make it better when they never, ever, have done anything but the opposite. Don’t let the freak show that is going to come out of DC distract you. These collectivists are dangerous.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Just after one year of “Hope and Change” it looks like people are wising up that they got sold the same bill of loser collectivist goods of the Carter years, and pining for those bad days they told us we had when republicans were in charge. As reality clashes with fantasy and things like this, this, this, this, this, this, and this keep happening, the democrats continue to pretend that what people want is bigger government, a complete takeover of healthcare - 1/5th of the economy - by that big government, and a massive migration from jobs in the private sector to a fraction of the number of jobs lost there in the public sector. And that doesn’t tackle the complete collapse of the AGW scam which wanted to expand the government take over globally and other such stupid ideas. At least Clinton was smart enough to be saved by a republican takeover of congress in 2004. I doubt Obama, a true believer, will be able to make the same connections. After all, he was told he was the messiah and could walk on water.

As I said before, a few years of the democrats in power would be enough to make many see the light. I just didn’t think it could take but one year for that to happen. I could not believe that the democrats were really this inept and stupid, but they are hard at work proving me both right and wrong. Democrats are good at manipulating the news, with help of the complicit MSM, to attack their opponents when they are in power. Unfortunately now that they are in power, even with massive help covering up for them by the MSM, they can’t hide how inept they are. Reality has a way of destroying most collectivist fantasies, and what is happening isn’t anything new. The fun thing is that I get to bring out my latest find, a poster on some highway in the Mid West that tells the story better than anything else:

Give it time. The numbers are getting bigger and bigger, and all but the most hard core leftists are agreeing that for all his faults, and he had them believe me, Bush was heads and shoulders a better president than the current community organizer in chief….