I won’t repeat my ranting about the loss of real reform with the public option. I think I’ve been over that ground enough. The question is whether the bill is worth supporting with what’s left. I’m not convinced, but Nate Silver makes a good case for its value to working families. An excerpt:
Marcy is basically treating the $5,243 per year as though it’s a tax hike. That’s not what it is — at all. It’s a deeply discounted — albeit mandatory — service that they’re purchasing. And it’s saving them a lot of money: it either saves them a lot of money every year if they’re already buying insurance, or a lot of money on average if they’re not buying insurance.
And in either case, because of the caps in out-of-pocket expenditures — it also provides them with a lot more certainty in forecasting their income stream. It allows them to come up with a reasonable gameplan.
Frankly, unless they’re living in New York or the San Francisco Bay or some other place where the cost of housing is very high, the family that Marcy draws from — one which pays $1,600 per month for rent but does not buy health insurance for themselves or for their children — does not have a reasonable and responsible gameplan to begin with. If they can’t figure out how to squeeze out $430 per month in insurance premiums, what are they supposed to do in the status quo when somebody actually gets sick? You can object to the Senate’s health care bill on libertarian/paternalism grounds, but it will leave the overwhelming majority of low- and middle-income families better off.
It’s a bit patronizing to suggest to poor families that they ought to be able to come up with $430 per month in addition to the costs of life they’re already enduring. Yeah, maybe someone will get sick, but with poverty it’s often really about the hear and now – the kids get hungry in the moment.
And without the price controls, what is even the guarantee of $430? They’re mandating no exclusions for pre-existing conditions, but what in the bill ensures such people aren’t simply priced out? That’s just as effectively prohibitive as an outright refusal.
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December 29, 2009 at 6:38 am
Fred Mangels
…but it will leave the overwhelming majority of low- and middle-income families better off..
I’d suggest this will be devastating to low and middle income families.
This is horrific and to hear the usual lefty spiel of Sure, we know we’re forcing on you, but we’re giving a you a good deal and we know what’s best for you.., is infuriating.
December 29, 2009 at 6:39 am
Fred Mangels
I might add, I wonder how many low and middle income people might end up losing their homes over this?
December 29, 2009 at 9:39 am
moviedad
How do people justify blaming “Lefties, Proggies or Greens” for actions that totally support the richest one percent? These bills are custom made for the corporate billionaire groups that constantly undermine the socialism we need.
Propaganda does it work well. Blame the socialist for the anti socialist laws. I guess if Fox news declares that water runs uphill, the rabid, slobbering fascist, anti-americans will line up to swear to it. I’m not assuming anything about you Fred Mangels, so please don’t take offense. You seem more intelligent than that. But I could name a few, whose main purpose in life seems to be ‘monkey-wrenching’ any fair and balanced conversation that might occur.
I’m so sick of these ‘Jews for Hitler’ types betraying their own class so they can abdicate all responsibility to the rich masters.
The American Government is “supposed” to be a tool to protect the powerless from the powerful. Case in point:
The people demand socialized health care, like the rest of the world. And instead they are given an insurance industry designed bill that punishes people who don’t pay whatever cost those murderous companies charge. Our politicians have all been bribed by the rich, hell, they are the rich. Currently all these criminal, treasonous activities are no longer illegal.
If you smoke crack in the city to escape the misery of poverty, and hopelessness, you do years in prison. You betray your country, you help facilitate the deaths of thousands. You get the keys to the country club.
It won’t last. The gloves are off. Even those people who work hard to keep the blinders on are having a hard time portraying their hypocrisy as virtue. And their treason as patriotism.
I’m sorry, but sending all the jobs to china and Indonesia is treason. It’s an attack on the country. It’s betrayal.
Civil war is coming. There is so much rage out there. No matter how successful the ruling class is at getting the affected to blame each other, it won’t last. eventually people will see that their neighbor is suffering the same fate. and they won’t be able to maintain the hate based on superficial things like race, hairstyle, culture, and whatever else we are taught to hate our neighbors for.
It’s really coming, and it is going to be bloody. I hope I die before it happens. I hope my kids and grandkids do not suffer it. I hope it’s all over quickly.
December 29, 2009 at 10:07 am
Mr. Nice
Fred, don’t worry.
The “fine” for not carrying health insurance is on a sliding scale. The maximum fine is something like $65 per month from what I hear. So, this is not a $430 mandatory health plan, it is a max $65 non-compliance tax.
No big deal. Consider that anyone too poor to afford the fine will probably qualify for socialized medical insurance. Anyone too poor to afford the max fine will not be fined that much. This comes with a lovely catch: insurance companies are legally required to sign you up even if you have a pre-existing condition.
So, after paying the fine for a while, a person gets sick. Deathly sick. Surely denied full coverage in Mexico, Canada, or Europe sick. But not in the USA. Just fill out a few forms and get insurance coverage. Spell out the pre-existing condition and still qualify. Multi-drug resistant tuberculosis? No problem, sign ‘er up.
Nobody will be paying $430 per month. Stop dreaming. Everyone who can’t afford it will pay the fine and sign up when they need to.
What does this mean in the end for insurance companies who are now forced to take grandma smoker who hasn’t seen a doctor in twenty years? It means the end of them. Communist medicine is just around the corner. It won’t take single payer nor public option, just the fact that companies are forced to deal with people they wouldn’t have otherwise will destroy them.
How does that work, forcing companies? Look at the mortgage industry, what happened to them after years of being forced to give double-ARM balloon loans to poor people with little credit? You know what happened.
December 29, 2009 at 11:06 am
Fred Mangels
How does one justify blaming lefties? They’re the ones that started this, and there’s more than a few of them saying “anything’s better than nothing…, now that it looks like this is going to pass.
December 29, 2009 at 11:20 am
Fred Mangels
Consider that anyone too poor to afford the fine will probably qualify for socialized medical insurance. .
I’m wondering if this will give the state medical insurance outfits, like MediCal, incentive to boot at least some of their cases? There’s a lot of pressure for that in California, I would think.
Like me: I’m kind of on MediCal, and kind of not. I pay share of cost- close to $400.00 a month before MediCal pays for anything- but right now I don’t know if I’m even on share of cost.
Since they put me on SOC, they’re very slow in processing my application. I’ll usually get a letter from them right before my expiration date telling me my SOC for the last so many months is, say, $397.00. Along with that letter and sometimes a day or so later, I get my application for the next period.
So, I basically pay for whatever medical stuff I need out of pocket and, If I had a heart attack or some such, I’d have to call them up and ask them to expedite my application.
Can’t help but wonder if they just change the rules and take a bunch of us SOC cases and dump us, telling us since we’re already paying a certain amount of money for medical care, we might as well buy insurance.
Thing is, I can’t afford to be spending that much money each month on medical, so I don’t. I pay for one prescription (having stopped taking some other ones in part because of the cost) and one doctor visit a year to renew prescriptions.
So, even though they’ve determined that I have almost $400 a month to spend on medical, I don’t. But they might use their formula to suggest I do.
I also wonder if this might have a bit of the opposite effect? Might a lot more of the currently uninsured balk at paying even a $65.00 fine and just apply for MediCal? Hard to say, and we won’t really know the full effect as this forced insurance, if I read it correctly, will be subsidized for poor people until 2013. After that, I guess we pay it out of pocket. Oddly enough after the next presidential election.
December 29, 2009 at 11:26 am
anon
We need fire & fury in the White House. Palin/Bachmann, 2012.
December 29, 2009 at 11:29 am
Anonymous
Wow Fred. You teabaggers killed real reform but you are not happy unless every shred of it is dead. Amazing.
December 29, 2009 at 11:53 am
ED Denson
Wow, I am astonished at the number of people who have read the health care bill in enough depth to make informed comments about it and its effects. This is a tribute to public education.
December 29, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Fred Mangels
Yeah, and you have, so you’re saying Anything’s better than nothing!.
FYI, most congresscritter’s, if they were honest, would admit they’ve read very little, if any, of the bill. That’s nearly always the case.
December 29, 2009 at 2:06 pm
moviedad
Without socialized health care, education and rights to water, we are doomed as a society.
December 29, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Eric Kirk
I don’t know if anything’s better than nothing. The elimination of the pre-existing condition exclusion is better than nothing. The subsidies are better than nothing.
But mandatory coverage with no price controls or public option, that’s not better than nothing.
December 29, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Anonymous
Silver is right that the numbers put out by the progressives are arbitrary and probably too high. But there’s no way you can argue that $430.00 added to the monthly bills for those who are working in jobs which suck so much they don’t offer benefits. And what about those working poor in urban areas without rent control? Do they just move? That seems to be the middle and upper class solution to all the problems of poverty. Can’t find work in San Francisco? Move to Des Moines. It’s so easy!
December 29, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Middle Class Anon
From what I’ve seen in the media analysis, people like me who can’t get health insurance no matter how much we can afford will be able to get it through the so-called reform. It does seem absurd to combine health insurance reform with mandatory insurance, but what is actually adopted remains to be seen. Then we’ll have to see how it really works (or doesn’t). I’m sure there will always be something for the libertarians to complain about, since nothing is perfect.
December 30, 2009 at 7:48 am
Fred Mangels
I guess I’m not the only one worried about the effect this will have on state programs: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/31032.html
December 30, 2009 at 10:20 pm
Eric Kirk
Well, on state budgets anyway.