Goddamn Psychotic Motherfuckers DO NOT GET IT

[filkertom]

Again, again, again, the ratbastards want to make not having health insurance punishable by law. With hefty fines.

Let's see if I can explain this as simply as possible, for our poor, dumb fuck congresscritters and weaselly presidential advisers and shitheaded overgreedy lobbyists and reality-challenged commentators, none of whom have to worry about their goddamn health care.

What people need is "health care", not "health insurance".

For the most part, the people who don't have health care don't have it because the way the system is set up right now, they need to either have health insurance, which they cannot afford, or the money to get health care without insurance, which (being a good deal more than insurance) they really can't afford.

If they cannot afford health insurance, they cannot afford the fines for not having health insurance. Therefore, making it illegal to not have health insurance actually makes things worse, and still does not provide health care.

Comparing the prospective mandatory health insurance to no-fault car insurance does not work. Driving is a privilege. Your health is a necessity.

Admittedly, I don't know why I'm bothering. These evil fucks are trying to squeeze every last drop of blood out of people, and the Obama administration, all inspiring soliloquy and no cojones, are trying to help them.

Comments

[lovefromgirl.livejournal.com]

From what I hear, Baucus is a smug little prick anyway.

I am willing to pay higher taxes. God knows I'd part with more of my paycheck if I had one. What about the people who don't have one?!

I think the Capitol Steps were right all those years ago. "I want a brand new pair of candidates..." Only if this passes, it's "Fix it or I'm frakking well emigrating."

-- Disgusted in NY

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

There's a subsidy for people who can't pay. Problem is, in the Baucus plan, not enough people are eligible, and the insurance companies are going to take a big bite from the subsidy.

[scruffycritter.livejournal.com]

Maybe the people in Massachusetts can eluciate on the matter, but I thought MassHealth is something like that.

Everyone has to have insurance, and the state insures you if you cannot get it but it's mandated that everyone has to have it.

[emiofbrie.livejournal.com]

How are MassHealth prices? Is it comparable to MinnesotaCare?

MNCare is Minnesota's state health plan, but it's not mandatory (yet), and is priced on a reasonable sliding scale. If you make below $7K a year, it's free and termed as "Medical Assistance".

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

The government LOVES to create 'unfunded mandates' -- required things that they don't need to spend their own money.

It's usually things that the states have to pay (if the Federal government), or that towns and cities have to pay (if a state).

The idea is just filtering down to the rest of us.

[pjack.livejournal.com]

I absolutely agree that we need universal health care. Health care should be free for anyone living in America, with no health insurance needed.

However... If you're going to keep the health insurance system, with or without a public option, there is a logic to making it health insurance mandatory. Its an information distribution problem. When consumers (i.e, patients) know more about their health future than the insurance companies do (through family history, genetic analysis, etc), it changes what insurance they buy. As genetic tests become more prevalent, the problem gets worse. Imagine what would happen to the fire insurance industry if you knew for a fact whether or not your house would burn down in ten years, but your insurance company didn't know! The insurance companies would go out of business, and no-one could get insured... unless buying insurance was mandatory. (Here's a link to the NPR Planet Money podcast (http://public.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/pmoney/2009/08/podcast08.21.09.mp3) where Charlie Wheelan talks about the problem. It's a really good listen. My apologies if I'm misremembering it.)

I still think it's a bone-headed system, but I wanted to point out that there's a logic to it other than pure greed.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, but the problem is that making it mandatory does not provide any way to make it affordable. Saying it's against the law if you don't have it doesn't suddenly give people the money to get it.

[thistlethorn.livejournal.com]

I was incensed by an article about this earlier today (a very *breezy*, blithe article, I must add).

The whole car insurance thing? It means a lot of poor people who cannot get around without a car (in the many places that have poor or no mass transit) drive without car insurance anyway. I'm sure they'll all go to some sort of hell for that huge crime.

But *this*??? Evil *is* the only word to describe penalizing the poor even more for being poor. So, you know, they won't get health care, but they will pay fines for not having health care.

[marahsk.livejournal.com]

The whole car insurance thing? It means a lot of poor people who cannot get around without a car (in the many places that have poor or no mass transit) drive without car insurance anyway. I'm sure they'll all go to some sort of hell for that huge crime.

I completely understand the need for transportation, but as someone who was in a car that was hit by an uninsured driver, yes, that is a real crime that hurts the people who end up subsidizing them. Maybe I'd have more sympathy had he, knowing that he wouldn't be making good on any damage he might cause, had at least made the effort to drive carefully. But he gave the impression that he felt he could drive recklessly because what were they going to do, raise his rates? Meanwhile my friend, who subsidized him by paying for uninsured motorist's insurance, saw her rates go up because her insurance covered his at-fault accident.

[allandaros.livejournal.com]

ARRGGGGHHHHHBBL.

[lariss.livejournal.com]

And when these folks who don't have money for Health Insurance also don't have the money for the fine...then what?

Debtor's Prison?

In which case we, the public, will pay for their frockin' health care ANYWAY?!! Just like we do when people who can't afford healthcare go to the Emergency room and then default?

I say skip the middle man. Provide universal healthcare like almost every other developed or semi-developed nation in the free world including the Czech Republic. Come on now. Surely we can do better than the Czech Republic?

[ebonypearl.livejournal.com]

Huh. The fine is considerably less than what I'm paying for mandatory health insurance. Seeing as I only used it once in 9 years (for a strep throat test - and I had to pay for the whole thing because of co-pay and deductibles, so I might as well have been uninsured), if I had to pay the fine to be free of health insurance, I'd be saving money.

I know others aren't in the same situation,and aren't near as healthy as me, so I think the fine is unfair. Just like I feel taxing food is unfair. We have to eat. That's why I grow much of my own. I just hope they don't decide to tax gardening!

[zenturbo.livejournal.com]

MI does not have a sales tax on groceries, but has one on prepared food. I know when I was in NC on vacation, I was floored when I looked at the bill.

[baphnedia.livejournal.com]

Do you mind if i xpost this in its entirety, and would you like me to attribute it to you?

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Don't mind, and please. :)

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not like we haven't seen from the stimulus package and the public option that Obama is quite willing to abandon his campaign promises to the whims of Congressional leadership- and abandon them without even lifting a finger to defend them.

There's also the fact that, as things currently stand, one of two things will happen if for-profit insurance gets required to carry all comers: either the rates skyrocket for EVERYONE so the insuror's profits stay strong... or else for-profit insurance folds up as an industry as claims surpass income, with nothing ready to replace them. In other words, either healthcare will become more expensive than ever before... or else it'll essentially vanish altogether in a medical market crash.

[devospice.livejournal.com]

I suspect both will happen. Rates will skyrocket so they can keep up their profits for their stockholders. Those that aren't profitable will be sold off to other companies until we're left with just 2 or 3 major health insurance companies. When those start to fold the government will bail them out. Fun!

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

The Baucus plan is awful for everyone but insurance companies and their stockholders. Yet--we can pay the government through taxes, or pay the insurance companies somewhat more (profit), but we are going to have to pay. Care costs can be reduced by making the plan universal, but it is still going to cost. This is where the rubber meets the road in public health care, and why this is so hard to do.

[caraig.livejournal.com]

I'd love to say that I'd refuse to pay for insurance, or the fine... but they'd drag it out of my paycheck or account anyway, even if I'm not working.

I'd love to say that I'd move to a country that has real health care... but they only seem to let you emigrate if you have a job waiting for you there.

That doesn't leave a lot of options, and they look more and more appealing as this debacle drags on.

[caraig.livejournal.com]

*sigh* And reading that back, I come off like a LEFT-wing nutjob who's going to take a gun to elected officials. No, I'm not talking about nor advocating that. Primarying the bastards, getting them out of office or better yet making them face their ex-constituents, that I'd go for, but as unlikely as some of these crooks behind bars is, assassination isn't the solution. That wouldn't solve a damn thing.

[kanemaker.livejournal.com]

The only thing that will make the cost of health reform go down is tort reform.With sue happy lawyers getting anywhere from 1/4 to 1/3 of the settlements from law suites no wonder malpractice insurance is so high.Allowing inmsueance companies to sell across state lines would help too.Drug companies need to be reformed too.You can't tell me my Lipator research costs hasn't been returned a 100 times at least

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Um, NO.

"Tort reform" needs to be something a bit more meaningful than, "cap awards in court," which is what has actually been done where "tort reform" has been enacted by conservatives.

And "allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines" is another way of saying "repeal all state regulations on insurance companies, thus allowing them to get away with more no-pay policies like Katrina homeowners got."

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

I'd like you to become our health CARE czar. Thank you.

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'll do Baucus one better. How about an innovative law that will put an end to poverty...by declaring it illegal to be poor! Punishable by fines, even!

You know, to teach poor people how foolish they are being by choosing to be poor.

Oh wait...we kinda already do that, don't we?

[bayushisan.livejournal.com]

I've done A LOT of thinking about the whole health insurance issue and I've come to a conclusion that I never thought I'd come to.

Single payer insurance is the best way to go, provided that the inherent problems involved in that system are corrected. Over in England there are medications, specificly breast cancer meds, that the government won't pay for due to the expense. That's one of the problems we'd need to correct for example, as would be the waiting times to get an appointment to see the doctor of your choice.

Making it similair to England's system, with the right problem corrections, and allowing for the existence of private insurance that a person could opt into or use to supplement single payer then I think we'd have a workable and better system.

[jmthane.livejournal.com]

I would point out that there are those over here in the States who *do* have waiting times to get an appointment to see the doctor of your choice. There may be a higher incidence over here of being able to see the doctor when your actually sick, but you couldn't prove it by (for example) me.

[solarbird]

I presume you've also seen the threats from Randall Terry about violence if abortion isn't banned in any health plan?

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Paul Krugman on why covering everyone is important (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/healthcare-numbers/). Note the date. See also his recent entry on the public option (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/08/why-the-public-option-matters/). I think we're being played. If there's no mandate and no public option, this is probably going to blow up on us.

(If you want a copy of the Gruber paper cited in the first link, I can get it for you via my university library.)

[jmthane.livejournal.com]

You said only one thing I disagree with, at least in general.

For the most part, the people who don't have health care don't have it because the way the system is set up right now, they need to either have health insurance, which they cannot afford, or the money to get health care without insurance, which (being a good deal more than insurance) they really can't afford.

Unless you're using hundreds of dollars of medical care per month on medications, doctors, tests, etc., insurance actually costs more than paying cash.

Example: my employer pays my premium. This is a good thing, and increasingly very rare. The premium is ~$475 per month. Add on to this (as noted by bemusedoutsider) the deductible and out-of-pocket and you add another $2,500 per year before insurance covers 100%. The deductible, which must be met before insurance will pay *anything* except a very limited list of preventive care, is $1,200.

I'm seeing the doctor every three months. Call it $75 a visit, $20 for blood draw once a year, and ~$125 for lab work per year. My regular medicine is ~$356.40 a year. One mammogram a year, and one x-ray to see how bad the arthritis has gotten in my back - lordy, I don't think I can even estimate that but let's give it a rough cash number of ~$300. The total of those: $~1,101.40.

Less than even my deductible, never mind the $5,700 annual premium.

If I had to pay for insurance, I wouldn't. It's cheaper to pay cash and pray I never need an ER. And I'm not the healthiest person around.

So you're quite right - we need health *care*, not health *insurance*. The insurance companies simply need to dry up and blow away. Single-payer should be the only option on the table, but the greedmongers won't have it.

(Edited to fix a typo.)

[jmthane.livejournal.com]

And Max Baucus can sit on a peg...

If i am insured... It costs me $200 per, if i am uninsured its $62 per...

[m-t-quill.livejournal.com]

... Please sign me up to appear before the first Death panel. This shit just got to much.

Check Please!!

The Heel of a Loaf

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Obama seems to have made an excellent case for the Democratic consensus on health care. The problem is, that's a conservative consensus. Not even half a loaf. The heel of a loaf (http://adviceunasked.blogspot.com/2009/09/heel-of-loaf-obama-plan.html).

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

I really wish God would just strike these idiots down. Loudly and dramatically, with lightning and thunder and brimstone.

SMITE THEM, O GOD! SMITE THE EVERLIVING SHIT OUT OF THOSE BASTARDS!