The Health Care Debate, What a Mess
Posted by Ray on December 23, 2009 under Main | 
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There is good news and bad news to this mess. The good news is it is almost over and the bad news is that is it is almost over. No matter what side of the fence you are on the one thing I can assure you of is that it is going to pass tomorrow morning. Even though I can also assure you that it is a budget buster, see the Republican CBO inquiry today for proof, and you should all know by now that the CBO is garbage in, garbage out group. What I mean is that if you feed it the sequence of data you want results for you are certain to get the desired results you want.
The real unbiased results were from the actuary that submitted his results a couple weeks ago, sorry, but actuaries know insurance and are key to determining costs, risks and results. His report shows that the costs for premiums will go sky high, I guarantee that to be the case as well, I know a thing or two about insurance as well. Basically, we have lawyers writing a bill that is math intensive and that is a major mistake, for proof look at Medicare deficits, Social Security, National Flood Insurance or any other government run program. For those who think this bill will reduce health insurance premiums ask yourself this one question, how can it is they did not take out the federal anti-trust exemption for insurance companies?
Seriously, without taking out that one exemption it is next to impossible to lower insurance premiums because it restricts citizens from buying policies across state lines. That means that insurers who have a lock on some states will still have a lock on those states, give me a break. Not only that, but now these same insurers must add millions of sick people to the roles and cannot charge them higher premiums, specifically, so that means all of our premiums will go up. This bill is the greatest gift to the insurance industry ever created. The only government gift to the private industry that was better, and it was not even close, was the no bid contracts to Halliburton under Bush. If this thing passes, buy insurance companies because for the first time in history the Federal government will mandate that citizens will be forced to buy a product from private companies to the tune of a trillion dollars over the next 10 years, give or take a few billion.
Because premiums will go sky high and our brilliant elected officials are incapable of doing simple math the subsidized premiums we will have to pay will blow those sweet deficit reducing estimates right out of the water within 3 to 4 years. If the administration and Congress decided to work with the industry, people like me who are truly impartial, they could have built a real reform bill, but since they think they know everything they have just put the final nail in the coffin of the US, from a fiscal point of view. Medicare will be insolvent or eliminated much faster than currently projected and the budget deficits will be through the roof by 2016 as the new taxes make people rethink how much money they want to earn. Oh, I am also assuming that we are actually in a recovery I might add, but if we are not in a real recovery, which the housing numbers today shows that without government help we are still in trouble, then the trouble comes much earlier.
What is that you say, AARP and the AMA support this bill so it must be OK? Let me tell you something about those organizations, in my opinion, they would sell their grand kids for an extra dollar and I am not kidding. AARP had a Medicare Advantage plan that they endorsed pulled from the market because it was so bad. They endorsed the product, it got pulled from the market and I can assure you that Medicare Advantage contract was a lot shorter than 2,100 pages long so it is highly unlikely they even know what is in the health care reform bill, but they know they can profit from it somehow. They hate variable annuity contracts, but love immediate annuity contracts because they have a GA contract with NY Life. Basically, if they can profit from it they will endorse it, period.
The AMA, who knows what they see in it except that they probably think they will get a permanent Doc Fix Bill passed or they like the idea of mandatory private insurance much better than a public option. Let’s face it, $26 per office visit from Medicare must stink versus the $50 or $90 per visit from private insurance. If you combine that an additional 30M new patients, or 40M depending who you listen to or where you get your uninsured number from, that equals some major money for the AMA and its members.
Clearly, this whole bill revolves around money for everyone. Everyone who loves it is getting paid big time to endorse it or vote for it. However, you, the person who pays for everything, is not in favor of this bill according to every poll conducted. I wonder why you are not in favor of it? Maybe because you know your Congress person is receiving tons of money from special interest groups to push things through, check opensecrets.org to see, or that Bernie Sanders, a socialist, sold out for $10B, way to be a socialist, Ben Nelson sold out for less, and of course we have the Louisiana Purchase take II. However, you have to pay your taxes plus the health insurance premiums and Congress wonders why you don’t want this thing, incredible.
What I find interesting is that New York, who is on the verge of bankruptcy, should have held out against this thing. Where was Schumer and Gillibrand on this? Why didn’t they say no way on this bill and get out Medicaid paid for? It work for Ben Nelson and Bernie I am sure it would have worked for NY. Oh yeah, Chuck was busy making the media rounds and calling flight attendants “bitch” instead of doing is fiduciary responsibility to his home state. I dislike the Republicans, I mean abortion that is the best defense against this thing you can come up with, however I agree with them that this bill is the train wreck of the century. Why is China moving towards capitalism, but the US appears to be moving towards socialism?
Clearly socialism did not and does not work, but here we are. For those who want the socialist lifestyle I urge you to seek out the countries that live under those types of regimes. I admit the US has problems, nothing is perfect, but here is the thing most countries want what we have, not the other way around. We could fix health care the right way if we took our time and did things in the open, as Obama promised he would do, but that never happened. Instead we decided to use a sledge hammer to itch our nose and it is not going to end well. Unfortunately it will take 4 years for me to be proven correct.
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