By John Ballard
Posted without comment.
Today my little brother Bill would have turned 51.
Which means he's been dead almost 9 years. Can't quite understand that.
He was waiting for health insurance to kick in at his new job: We'd watched how medical costs had starved our family when we were kids. So instead of being saddled with a "pre-existing condition", he lay down alone on that green-and-white striped couch and watched TV as a heart attack rolled on into cardiac tamponade and he bled out into his chest.Universal health care for every human being, no questions asked, without profit linked to medical choices. Now. Get rid of any leader who caves, no matter what other distractions they toss up. The alternative is ongoing pointless death.
It's difficult to read about the health problems some families are faced with. However, stories like that are not an effective reform argument because they completely ignore fiscal realities. I'd love to never have to pay another medical bill too, but I do not want taxes to eat away at more of my paycheck and I am growing tired of subsidizing people that don't feel the need to take care of themselves.
ReplyDeleteSeems to me the man who allowed himself to die of a heart attack did exactly what you want.
ReplyDeleteIs that one less medical bill that would otherwise have been added to your "tax burden"?
We have no way of knowing if "he didn't feel the need to take care of himself" but that is beside the point if fiscal realities trump.
The fiscal reality I see is that Medicare and Social Security are funded by payroll taxes, not income taxes. Unlike income taxes, for which we are allowed deductions, payroll taxes are not only regressive but in the case of Social Security are actually capped every year to insure that after a certain point the highest income earners pay nothing more until the next January.
Our "tax burden" for Medicare is minuscule (What? Less than a penny and a half on every earned dollar?) and the tax burden for Social Security is capped ($106,800 for 2009).
Medicaid (welfare) is administered and matched at the state level.
I don't see where reform is changing the fiscal picture to any great extent.
My point about subsidizing the unhealthy was not directed at the heart attack patient per se. It was directed at the fact that it's just another story that's use to make us all think that we have to all contribute to this vast pool that covers everyone. You can be certain that there will be even less incentive for individuals to take care of themselves as the pool gets larger. By the way, the odds are very good that the heart attack guy was not leading a healthy lifestyle. Very few people that age just get a heart attack without some other indication.
ReplyDeleteWe would be naive to think that the 1.45% Medicare tax is the only cost of Medicare. There are costs of the Medicare program that are reflected in other parts of the federal government budget. But we can even ignore that too. It's the massive cost shifting that flows to the non-Medicare portion of the system that I'm concerned about. In your career, would you have tolerated 9 years with no pay increase? That's what providers that accept Medicare are facing (if the 21% cut gets erased). That has to be made up somewhere, but you will never hear a Dem mention that.
What became of medigap insurance?
ReplyDeleteAs a Medicare beneficiary I thought that is what the insurance was for, to pay the difference between what Medicare pays and the portion left for me to pay.
What am I missing?
(Where are our friends in the insurance business when we need them?)