By John Ballard
The time has come for those standing in the way of health care and insurance reform to put up or shut up.
I'm not the only one getting tired of obfuscation.
Literally thousands of people on all sides of the issue have invested too much effort getting to where we are and it's a nutty idea to suggest that all that effort be tossed.
The Kaiser Family Foundation (and others) have done an excellent job of compiling a twenty-four page, easy to understand summary of the Senate and House bills now being crafted into some final form for the president's approval or veto.
Constitution-loving patriots take note. That's how the system works and at this point it is still working.
There is no Constitutional mandate to Reset or Start Over.
The legislative language is opaque to the point of muddy, but the Kaiser summary is not.
Complaints about thousands of pages are nothing more than smoke.
Claiming the bills are too long is not only a delaying tactic but an admission of ignorance as well.
The time has come for opponents to be clear and specific about what they like and do not like.
This can be accomplished very easily by putting the Senate and House summaries side-by-side with a third blank column for those endorsements and/or complaints.
Here are the specific categories.
Go to the link and read what the Senate and House bills say.
Then watch and listen to see what is being offered for the third column, now blank.
Please choose one or more topics for comparison:
Overall approach to expanding access to coverage- Individual mandate
- Employer requirements
- Expansion of public programs
- Premium and cost-sharing subsidies to individuals
- Premium subsidies to employers
- Tax changes related to health insurance and to financing health reform
- Creation of insurance pooling mechanisms
- Benefit design
- Changes to private insurance
- State role
- Cost containment
- Improving quality/health system performance
- Long-term Care
- Prevention/Wellness
- Other investments
- Financing
We don't need a road map.
We already have one and this is it.
Those who don't like it simply because they say it is the "Democrats" proposal need to get over it.
I don't like it any more than you do because it is what happens when corporate interests outweigh those of ordinary citizens, several millions of whom are now without health care.
But whether I or anyone else "likes" it is beside the point. It's nasty medicine no matter how anyone sees it. Without it we will only get sicker in more ways than one.
Will someone kindly show this easy to read list to the complainers with instructions to read it, check out the link, then put up or shut up.
The problem is that under the proposed legislation, those millions aren't going to get "health care". They're going to be forced to purchase health insurance from an industry that is not significantly regulated for the benefit of the majority of society.
ReplyDeleteWhat's missing from these bills, structured as they are, is a mandate that the insurance companies achieve a defined percentage of care. And of course we must confront that fact that the insurance industry doesn't provide any care at all, but skims a significant percentage of the citizen's money used to purchase care.
And what of the anti-trust exemption. Since both bills are based on the miracles of the free market, they fall flat in so much as the insurance market is not free.
Tugging on heart strings about the millions of uninsured doesn't cut it (i'm one of them) when the solution is to force the uninsured to pay up to 8% of their wages to purchase a shitty product. All the good options to do this have been ignored, so now the trick is to force the worst option down our throats. No thank you.
Okay, we can put that as a "No" for "individual mandate."
ReplyDeleteThat leaves sixteen other items still blank.
See how easy that is?
My point is simple. Some of the language of the two bills is identical verbatim and other parts are in conflict. The time has come for everyone with a vote, just as you have, to state plainly what he or she does or does not like.
What you and I think is no longer the issue. At this point the matter is up to elected representatives. The arguments are already on paper. The next step is to fish or cut bait. Our job now is to hold their feet to the fire and insist that they vote yea or nay on what is already on paper.
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fwiw, both bills include language to "achieve a defined percentage of care." Here's a link to look at. Select "House Bill," "Senate Bill" and "Changes to private insurance" from among the options.
House Plan:
Limit health plans� medical loss ratio to not less than 85% to be enforced through a rebate back to consumers and prohibit plans from imposing aggregate dollar lifetime limits on coverage.
Senate Plan:
Require health plans to report the proportion of premium dollars spent on clinical services, quality, and other costs and provide rebates to consumers for the amount of the premium spent on clinical services and quality that is less than 85% for plans in the large group market and 80% for plans in the individual and small group markets.
If I understand your point, you want to limit how much of premium dollars will actually pay for medical care and limit how much will be used for administration, advertising, sales bonuses, executive compensation and shareholder dividends.
Yeah, me too.
Hell, I'm one of the original single-payer advocates. But that option is no longer on the table. (Never was, incidentally.)
As for the anti-trust provision, notice that last item under the House proposal which does not appear in the Senate bill.
Looks to me like Pelosi wants to put that item in the spotlight to embarrass Senators for not having including it in their bill.
Thanks for a chance to illustrate what I'm talking about.
There's also no Constitutional basis for forcing people to buy health insurance on a federal level, except among liberals who have never read the Constitution and believe it's whatever they interpret it to be (without knowing what it says).
ReplyDeleteGot it.
ReplyDeleteThat's two "noes" in the mandate column.
Can we now move on to the other sixteen categories?