Weighing the Promise of Health Care and Finding it Wanting
by Joseph C. PhillipsSpeaking on ABC’s “This Week”, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi commented, “I think everybody wants affordable health care for all Americans. They know that this will take courage. It took courage to pass Social Security. It took courage to pass Medicare. And many of the same forces that were at work decades ago are at work again against this bill.”
There is that word again. What exactly does affordable mean? The left tosses the word about but never bothers to define exactly what they mean by affordable. It could mean anything and everything and no doubt it will. Affordable is a political term that is unassociated with actual costs, only addresses price and means, “you pay according to the amount of political capital you have.” For instance if you belong to the SEIU you pay less than if you didn’t. But I digress.
I dare say that the only reason it takes courage to pass Obamacare is because a majority of Americans oppose it. According to a recent CNN poll only 25% of Americans want congress to pass this healthcare bill. It is particularly telling that the new left continues to depict the 75% of Americans that oppose their efforts to nationalize healthcare (which is the end game) as ignoble, uncompassionate, ignorant racists. More annoying is that they portray themselves as visionary, compassionate champions of good.
I suspect that the truth is that Americans do not like the substance of the healthcare bills – all 4000 pages! Nor are they enamored of the back room deals this administration cut in order to secure the votes of their own party. Frankly, the stench of bribes like the latest appellate-judgeship-for-yes vote is more reminiscent of B.S. than it is of hope and change.
It is also likely true that Americans have weighed the fiscal promises of huge government programs like Social Security against their reality and decided they would like to find other avenues towards reforming healthcare- other than putting it in charge of Washington bureaucrats.
Social Security was passed in 1935 as an insurance program to protect a small segment of workers in their retirements. In 1940 just over 222,000 citizens received monthly social security benefits. The program has since grown to become the single largest item in the federal budget, consuming over 22% of total expenditures. The program was originally funded by a 1% tax on the first $3000 of income, with the tax increasing to 3% over the next 12 years. In 1966 the Medicare tax rate was split from the Old Age, Survivor, and Disability (OASDI) rate. Since the inception of OASDI there have been 20 increases in the tax rate, which now stands at 6.2% for both employer and employee on earnings up to $109,000; the Medicare rate is 1.45% with no cap on earnings. Nearly 80 percent of Americans pay more in Social Security taxes than they do in federal income tax. And still social security faces a fiscal crisis. What’s more, what began as an insurance program is now simply a welfare program. The Supreme Court has ruled that citizens do not have a right to social security benefits.
This year social security will run a cash deficit for the first time in more than 25 years. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) those deficits will continue into 2011. The system rebounds slightly until 2016 when the deficits begin to accelerate at a steady and rapid pace. This in direct contradiction of the rosy picture painted by Budget Director Peter Orzag and Congressional Democrats, who assured us that SS was secure for at least 50 years.
And what of Medicare? Medicare trustee Tom Saving and his colleague Andrew Rettenmaier estimate that Medicare will consume 25 percent of federal income tax revenue by 2020, and 50 percent by 2040.
Both programs are in need of a fiscal “fix.” What are the Democrats recommendations? President Obama, after acknowledging that the system is running out of money, suggests taxing a larger share of income. True to progressive form Obama suggests what would be the largest tax increase in U.S. history, at least $1.3 trillion over the first 10 years. Yet according to the Cato Institute, such an increase would increase Social Security’s cash-flow solvency by just seven years.
Former Enron Advisor Paul Krugman is on record as recommending a combination of tax increases and benefit cuts. In some languages denying benefits in order to save money is called rationing. And it is into these steady and trustworthy hands that we are being asked to entrust another 1/6th of our economy.
Americans have listened ad nausea to the promises of this administration and found them to be fantastic. The mantra that a national healthcare plan will cost less money, will not raise taxes and will not result in a rationing of care is not only unsupported by history, but is patronizing as well.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
| 
Follow Us on Twitter
Subscribe via RSS
Got a Tip?
43 Comments
Good article. I cannot imagine this fantastic promises will materialize. If Obama plan to destroy 1/6th of the economy to transform America then he is on track.
And they drag out the same old scapegoats every time: the greedy [fill in blank]. But the numbers never seem to work. For all the hysterical hyperventilating we've heard about Evil Big Pharma, it's almost a non-issue. According to the GAO, drugs as a percentage of total health care costs in the USA are about 10%. According to Forbes, the profit margin of the average pharma company is about 15.5% (note that since a drug costs about $1bn to bring to market and not every drug makes it, pharma, like insurance companies, requires large margins to handle regular great losses). So if our helpful government took away every single penny of profit made by Evil Big Pharma, it would reduce health care costs by a staggering 1.55%.
Big whoop.
I'd rather have drug companies motivated by the free market to make the cool drugs that let me and my family live than have it controlled by the same people that run the DMV.
[...] link: Weighing the Promise of Health Care and Finding it Wanting This entry is filed under America – Blogs, Big Hollywood. You can follow any responses to this [...]
I often wonder why the MSM doesn't report that the 3 year Massachusetts experiment with universal health care is an unmitigated disaster, throwing the state into bankruptcy, raising premiums by as much as 40%, and exponentially increasing the waiting times to see a primary care physician.
The usual criticism of US health care is "We spend more and get less". This is absurd.
USA Healthcare is First – Infant Mortality is Low
() The WHO itself ranks the US #1 in care delivery that is important to patients. It issues another ranking at 37th because this quality of care costs more and is not delivered by government. The 37th rank is a political judgment that is not related to the quality of care delivered
The only arguments against the quality of US health care are based on flawed infant mortality and life expectancy statistics.
() Life expectancy at birth is a bad measure of healthcare results, because it is exactly the countries with socialized healthcare who throw out premature births and births where the child dies within 24 hours. Each time the US includes such a birth, it lowers our life expectancy statistic and raises our infant mortality statistic.
It is almost as if the relevant departments want US healthcare to look bad. I haven't seen any statistics from those agencies that make an adjusted comparison.
() The US has much more accident and crime related death than Europe. This also lowers the life expectancy statistic, but has nothing to do with healthcare.
() For particular diseases, such as cancer, US citizens pay more and do better. This doesn't show ineffective healthcare. It shows that people are willing to pay to live longer, if they have the money and the option.
() When people cite the low costs of Medicare administration, they do not include activities that support Medicare but are not included in the spending figures. All governments have the incentive to under-report their healthcare costs. Despite Medicare's supposed efficiency, it suffers large losses to error and fraud, underpays for the care it proimises to deliver, and is so well planned that it is rapidly going broke. That is all within the government's control. They must like the situation.
() It is easy to spend less on healthcare and have great statistics: give the government a monopoly on paying for the care and for compiling the statistics. Cuba routinely issues infant mortality statistics that are lower than the US. I don't believe them.
Also please note that those costs to bring the drugs to market, and a huge part of the costs to insurance that drive up the price of healthcare are costs that are caused by government mandates, and the FDA….The surest way to "cut healthcare costs" is to get the government completely out of it, and let the free market do its thing….EVERYTHING that the government touches becomes more expensive!!!
February 26, 2010
Dear President Obama:
I want to thank you for holding “the health care summit.” It gave the citizens of The United States of America an opportunity to see, in clear bright relief, the philosophical division between the socialistic path and that of the capitalistic path with regard to health care; in such a moment of great division the midterm election of 2010 will determine which path the United States will choose to follow.
During the summit you brought up an example of how your insurance company did not meet your expectations when your vehicle was rear ended and “totaled” against your wish to have it repaired. While this circumstance was unfortunate your reaction to it is very revealing as to how you view a citizens responsibility to administer their own affairs, and your view of the capitalistic system. At that moment, in dealing with your mishap, you perceived that because you paid your premiums you were due something more than the agreement allowed for. As your story goes, “all you wanted was to get your old beater repaired.”
Let’s invent something call the “Obama Insurance Company,” I’m sure Joey Buttafuoco could be used as your pitchman – “Dented bodies lovingly restored.” Your premiums reflect that your company will fix any vehicle in a collision regardless of underlying value. After a few months of doing this what do you think would happen? The Obama Insurance Company would either have to raise it’s premiums or go bankrupt, and your “good” customers would no longer have coverage. Why? With each passing claim paid instead of encouraging a customer to invest in a new used car the Obama Insurance Company is over paying to maintain a diminishing asset. If the Obama Insurance Company wants to offer this option they would have to charge more to cover the potential cost.
Mr. Obama if it is true for vehicles it is true for human beings. Just like your “beater” one day I am going to die. To be sure I want to spend as many days with my family and doing the things I love to do as God, and a little luck, will grant me – but one day this carcass is going to give out. No amount of insurance is going to change this. That said, I need an insurance company to weigh the costs and risks and permit me to voluntarily engage in a policy that will cover my family to avoid medical induced bankruptcy. For sure the government has a role as police officer to make root-en toot-en certain they are solvent, and are living up to their end of the bargain, just as they do with auto insurance companies. In the case of the Obama Insurance Company the regulator would have shut it down before it even opened it’s doors.
Mr. Obama the capitalistic system provides the food you will eat for dinner, the fuel your airplane will consume to conduct government business, and all the stuff that the outstanding Secret Service uses to do it’s heroic and untold vital job. The capitalistic system also provides something even more precious than stuff; self-reliance and creativity. As a young boy I watched a friend of mine create a toy and market it to a major toy company, that toy is still being sold to this day. Short on brains then, but long on perseverance, I got to work doing jobs for people that they did not want to do. Everything from diapers, cleaning houses, lawns, and cleaning vehicles. All this activity led to savings, or capital formation. This capital was invested in a camera, because of a love of photography, I wanted to give it a go. Went to work at a local newspaper and did so well I considered it as a career. Through all of these experiences I learned the qualities I would have to exhibit to succeed in life. Show up on time, tell the truth, look the part, and above all else, always do the right thing. Mr. Obama why do you seek to crush the very system that allows my small story to be replicated millions of times a day, and as a byproduct of this activity, provides our citizens the highest standard of living of any nation on Earth? If you are waiting for the citizens of the United States of America to forget this lesson your frustration is only about to begin.
Respectfully,
This is not about healthcare reform. This is about unfettered power, money grab and corruption.
Socialism is an economic cul-de-sac.
Medicare is broke and the social engineers who gave it to us knew the boomers would stop paying and start receiving benefits. Where are they now? Obama wants to let the new ones double down on this madness.
They will try to make ends meet by letting the elderly take the little blue pill to die early so they can confiscate their life's work through the death tax.
It is not comforting to know the beneficiary of your death is the one who gets to pull the plug.
.
Yep. FDA costs alone (for Level III trials) are in excess of $110 million, and yet if problems show up with the drug later the FDA is not liable. In fact, the FDA can and HAS changed the rules after approving a Level III trial, bankrupting a drug company.
Nice work if you can get it.
I think it is the lies that are being used to pass this bill that upsets me the most. I feel Obama and the Democrats will say anything, promise anything, do anything to get it passed.
On a lighter note, there are several humorous cartoons on Obama and healthcare at http://drawfortruth.wordpress.com/category/health... The third cartoon down has Nancy Pelosi "waterboarding for healthcare votes."
We need a major overhaul of governmental welfare programs. If you want to withdraw Social Security or use Medicaid, you need to have paid into it for X number of years. If you want to receive welfare or unemployment, you need to have X number of job applications turned in that month. Once you have a job and are able to get by, you need to start repaying that welfare with a zero/low-interest loan. And there needs to be a time limit on the amount of time you can receive welfare, X number of years. Everybody who wants a job can eventually find one. It may be working part-time at McDonald's, and it may take you a long time to find that job (especially in this economy), but it doesn't take a person who is actively looking 10+ years to find a job. The same goes for health care. I'm all for making it cheaper and easier to get decent care, but a governmental takeover is not the answer.
There is no shame in occasionally needing a little help. We all go through difficult times, and sometimes, that means financially. But once we're past those hard times, we need to stand on our own feet and not expect the government to do everything for us.
……..and this article belongs on the 'hollywood' site…. because… ???
Click on the "Joseph C. Phillips" byline, Einstein.
Perhaps you didn't recognize him, but Mr Phillips has worked in Hollywood for years.
Clear, succinct, logical facts, yet the left is undetterred.
The piper will be paid.
I wonder just how wealthy and free the American people, in toto, would be had the socialists not started sucking at our collective teat since 1935 and our people not allowed themselves to be dumbed down by left-wing teachers from college to kindergarten.
The "Obama Health Care Plan" isn't going to pass. Obama seems less enthusiastic than the Big Breitbart crowd about getting it passed. Obama's just reading the script he's been handed so he can score kudos with his "base". I, for one, am sick of all of the phony drama surrounding "The Great Health Care Debate". It's like Pro-Wrestling, only cheesier. I've noticed that both the "Clinton health care" and "Obama health care" plans weren't/aren't very popular, almost as if Clinton/Obama Wanted/Wants the plan to die.
[...] Explain the zombies’ goals: Higher taxes, forced unionization and a loss of liberty (see nationalization of healthcare). [...]
What a great letter! Thanks for reminding me and other readers who Americans have always been.
You are very welcome. As they say – I'm just doing my job. My job, and yours, is to pass this country on to our children in better shape than it was left to us. To do this we must fight against all threats to what allows our capitalistic system to create and fulfill the hopes and dreams of our fellow Americans. Please write a letter yourself and explain to your representative why you are in the best position to decide what is good for you and not the government, if they write you back, you write them back and tell them that you do not accept their explanation and you have not moved one inch from your position – these next 19 days are vital – fight now like the future of your country depends on you and you alone. Good luck and God be with you.
Why do obama, pelosi, and reid think that we don't recognize that our freedoms and econumic prosperity are being ripped away from us? We are on to them and we will right them and the SEIU, and all Communist oppressors.
The "Obama Health Care Plan" isn't going to pass.
————————————————
I so hope you are correct!!
Yep, my husband works in animal pharma, so they don't fall under FDA as much, He has been trained to do audits of his company's feeder facilities, and he says that basically, any company worth its salt will always do their best to make sure they go above and beyond the government mandates to be absolutely safe. For the rest, he's been trained in all the possible ways to dodge government inspectors to that he can catch signs of trouble on his audits.
In other words, it's not all strictly necessary. Good actors will go above and beyond, and the bad ones will dodge it anyhow.
The original age you had to be before being able to draw social security was actually right at the maximum life expectancy meaning that it was designed so that very few would draw on it for a short period of time. That ceiling age hasn't been raised, so now Social Security benefits can be drawn by the average person for a good twenty years or so.
MSM is in on it. The more money the government takes, the more powerful they become, the more glamorous it becomes to cover them, the more power the MSM has.
Or so that's the way it used to work.
You are correct they will. I have been watching politics for over 30 years and I have never seen any administration with such total and utter disregard for the truth and the American people before in my life time.
If only we were so fortunate. I think they will do everything they can to pass it, and they actually want to lose one or both houses of Congress.
Obama ran in 2008 against Bush. As lame as it sounded, it worked. He can't do that in 2012. If the dems keep both houses, he can't run against anyone, because dems will own everything. He doesn't have any on to run against.
How ever if they ram this through, lose one or both houses, then in 2012 he can run against an obstructionist GOP, claiming the reason everything sucks is because GOP. If he pulls that off his coat tails are long enough to bring control back to the left.
The realize it, they just don't care.
Remember to the left, we don't simply disagree on politics, we are their sworn enemy and must be defeated at all costs.
Pretty impressive credentials. Thanks for the tip. I had no idea who he was either, I assumed a behind the scenes roll, maybe an author, seeing as he writes so well.
Well, I guess OBLABLA is out campaiging again…. he needs OUR support….. gheesh….. NO ONE WANTS IT!!!! My kids need to eat not more DEBT….
Great letter, Joe! I especially liked the reference to the government as police officer.
I have been using the anology of the umpire for the governments role in the markets. The umpire is there to maintain order and enforce the rules. The umpire is not there to change the rules should one team take a big lead over another. The umpire isn't supposed to make up new rules so that everyone is reminded that he's involved in the game. Just keep the playing field level and let the kids play!
Pondering that will only make you sad, nolotrippen. The thing to do now is to turn it around!
Speaking of government-run healthcare, in the news today is a story from the UK.
A woman had been in and out of the government health care hospital for 9 months, with varying diagnoses.
She finally found out she was pregnant…3 hours before she delivered her first baby, which weighed nearly 9 lbs.
Yes, but at our expense. Sigh…
You mean RomneyCare (the health care program passe in Massachusetts, under Mitt Romney, that is almost identical to the one proposed by the Senate)?
[...] Explain the zombies’ goals: Higher taxes, forced unionization and a loss of liberty (see nationalization of healthcare). [...]
I didn't know that. That actually makes a lot of sense. No wonder the system is so screwed up. Thanks for the info.
Are you joking? And that's the kind of care the liberals are trying to shove on us? Gee, thanks.
Nope, sad to say, it was in the news yesterday. Today, there is a story of a KY woman, who didn't know she was pg, delivering her baby herself, picking up her child at school, and driving to show the baby to her mom, before checking into the hospital for a few days.
The difference is, in the UK the woman had been undergoing tests with a diagnosis of either Irritable Bowel or some other sort of GI issue.
Instills a lot of faith, right? All we have to do is think about all the times the government has messed up, and how much red tape we have to wade through to fix THEIR errors.
For example, how many times have you received mail meant for someone at another address?
The chance of providing quality health care to the poor is now at hand. Nationalized health care will make sure that no person is left behind. We must thank the rich for getting it passed. They will have the power and compassion to raise the payroll tax, and pay medical costs for every sick person. It might anger some of the overpaid, but they have been living high on the hog for too long.
You must be logged in to post a comment.