tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9612609.post2599000120459882687..comments2023-09-29T06:58:20.125-07:00Comments on Badtux the Snarky Penguin: OMG Teh Jackboots iz cuming!BadTuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01345749557330760251noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9612609.post-1276000165467168242010-04-01T01:16:04.238-07:002010-04-01T01:16:04.238-07:00You have some good points, but also some faulty re...You have some good points, but also some faulty reasoning. I went over the comment size limit, so I posted a rebuttal to your gun-point reasoning <a href="http://nathanstudy.blogspot.com/2010/04/gun-point-analogy-doesnt-hold-water.html" rel="nofollow"> here</a>nathan3700https://www.blogger.com/profile/04423294092652508970noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9612609.post-70982006074097944472010-03-31T08:29:27.059-07:002010-03-31T08:29:27.059-07:00One last thought: If middlemen were the problem, t...One last thought: If middlemen were the problem, then the uninsured would pay less for health care than the insured, because the uninsured can shop around for the best price. But that's actually not the case. Instead, <a href="http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:BuTbhMirX_kJ:www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5290172/+uninsured+pay+more+healthcare&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" rel="nofollow">the uninsured are routinely charged four times more than the insured</a>. <br /><br />So that middleman thing just doesn't work. If competition worked in healthcare, the uninsured would pay LESS, not four times MORE, because competition would allow them to find less expensive healthcare. But that doesn't happen. In the end, competition in the healthcare field is about as real as the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus -- it just doesn't happen, because of the "your money, or your life" nature of the business. Might as well talk about competition in the field of Central Park muggings at that point...<br /><br />- Badtux the Health Care PenguinBadTuxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01345749557330760251noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9612609.post-40699412598754586152010-03-31T08:11:31.370-07:002010-03-31T08:11:31.370-07:001) I wish it would lead to single-payer, because t...1) I wish it would lead to single-payer, because that is the most efficient system for paying for health care, but this system is closer to the German system than to the Canadian system. It basically turns the insurers into regulated utilities like the German insurers. The German system has been around since 1883, so clearly that's not a good indicator for this system leading to single-payer. <br /><br />2) I didn't note the problem that you note (the middlemen) for the same reason that I didn't note pink unicorns or cotton candy trees -- because it's not real. The actual problem is that in many cases doctors can literally say, "your money, or your life." The plight of uninsured people who are forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars they don't have in order to pay for heart surgery they needed to stay alive shows that it's not a middleman problem, because there was no middleman involved there, it was the equivalent of a Central Park mugging where the doctors basically said, "your money or your life", except with a scalpel rather than a gun. That is why I think insurers have been unfairly demonized by both the left and the right -- they're trying to police the Central Park muggers, and yeah, they need to be regulated because they're also taking out some of the pedestrians on the sidewalks too by firing at will in all directions like an Iraqi Army unit taking sniper fire (the so-called "death blossom"), but the core issue here is providers with the power of life and death using that to extract people's wallets, not insurers or middlemen or anybody else.<br /><br />3) A tax if you don't buy health insurance infringes on freedom? Puh-LEEZE. Hyperventilating like that makes you look like an idiot. By that standard Ronald Reagan hated freedom because in the Tax Reform Act of 1986, he forced all of us to have mortgages by charging us taxes on the money that would otherwise go to pay mortgages! The power to tax is one of the core enumerated powers in the Constitution, and as I've pointed out, enforcing taxes at gunpoint has been the case since at least 1794. Why did George Washington hate freedom? :). <br /><br />The deal with this particular tax is that you have a choice. You can either pay into the uncompensated care fund so that when you go to the hospital emergency room with a broken arm from falling down your stairs, the ER can get reimbursed from that fund, or you can buy insurance and use the insurance to pay that ER bill. You have the freedom to be everything but a deadbeat. You seem to be defending deadbeats who want to go to the ER with a broken arm but not pay for it in some way. Since when did being a deadbeat become one of your core freedoms that you want to defend?!<br /><br />- Badtux the Healthcare PenguinBadTuxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01345749557330760251noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9612609.post-21190580757679947942010-03-30T23:08:49.237-07:002010-03-30T23:08:49.237-07:00I'm glad to see that you're not drinking t...I'm glad to see that you're not drinking the kool-aid with every other Democrat who thinks this legislation is the greatest thing since civil rights. This thing will have to be fixed, and we all know that Obama intends it to lead to single payer of some sort. So it has been a charade. This was a monument to himself a-la FDR.<br /><br />But I have to say I'm disappointed that you still don't see that the true problem isn't private enterprise, but that fact that we, since the 40's have inserted two middlemen between patients and providers (insurers and employers) where they ought not be! Remove those two middlemen, and market discipline fixes the inefficiencies you bemoan. Oh, the free market fairy! (as you have derided in the past) But tell me, what incentive does a person have to 1) demand price transparency, 2) question their doctor about expensive tests/treatments 3) budget for medical needs IF THEY KNOW their employer/insurer will always foot the bill. And what incentives do providers have to advertise prices transparently or to be conservative in treatment, when they know that the patient doesn't give a darn and so they have to wrangle after-the-fact via a bureaucracy. They have all the incentive in the world to jack up the price as much as possible in hopes they can get reimbursed a decent fraction of it. <br /><br />Worst of all, this bill infringes on freedom at unprecedented levels. Come on, forcing people to buy insurance via tax law? Oh, just because we already micromanage people via tax law that makes it okay? And using the Federalist Whiskey tax to justify it? Come on. Excise taxes are on goods that people can choose not to buy. But having penalty tax because you <b> did not </b> buy something? What is next, a penalty if couples don't buy birth control or who don't buy a Prius? Where do you ever draw the line? When does freedom ever come out on top with you guys?nathan3700https://www.blogger.com/profile/04423294092652508970noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9612609.post-58913037588368854062010-03-30T09:34:49.261-07:002010-03-30T09:34:49.261-07:00As I've repeatedly pointed out, insurers did n...As I've <a href="http://snarkypenguin.blogspot.com/2009/12/demonizing-insurers.html" rel="nofollow">repeatedly</a> <a href="http://snarkypenguin.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-is-health-care-so-expensive.html" rel="nofollow">pointed out</a>, insurers did not cause the mess, they simply responded badly to it. What caused the mess was spiraling provider costs caused by a) unnecessary duplication of expensive facilities and equipment (every single hospital had to get the very latest <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotic_surgery" rel="nofollow">surgery robot</a>, even though it's only used once or twice a year at the typical hospital), b) continued spiraling drug costs as drug companies spend over 1/3rd of their revenue on advertising, and c) outrageous physician income for specialists, the highest of any nation on the planet, even nations such as France and Switzerland that have healthcare reputations as good as that of the United States. <br /><br />My biggest complaint on the costs side is that this bill does nothing about any of those problems, it keeps the insurers from reacting badly to them (prevents insurers from denying care and prevents insurers from kicking out sick people) but doesn't do anything about the root causes of the costs spiral. But the insurers aren't the ones who are making costs go up and up and up, and giving them the blame for this mess is not useful.<br /><br />- Badtux the Healthcare Economics PenguinBadTuxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01345749557330760251noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9612609.post-12316028601591044892010-03-30T09:12:10.642-07:002010-03-30T09:12:10.642-07:00We need something like Medicare for all. The insu...We need something like Medicare for all. The insurance companies created this mess and they sure as hell aren't going to fix it because they are making too much money the way it is now.Kulkurihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09198195648066700925noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9612609.post-17361641299605979682010-03-29T18:20:12.138-07:002010-03-29T18:20:12.138-07:00Anyone that thinks they understand politics is an ...Anyone that thinks they understand politics is an idiot.BBChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15323188240580782454noreply@blogger.com