In 2006, [Massachusetts] lawmakers seeking to broaden health coverage made it illegal to be uninsured. It works like this: Employers have to offer you a health plan. If you are jobless or don’t like your employer’s plan, you must buy your own. If you don’t get one, you pay a stiff fine. This strategy—known as an employer and individual “mandate”—forms the backbone of the national health reform bills now making their way through Congress.
On paper, the experiment was a resounding success. According to an Urban Institute estimate, the number of uninsured residents quickly fell from 13 percent to 7 percent following the law’s passage.And yet, something strange happened. Despite having health insurance, roughly one in 10 state residents still failed to fill prescriptions, ended up with unpaid medical bills, or skipped needed medical care for financial reasons. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent to insure more Massachusetts citizens, but many people still weren’t getting necessary care. What happened?
Assume you’re looking to buy insurance. The state has a handy Web site where you can find the cheapest plan. For a young family of four, that plan costs roughly $9,500 per year, which doesn’t include a minimum annual deductible of $3,500 before many benefits kick in. (The state helps cover some of the premiums for those who make very little money, but many still have to pay the other fees.) And if anyone is hospitalized or needs a lot of specialized care, you also pay 20 percent of that bill. In this relatively cheap plan, the family can be liable for an extra $10,000 per year of medical costs. This sort of “high deductible” health plan is clearly structured to discourage medical care.
The article goes on to detail the effects of the program, parts of which may end up in Obama’s plan. The author’s conclusion?
The expensive Massachusetts plan is not well-designed to systematically improve anyone’s health. Instead, it’s a superficial effort to clear the uninsured from the books and then clumsily limit further costs by discouraging care.
#128
I don’t know where this theoretical stuff comes from. I mean its not like its not without precedent. Go look around – plenty of countries have it.
On ‘setting of price’ – they don’t have to set it, there can be a market for services rendered from private hospitals etc. They can also find out the real cost from government run hospitals. Its not hard. If you run a business you have to do that kind of thing all the time – working out if your supplier is giving your a reasonable cost, by doing a back of an envelope calculation.
Economics absolutely plays a part. Or certainly can and does in most (all?) universal health systems.
The quality argument is bogus. Especially if you have no health care right now.
So you’re saying there’s lots of doctors out there that if they are paid slightly less for a procedure they are going to do a half arsed job? Wow. Perhaps they are in the wrong profession. That’s not to say they should get paid badly just that (if you go look it up) salary doesn’t bare a direct relation to quality of work.
Actually the doctors pay part is completely missing the point. The big issue is insurance. Its cost. Being dropped. The complexity. Its inefficiency. Its goals of profit. Not being able to get it, if you have pre-existing conditions.
Having the government replace the broken, expensive, profit focused insurance part, works, and doesn’t imply the rest just falls over.
129 – LL so for you this is just a jurisdictional issue? Somehow I don’t think you’re ok with State sponsored health care either.
#107, bobbo, fair enough. Yes, I was only concerned with examining what is a market, and not any particular condition of one (i.e. free market).
#132, “Pay up or die you stupid poor person”
Did I say “poor” or “stupid?”
No, I don’t think so.
Rich people die all the time. Did their insurance help them?
#132, Basic sustenance is sustainable for anyone working and contributing to society.
Then why do we issue food stamps and the like? All the billions and billions of dollars spent for these programs we still have poverty.
#134, Mostly it is, but I would have an easier time swallowing it (though not automatic) if the federal government would keep its c*ck out of my a$$.
There is a reason this is supposed to be a republic — the concentration of power in the hands of a few is a dangerous thing.
Lets just abolish medicine then. Survival of the fittest after all.
All the billions and billions of dollars spent for medicine we still have sickness and death.
All the billions and billions of dollars spent for the military we still have threats to face.
All the billions and billions of dollars spent for the legal system we still have crime.
Man, I can do this for anything.
If gov run HC is SOOOO much better. How about this. Set up a gov program that is voluntary. If it is better run, (lower cost) people will flock to it. If private run is SOOO bad it won’t be able to compete. There ya go. Any takers?
“Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”
Patrick, that was the argument Obama made yesterday.
# 142 tcc3 said, “Patrick, that was the argument Obama made yesterday.”
That his HC plan would contain no mandatory requirements for anyone?
#139, Hey, I’m not the one who said people can eat without help from the government. You are.
If that is not the case, then we have to ask ourselves why the “Great Society” isn’t so great . . .
If you are looking for proof (doubtful, but one can always hope) as to why a federal agency of that size is doomed to failure, you need look no further than across the tracks.
#144 I already issued the challenge to those who think that the gov can do it better. No takers…
#146
A good point is buried in that ramble – prices are less when avoiding insurance.
People don’t want insurance – they just want someone else to pay the bills. Someone who will be the responsible one, so they don’t have to worry or care about anything ever again.
Those same people would complain a lot less if everyone was in the same boat so to speak…if their neighbor didn’t have “that better health plan with it’s $10 drug card”…the plan they choose not to take in order to afford the vacation in the mountains.
Combine the two together, then mix in a lying (talking)politician and you have people like #118/#122 dreaming and hoping universal health care will work – and make everyone the same (equally miserable) so they don’t have to be troubled about such things anymore.
Hopeing and dreaming are a necessity of life, but one has to do it with their eyes open. As it stands now, P.T.Barnum couldn’t have asked for a better audience.
#146
When I mean theory lots of the issues you’re bringing up can have their answers directly found in the majority of 1st world countries solutions. They have it and it works. Not perfectly, but better than the US. How do I know? Because I live here – but I’ve lived in other countries that have universal health. Hell I had an ear infection when on holiday in Spain, and they sorted me out.
So all of the crap about it couldn’t possibly work. Or its communism is absurd. Unless you are suggesting Germany, Uk, Ireland, Switzerland + Spain are all communist…
Now perhaps it’s all new and scary from your perspective. I certainly wouldn’t claim it won’t have problems. Some of the problems may be to do with what you suggest. But that doesn’t make it a fail. They still have a superior system – in terms of money spent for health care supplied.
All I can tell you is that the US has the worst system out of any country I’ve lived in. It’s not theoretical from my perspective.
Its broke. Admit it. Its easy to explain why its broke. And yes some tax rebate isn’t going to fix it – how could it?
# 12 Mr. Fusion said, in part:
That by itself would be worth a high deductible. That’s what I want to know about the Mass. plan — does it make the providers charge the “insured” rate, or does that only kick in after you’ve satisfied the $9500 deductible with a single runny nose and a single antihistamine pill?
– – – – –
# 140 Patrick said:
I could go for that. Yes. We should do that.
(But I _still_ don’t get the reference to cell phone taxes. Do you?)
#150,“If gov run HC is SOOOO much better. How about this. Set up a gov program that is voluntary. If it is better run, (lower cost) people will flock to it. If private run is SOOO bad it won’t be able to compete. There ya go. Any takers?”
I could go for that. Yes. We should do that.
I could, too, as long as you only paid into it if you were on the plan.
#129, Loser,
Again, you ignorant fuck, roads are the responsibility of the STATES and not the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
How many times have the Liebertarians told us there is only ONE tax payer?
If I am forced to start paying more taxes to fund a goverment agency that does not benefit me, you can bet your pansy ass I will shut down and retire to some little island in the caribbean. YOU can deal with finding work for my employees.
Please, don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out. As for your “employees”? Quit posing. You don’t run a company and you most likely are on Medicaid now.
You won’t support a government agency that doesn’t benefit you. How arrogant. If you don’t wish to be an American, no one is stopping you from leaving!
#131, Loser,
And before you start calling me heartless, you should consider how many charity hospitals per capita there were before Uncle Sam started putting his hands in everybody’s pockets.
All those Charity Hospitals have been taken over by Health Insurance companies and large HMOs. Uncle Sam had nothing to do with that.
#146, debate,
The uninsured; this is another subject entirely. Do you know that there are many hospitals right now that don’t turn away patients based on ability to pay? Many of them are non-profit, meaning they are subsidized by charity and other government programs to help the poor.
No, that is the issue. Almost half of Americans are uninsured, under insured, or have such high deductibles and co-pays they are in severe financial danger over most serious illnesses.
These hospitals that don’t turn away patients? Every day they become fewer and fewer. They can’t afford it. And all (to the best of my knowledge) are run by county governments. Even then, they are usually no more than clinics set up to treat minor ailments, not cancer treatments, kidney dialysis, heart disease, schizophrenia, etc.
#150, #151, the insurance companies are fighting like mad to block just that — a gov’t-run insurance plan to compete with their plans. Despite all their bluster about how inefficient a gov’t-run plan would be, they know it could be done cheaper than their for-profit model.
LL, you’re just a cheap bastard, admit it. Taxes are the dues we pay for civilization, and you don’t want to pay your share. As others have said, man up and admit it. You get benefits from what the government pays for — the ROADS, the regulatory agencies that make sure our food isn’t poisoned and our cars are safe, et cetera, et cetera. You just don’t want to pay for it. There are many like you, ya punk.
#129 LL If I am forced to start paying more taxes to fund a goverment agency that does not benefit me, you can bet your pansy ass I will shut down and retire to some little island in the caribbean. YOU can deal with finding work for my employees.
Good catch Fusion, I missed this. Oh, the horror! The horror that the government might be spending money on something that doesn’t benefit LL. The nerve of that government to dare spend money on something that doesn’t directly make LL’s life better!
LL, you ignorant f*ck, put up or shut up. You think it’s so bad in the U.S., then get the hell out, go create your own libertarian paradise somewhere else.
What a friggin’ idiot.
#116, Cow-Patty,
More of your bullshit?
A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have. — Thomas Jefferson
Nope. Never said it. Lately, it has been attributed to Jefferson by the right wing nut crowd.
It was actually said by President Gerald Ford. But he isn’t as sexy a person as Jefferson so it doesn’t sound as good coming from him.
BTW, a government doesn’t have to be big enough to give much in order to take everything.
Phydeau, Fusion,
Alas, we have finally hit the end of your civilized responses, as indicated by nothing other than they same hackneyed insults spewing forth from your holes. This is what always happens when collectivists feel they have lost to common sense and decency.
So, since we have devolved to insults, here’s one for you:
How does it feel to know that if your mothers had known the proper use of a wire coat hanger you wouldn’t have been born brain damaged?
# 150 Uncle Patso said, “I could go for that. Yes. We should do that.
(But I _still_ don’t get the reference to cell phone taxes. Do you?)”
It would be a great way to test the theories. I don’t think any leftwing nut jobs would actually want to test their theories, hence the relative silence on my challenge.
Which part of the cell phone tax are you referring to?
#150, Uncle Pat,
But I _still_ don’t get the reference to cell phone taxes. Do you?
That is in reference to Liberty Loser, brm, Sea Lawyer, and maybe some others thinking that if your boss provides you with something you shouldn’t have to pay for the personal use of it. The IRS currently classifies this as a taxable benefit, the same as if they paid for your wife to accompany you on that business trip.
Employer supplied cars are the most common item currently. As they become even more prevalent, employer supplied cell phones that are used for private calls should also be classed as a taxable benefit.
Loser thinks these, and all taxes, are bogus and he is above being expected to comply with the evil government.
#159,
Hey fusion, I still haven’t heard if your liberal buddies are planning to pay their cell phone back taxes and pay them from now on.
I mean, come on! It’s your duty to inform them, otherwise you are aiding and abetting.
#157
Shhhhh, someone may catch on to why there hasn’t been much effort made in closing all the Pro-Choice stores.
#152
“..All those Charity Hospitals have been taken over by Health Insurance companies and large HMOs. Uncle Sam had nothing to do with that…”
Government is the cause of the closings.
Charity Hospitals couldn’t afford to process all the government required paperwork or follow all the government required rules.
Being ‘taken over’ by those evil insurance companies was a better option than abandoning the building and services.
Our government, under the disguise of “protecting it’s population” is making sure there is no longer and never will be again, any “Charity” competition around.
That is where the Charity Hospitals have gone. But you knew that…and yet choose to ‘spin’ it a different direction.
Run away crying, LL. Boo-friggin’-hoo that the government spends money that doesn’t directly benefit you. You’ve shown your true colors.
Seriously… you hate America so much, hate the fact that many of us want to make sure our fellow Americans are taken care of, hate that your taxes go to such things. You’re just a pathetic hater, much like your fellow wingnuts. Go create your libertarian paradise somewhere else. America doesn’t need haters.
#163, America doesn’t need haters.
You are right.
But it does need me. But it does. It does.
And it needs the other 20M small businesses because without them, you won’t have a tax base on which to build your fascist society.