OT: Politics and other stuff that is sure to piss everyone off

[VT_Football_Fan]

RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE!

46 seems to be away. What say we make this da tittay thread?

 

[Hokie200proof]

Well. Where does she stan...

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What were we talking about?

 

[VTscores]

Is that off topic?

It sssseems to be on topic.

 

[VT_Football_Fan]

Well. Where does she stan...

...

...

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What were we talking about?

Hopefully she is independent and goes both ways.

 

[wildturkey]

46 seems to be away. What say we make this da tittay thread?

This should be Obama's campaign commercial. Landslide victory.

 

[VTscores]

What's the faulty assumption here? We're already paying for the uninsured everytime they go into the ER. It's not like these uninsured people haven't been receiving medical attention.

As far as the paying for the Georgetown law student's birth control, that will not cost the taxpayer anything. The issue there was that religious institutions should not deny contraceptives. They are private institutions, so the burden of the cost will be with the institution.

1) You didn't read my post above. If you had, you'd have seen that we discussed uncompensated care before with the actual numbers.

To recap, however, the total cost of all uncompensated care to the taxpayers cost $43 billion in 2008. Some, but not all, of those people will be covered by the ACA. Among those still not covered will be illegal immigrants, whose ER care will continue to fall under that uncompensated care category. The ACA cost will be $100 billion. Total care will cost significantly more than just covering ER visits for this group of people.

2) Covering preventative care (with no co-pays) isn't going to fall to the institutions, at least not directly. Most insurance plans will pay for preventative care. Does that mean that we're not paying for it in our insurance premiums? Nope. If you're paying an insurance premium, YOU will be paying in the form of increased premiums, or your company will be paying more. Likely both.

Somehow, people seem to think that we're going to get away with insuring the uninsured and adding to health care costs, and it's somehow not going to be all of us who pays. If we add new health care costs to the pool, we'll all be subsidizing those costs, either through taxes, increased premiums, or limits to our own access to care.

I'm suggesting that given that we're paying double what other countries pay for care, coverage for that 10% of the population who can't afford coverage could have come directly out of health care industry profits, with room to spare. The health care industry has pulled off an incredible coup here, and I'm not just talking about insurance companies.

If we want universal coverage, we really should have looked at why health care is so expensive for us to begin with, and it's NOT just insurance companies.

 

[VTscores]

46 seems to be away. What say we make this da tittay thread?

If that were Obamagirl, certainly no guys would be able to remember any reasons not to vote for him.

 

[VT_Football_Fan]

If that were Obamagirl, certainly no guys would be able to remember any reasons not to vote for him.

Other than he is absolutely worthless and won because he is black

 

[VT_Football_Fan]

Now back to the tittays.

 

[Forty_Sixand2]

 

[Hokie200proof]

1) You didn't read my post above. If you had, you'd have seen that we discussed uncompensated care before with the actual numbers.

To recap, however, the total cost of all uncompensated care to the taxpayers cost $43 billion in 2008. Some, but not all, of those people will be covered by the ACA. Among those still not covered will be illegal immigrants, whose ER care will continue to fall under that uncompensated care category. The ACA cost will be $100 billion. Total care will cost significantly more than just covering ER visits for this group of people.

2) Covering preventative care (with no co-pays) isn't going to fall to the institutions, at least not directly. Most insurance plans will pay for preventative care. Does that mean that we're not paying for it in our insurance premiums? Nope. If you're paying an insurance premium, YOU will be paying in the form of increased premiums, or your company will be paying more. Likely both.

Somehow, people seem to think that we're going to get away with insuring the uninsured and adding to health care costs, and it's somehow not going to be all of us who pays. If we add new health care costs to the pool, we'll all be subsidizing those costs, either through taxes, increased premiums, or limits to our own access to care.

I'm suggesting that given that we're paying double what other countries pay for care, coverage for that 10% of the population who can't afford coverage could have come directly out of health care industry profits, with room to spare. The health care industry has pulled off an incredible coup here, and I'm not just talking about insurance companies.

If we want universal coverage, we really should have looked at why health care is so expensive for us to begin with, and it's NOT just insurance companies.

Well, all of what you say there is plausible. I would only add

 

[VT_Football_Fan]

Gotdamn 200.

 

[Forty_Sixand2]

Hey VTFF,

Get out of the tits thread and go post all that you know about the Godfather and UVA!!

 

[VTscores]

Gotdamn 200.

You guys are killing me.

 

[VTscores]

Well, all of what you say there is plausible. I would only add

I'll have to concede that point. Well played.

 

[Hokie200proof]

Gotdamn 200.

DJ tattys... Even better live.

 

[hokiegrad]

From your linked article, Rothbard writes -
"But why are rates high and increasing rapidly? The answer is the very existence of healthcare insurance, which was established or subsidized or promoted by the government to help ease the previous burden of medical care. Medicare, Blue Cross, etc., are also very peculiar forms of "insurance."

He very clearly blames health insurance, along with subsidized medicine (for those who are unable to pay for it), as the major reason for why healthcare costs are increasing.

I can see where you got that now. But I think that's based on a misunderstanding. The way I read that part of the article, Rothbard is talking about the type of health "insurance" we have today, which isn't actually insurance at all in many respects. As I posted about earlier. (here: http://www.sportshoopla.com/forums/...ff-sure-piss-everyone-off-12.html#post2092278 ). As I said, I certainly don't think insurance should be done away with. If Rothbard did, I disagree with him. I do think it should actually fit the definition of insurance (from Merriam-Webster's: "coverage by contract whereby one party undertakes to indemnify or guarantee another against loss by a specified contingency or peril").

Rothbard's article -
"If your house burns down and you have fire insurance, you receive (if you can pry the money loose from your friendly insurance company) a compensating fixed money benefit. For this privilege, you pay in advance a fixed annual premium. Only in our system of medical insurance does the government or Blue Cross pay, not a fixed sum, but whatever the doctor or hospital chooses to charge."

You're forgetting that you, if you're a government, can change the whole system.

You can try anyway... And should. I'm all with you on the government needing to do something on this issue.

Just because things have worked a certain way in the past, doesn't mean that that's the right way of doing things. You and Rothbard are trying to simplify an issue that is far more complex than you are admitting.

huh? I'm simplifying the issue? I haven't tried to give a comprehensive solution. I've talked about a few things that would help. But it's an immensely complicated issue, and I don't have time to come up with a full solution much less lay it out for you here. If you thought I in anyway implied that this was simple, you misread me...

Rothbard's fire insurance analogy above would be great if a house acted in the same way as a person, or if property and human life could be valued by dollars.

It's an analogy. When was the last time you saw an analogy that applied exactly, 100%, with no "but this is different"? As I read it, he was trying to drive home the difference between true insurance and modern American health "insurance", which only very loosely conforms to the definition of that word.

What's the cost of a house that burned down? Easy to assess in insurance terms - the cost of the building materials, the belongings inside, the cost of labor to build a new one perhaps? What's the cost of lost life?

We're talking about health insurance here, not life insurance. They are completely separate things.

Or lost quality of life? Or a lost limb? Or the loss of the use of your legs?

insurance doesn't necessarily place a value on what is lost. You can buy less coverage than the item is worth, as is done much of the time. E.g., your car insurance only covers you up to a certain maximums. When purchasing insurance you have to consider whether it's worth it to pay a little more for higher coverage or a little less and run more risk.

Health insurance is completely different from other forms of insurance as it has no start and end point.

huh? As with all other types of insurance, health insurance should start when I start paying for it and end when I stop paying for it. I think what you mean is that you'll have to pay for it your whole life. You'll also have to pay for car insurance your whole life unless you intend to stop having a car, house insurance your whole life unless you intend to stop having a house, etc. Not sure where you're going here.

It's also a much more active as a person will always need additional care. You get sick, you get treated, you get hurt, you get treated, you get a rare disease, you get treated... over and over again until you die.

That's certainly not typical for insurance, but I'm not sure why you think this is a big deal. Both the insured and the insurer should realize this (certainly the insurer will) and it is factored into the insurance plan you select.

In the house/fire insurance analogy, you could pay for fire insurance for 100 years with no fires. Or, your house burns down and you get paid for what you lost. You total up what's been lost, you get money. That's property. It's a fixed cost.

Health is maintained, not lost and then recouped monetarily. It's a series of preventative or invasive procedures so you DON'T lose things - like your life (from some rare disease, or diabetes, or heart disease) or a body part (from some terrible cut/laceration or an infection) or your ability to do certain things (from back issues, joint pain or paralysis from a serious injury).

You could pay for health insurance for several years at a stretch without incurring any covered health expenses, too. Lots of people don't go to the doctor at the drop of a hat (bless them) and are generally healthy and thus don't need to go to the doctor very much. Insurance plans where there is no deductible or it is very low are one of the huge problems with our current system. These plans encourage people to go to the doctor for things that really don't warrant it. That's money flowing into the health industry (because the doctor is getting paid, obviously) that shouldn't have. That's increasing premiums (because the insurer is going to recoup those costs) for everyone else. You want to drive down costs, there's a big issue to tackle.

I already talked before about how what most people call preventative care (physicals, vaccines, etc.) should not be covered by insurance. Not that they shouldn't be covered by something... if the government wants to pay for vaccines, and insurance companies want to incentivize you to get physicals by giving you premium deductions if you do, like your home owner's insurance gives you a deduction for an alarm system, great. But those kinds of things don't fall under the definition of insurance. My car insurance covers accidents... not oil changes.

But you're right that there are a lot of medical procedures that are preventative in the sense that they prevent you from losing something (e.g. your eye) beside the kind of thing I'm talking about there. Things where the problem has already started and you need the doctor to fix it now or it will get worse. That's not primarily preventative, that's corrective. You're correcting the problem so that it doesn't generate into something worse. True health insurance here would cover correcting the problem that came up (to the extent that the plan you selected covered that, of course). It shouldn't be concerned with the preventative nature of your problem, but rather with the corrective.

What would you pay for these things in a market economy? Is there an amount you WOULDN'T pay to stay healthy?

What I would pay would obviously depend on many factors. My perceived benefit (e.g. I could live without my little toe if it would cost $100k to save it), my ability to pay (going back to the risk element I mentioned above... if I didn't have sufficient insurance coverage, then I got bitten by risk... I played the odds and lost), etc.

In a completely free-market healthcare system, the market demand would dictate what these procedures would cost. Why do you presume that they would cost less? Do think the supply of health would somehow start to outnumber the demand?

Supply is not a problem here. We have plenty of hospitals, emergency care centers, doctor's offices, etc. Further, you reduce demand by things like higher deductibles, so people aren't going to the doctor willy-nilly unless they're willing to pay for it. But the real factor you're missing here is that we're not operating under a market economy here now! Supply/demand isn't what is determining costs. Fix that and prices have to go down, because they're artificially inflated to be where they are now (as we have already discussed).

 

[hokiegrad]

to continue...

If your house keeps burning down, your insurance company will drop you. If they don't drop you, they're raise your premiums. Should the same practice be allowed for health insurance? If you get sick, get a disease, get hurt "too often", should health insurance be able to drop you? If they're in it for making a profit (which has been the case since it began) the answer is a loud and resounding yes.

Absolutely yes. That doesn't have to be the end of the story, though. You can choose to buy coverage where you pay more so that they don't have the right to drop you, or that right is reduced. We could setup a government system to help people in that kind of situation. Etc.

If your house/fire insurance drops you, you can choose to rebuild at the peril of losing all of the money it costs to build a new house. If your health insurance drops you, what can you do? Hope you don't get sick? What if you are dropped (even for non-medical reasons, like you lost your job) and you get cancer? What happens then? You have two choices really. You go bankrupt trying to get care, or you bankrupt all of your friends and family as you borrow money for care. Or you chose to die.

See above. Insurance doesn't have to be the only thing in play here! That's a huge key here that so many people miss. Also, as I've talked about in other posts, your job shouldn't have anything to do with your health insurance coverage, so if we fix that your example of the guy losing his insurance because he lost his job would go away.

How can you put a price on living or living healthy? How is it just to say to someone you need X amount of money to be able to live? How can you justify that morally? If you can't answer that, and you want to follow the system that Rothbard is recommending, you've got a problem... because that's exactly what a purely libertarian healthcare economy would force us to do - set the market price for life. And you think that will be cheaper than what we have now?

I'm not saying "go die". I hope my last two comments have shown that losing insurance coverage shouldn't be the end of the story. And don't assume I am espousing a libertarian philosophy just because I mentioned one article from Rothbard...

It's a great quote by Jefferson, but it's impossible to say exactly what that all entails. But, let's relate this quote to what we're talking about here:
Would the government be improving the lives of its citizens by providing affordable healthcare? I would presume you'd argue no, or, at the very least, you would respond only after knowing the potential cost? Otherwise, how could the answer be no?

I, not surprisingly, would say yes. How can society function without proper healthcare? If it's not the obligation of the government to ensure the health and well-being of its populace (some might even argue this would even fall under your goal "To protect the people it governs"), where does this obligation lie? In private companies? What if the healthcare they are selling is too costly for certain segments of the populace? Do we just let these people die? Do we deny treatment?

Why does the government taking over have to be the solution? Can't the government do a lot of things to help fix this without taking over entirely? E.g. setting up something to help cover the poor souls who aren't insurable within their means, working to remove the connection between employment and health insurance coverage, etc. I don't think you understood where I'm coming from nearly to the extent you thought you did.

That's all I have time for tonight...

 

[Hokie200proof]

You forgot tits.

Not saying I won't respond, but we kinda moved on to tigolebitties.

 

[VTscores]

I stopped reading when the tatas showed up.

Suddenly whatever it was we were talking about just didn't seem important any more.