I just read the 11 page summary of the President’s Proposal on health care reform put out by the White House. Fellow Americans, you have no idea of the financial havoc this plan, or the House or Senate plans, will cause to the health care system specifically or to the economy in general.
The rules and regulations are so invasive that we will be forever mired in endless bureaucratic control of this most important segment of our lives. These plans, while they say they give us choice, are as much “top down” as if the government were running the health care system as in the Canadian or UK systems.
The visions I had were from the movie “Brazil” where huge rows of gray offices provided meaningless jobs for bureaucrats who never understood in the least what their part in the evil system was.
Everything in the Proposal is a lie and so counter-intuitive to the Laws of Economics that one can only assume blatant ignorance of economics or a perverse desire to centralize the role of the state in our affairs regardless of the consequences. I think it is both.
Here is the White House’s summary of this Proposal:
- It makes insurance more affordable by providing the largest middle class tax cut for health care in history, reducing premium costs for tens of millions of families and small business owners who are priced out of coverage today. This helps over 31 million Americans afford health care who do not get it today – and makes coverage more affordable for many more.
- It sets up a new competitive health insurance market giving tens of millions of Americans the exact same insurance choices that members of Congress will have.
- It brings greater accountability to health care by laying out commonsense rules of the road to keep premiums down and prevent insurance industry abuses and denial of care.
- It will end discrimination against Americans with pre-existing conditions.
- It puts our budget and economy on a more stable path by reducing the deficit by $100 billion over the next ten years – and about $1 trillion over the second decade – by cutting government overspending and reining in waste, fraud and abuse.
I don’t have to remind you that in every program the federal government has ever implemented costs have been grossly underestimated intentionally by lying, or by incompetence, or both. Recently disclosed FOIA disclosures reveal that Lyndon Johnson lied about the costs of Medicare because he knew that he couldn’t get the bill through if the true costs were known. Even so the costs have risen geometrically above the worst estimates back then.
I don’t believe that the Obama Administration is just well meaning but misguided. I am not sure that President Obama fully understands the consequences of his Proposal because of his lack of understanding of economics, but the Proposal as a means to exert control over 16% of the economy is a conscious and blatant power grab.
For example, there are provisions for price controls of insurance premiums of private insurers. I don’t believe any of the proponents of these plans actually believe in price controls because everyone knows they don’t work. The Cato Institute in its excellent article today on the Proposal dug up this quote by Larry Summers:
[P]rice and exchange controls inevitably create harmful economic distortions. Both the distortions and the economic damage get worse with time.
Yet as harmful as they are, price controls were one of the centerpieces of President Obama’s speech today as he announced the Proposal. As reported in the Wall Street Journal article:
The Obama plan calls for giving the federal government authority to block insurers from making premium-rate increases. A new Health Insurance Rate Authority would lay out what it viewed as reasonable rate increases, and those considered unjustified could be blocked.
If you think I am exaggerating, here are the titles of some of the “reforms” outlined in the Proposal. They are a pervasive bureaucratic nightmare that is the beginning of the end of the best health care system in the world. If these don’t sound 1984ish to you, then check your pulse. These policies are deceptively disguised but in fact they are: government penalties, increased government oversight, market interference, price controls, centralization of their control, increased regulation of hospitals and doctors on how to administer health care, taxes on producers, and taxes on the “rich.” Here is a list of the program initiatives:
- Strengthen Oversight of Insurance Premium Increases
- Improve Individual Responsibility
- Strengthen Employer Responsibility
- Comprehensive Sanctions Database
- Registration and Background Checks of Billing Agencies and Individuals
- Expanded Access to the Healthcare Integrity and Protection Data Bank
- Liability of Medicare Administrative Contractors for Claims Submitted by Excluded Providers
- Limiting Debt Discharge in Bankruptcies of Fraudulent Health Care Providers or Suppliers
- Use of Technology for Real-Time Data Review
- Illegal Distribution of a Medicare or Medicaid Beneficiary Identification or Billing Privileges
- Study of Universal Product Numbers Claims Forms for Selected Items and Services under the Medicare Program
- Medicaid Prescription Drug Profiling
- Medicare Advantage Risk Adjustment Errors
- Modify Certain Medicare Medical Review Limitations
- Establish a CMS-IRS Data Match to Identify Fraudulent Providers
- Preventing Delays in Access to Generic Drugs
- Policies to Contain Costs and Ensure Fiscal Sustainability
- Improve Medicare Advantage Payments
- Delay and Reform the High-Cost Plan Excise Tax
- Broaden the Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) Tax Base for High-Income Taxpayers
- Increase in Fees on Brand Name Pharmaceuticals
- Close Tax Loopholes
- Improve the Fairness of Federal Funding for States.
- Simplify Income Definitions
- Delay and Reform of Fees on Health Insurance Providers
- Delay and Convert Fee on Medical Device Manufacturers to Excise Tax
- Strengthen the CLASS Act
- Ensure Effective Implementation
Remember the lesson of Newspeak in George Orwell’s novel 1984: a word has a meaning that the State chooses it to mean. Said one of Orwell’s characters,
“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”
All of these policy initiatives quoted above mean just the opposite of what the words say. For example, when Obama says “Improve Individual Responsibility” he means the exact opposite because that section of the Proposal deals with penalties for those who don’t buy insurance even if they don’t want it. In other words, “individual responsibility” now means forced obedience to the State.
We need to oppose this legislation. A polite letter from you to your Representative and Senators, the Leadership, and the White House expressing strong opposition to these proposals would help: House of Representatives, Senate, White House.
Postscript. I hate to sound ante-diluvian, but I am a stickler for grammar thanks to my strict grammarian mother. I don’t expect the White House to put out documents with bad grammar. I think it reflects badly upon our nation and the state of our education system. But I find redundancies distasteful. Especially the phrase “subtract out.” It’s just “subtract,” dammit.
Jeff-
Yes. It would be a horrendous if this were enacted, but I’m guessing that Obama’s not serious about this. This is an election year, and this is a bid to win back the ‘progressives’ in the Democratic party, who are upset about Obama’s expanding the war in Afghanistan and giving Wall Street bankers the keys to the US Treasury.
If one reads ‘progressive’ blogs, one finds they think that Scott Brown won in Massachussetts, not because ‘Tea Party’ types have had enough big gov’t, but because a lot of disheartened Democrats stayed home on election day. So the Democratic party will cynically talk up single-payer health care, and there will gay marriage referenda in key states. People will get worked up again. ‘Progressive’ tend to be an endlessly gullible bunch.
Lloyd,
Thanks for the comment. As usual, very perceptive. You may be correct on this. Although I don’t see this proposal as playing to his base since all he did was split the difference between the House and Senate bills. Also, no public option. My feeling is that he and his top advisors are (1) politically tone deaf–threatening do ram this bill through in a reconciliation process, and (2) afraid of completely losing their “health reform” package to Republican opposition. I think they are very concerned about the political direction of the country.
P.S. I miss you.
Jeff-
Thanks for the P.S. I’ve been distracted by real life lately. Hopefully things will calm down soon. More later.
Per Ronald Reagan in a 1960 letter to Playboy magazine, “I, like you, will defend the right of any American to openly practice and preach any political philosophy from monarchy to anarchy. But this is not the case with regard to the communist. He is bound by party discipline to deny he is a communist so that he can by subversion and stealth impose on an unwilling people the rule of the International Communist Party which is in fact the government of Soviet Russia.”
Their movement appears to live on in spite of the economic collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s sad that more people aren’t aware of the ultimate consequences of their support for ‘hope and change.’ They will likely toil beside me in the gulag.
JIm: It was also Ronald Reagan who recorded an LP (that is a long-play record album, remember those?) about “the impending doom of private medicine if Medicare is passed.” Why do you live in fear of change to our current MEDICAL REIMBURSEMENT SYSTEM? What the White House is half-heartily doing is asking, “What is the best way to manage the out of control FOR PROFIT medical reimbursement market?” The reality is that for-profit medical reimbursement is a huge waste of resources. Multi-billion dollar profits are earned and pay-out rates below 70% of premiums collected is often the norm for an industry that has NO VALUE ADDED to the medical reimbursement process. Private insurance companies delay and deny coverages and add massive costs to an out-of-control business model. What Obama really needs to do is propose Medicare for All and have the full population pay premiums into the Medicare system. The reality is that we need to throw away the “for profit” model of health care reimbursement. Do we run the police, fire department or national defense on a for profit model? In fact, in national defense we have put a massive amount of our dirty work in the hands of private contractors (Blackwater, etc…), only to learn that they are much more expensive and much less efficient–sounds like private, for-profit health reimbursement! The whole premise of Jeff’s piece is WRONG. The profit motive runs counter to the idea of efficient delivery of medical reimbursement. Maximizing profits (and avoiding pay-outs) is not the correct business model for a system that should help private medical care, not hinder it.
Please show me one example of a government-run efficient not-for-profit program? No profit=no cost controls=massive waste.
FEMA, both pre- and post- GWB. Under Bush, the goal to privatize emergency relief was an unmitigated disaster. The government run FEMA is the best and most efficient way to bring relief to areas hit by disasters. Again, a for-profit model would lead to Darwinian-type responses as we saw with Bush’s response to Katrina.
Also: Police and Fire. The US needs to grow up and act like ever other industrialized country and add health care reimbursement to a RIGHT that all citizens are entitled to. Why is it that so many doctors want a single-payer system in this country? Don’t you think they are tired of the “death panels” and bureaucracy of private, for-profit insurance companies?
Maybe you are healthy enough to not see these issues first hand. I have a spinal chord injury that I have been dealing with for over a decade. I see the waste and abuse of private insurers on an almost daily basis. Don’t confuse health care delivery with health care reimbursement. All I am looking for (as are most health care providers) is an improved health care reimbursement system. Do we really want 30+% of our premiums eaten up by a profit motive?
Carl, Government intervention is not the answer to anything unless force of arms is required. Look at how well the Federal government takes care of it’s own domain of Washington D.C. That could be an example of how well they will deal with health care. One part of it will be shiny and clean, the other portion will be abject misery and despair. Have I been ripped off by a medical facility? Absolutely. I’ve been ripped off at the car dealership too. I vote with my dollars. I don’t go back. Reforms need to be made to limit the legal professions ability to make someone a millionaire over a doctor’s simple mistake. Maybe more young people would go to medical school and we would have more doctors thereby lowering prices. We have been the leader in medical technology and research. Government control will kill that. To put it bluntly, government is the hand of doom. That hand is ever heavier on my shoulder as I age.
I’m always amused when people get up in arms about how insurance companies try to extract a profit from people by denying coverage. How is it any different than any other business in any other industry? You sell as little of your product as you can for as much as you can. The difference is that in most industries, your customers can choose other suppliers. Because we’ve been tied into one insurer via our current employer-based coverage system, insurers can do whatever they want and won’t lose customers. Reintroduce competition, and watch insurers compete on the dimension of coverage and cost. Profit motives are beautiful things. Unless you thought that Henry Ford really just loved making cars.
Jim:
We have a lot more things to worry about than the International Communist Party. If you are saying we are using socialist and statist policies that were once abhorrent to this great nation, then you are correct.
Well, I did read a Ty Andros piece before I read this one. “When Hope Turns to Fear, Part III.”
For those who think that nationalized health care bureaucrats would put patients’ needs before bean counting …
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1253438/Mid-Staffordshire-NHS-hospital-routinely-neglected-patients.html
… think again.
Lloyd: and you don’t think this same crap goes on in HMOs every day? HMOs operate with the goal of managed costs not managed care. You don’t need to have the government in the middle to find these problems in the current state of US healthcare.
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