One cheer for Howard Dean

[kpete]

One cheer for Howard Dean

By Rich Lowry

The National Review

................

Putting aside its irrational animus for insurance companies, the left has a point. The insurance industry wouldn't support the bill absent the individual mandate. In fact, the mandate is all that stands between the companies and a death spiral. By requiring the companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions, the bill creates an incentive for people to drop insurance until they get sick -- unless the state forces them to do otherwise.

Howard Dean's constant refrain now is that the bill isn't reform. He's right. It is an incoherent grab bag that doesn't improve on the current system -- it just adds to it. As Yuval Levin of the Ethics and Public Policy Center writes, "What's left of the bill compels universal participation in a system that everyone agrees is a failure without reforming that system, and even exacerbates its foremost problem -- the problem of exploding costs."

The individual mandate is what barely holds the bill together, and tellingly, invokes the ire of both sides. The right and independents already hated the bill. With the left starting to hate it, too, it's almost unanimous. A new Wall Street Journal /NBC poll found support at 32 percent. How long before some poll finds it in the 20s?

Practically the only people who think passing the bill in its current form is a good idea are Democratic congressmen. Much better to take Dean's advice and dump it. The left and right can continue to battle it out over what constitutes true reform, with the voters ultimately deciding. In the meantime, everyone will be spared a more perverse version of the status quo, prominently featuring the hated individual mandate.

more:
http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_14029189

Health Insurance Company Stock Prices Say it All

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Health-insurance-company-s-by-background-n015e-091220-88.html

[dana_b]

1. and here's one more

:applause:

[phasma ex machina]

6. +2

:applause:

[leftofcool]

2. Here's another one from me.

Dean is right, Obama is wrong and that is that.

[Larkspur]

3. Didn't Obama campaign on "no mandates" for health insurance?

Looks like he broke his campaign promise.

[girl gone mad]

14. It was one of the reasons I picked him over Hillary in the primary.

Huge disappointment.

[midnight]

20. Yes he did..... He said those insurance mandates made as much sense as mandating

a homeless person to buy a house....

[phasma ex machina]

4. +1 "Health Insurance Company Stock Prices Say it All" nt

[chimpymustgo]

8. Posted: WALL STREET HEALTH CARE: Insurance company stocks “on fire” – they’re winning, we’re losing.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7279910

By: Jason Rosenbaum Thursday December 17, 2009 2:39 pm

So screams the Business Insider.

If you need a guide to the health reform debate in Washington, take a look at health insurance company stocks. When the debate is going the right way – towards quality, affordable health care for everyone, towards getting people out from under the insurance industry’s crushing monopoly – insurance company stocks take a dive. When the debate is moving against what America wants – towards more private industry, less insurance regulations, and the like – health care stocks soar.

Right now, they’re soaring. The Indianapolis Star goes into more detail:

Shares of the Indianapolis-based health insurance giant surged to a 52-week high Thursday as the prospects for a new government-run "public option" health plan faded amid intense Senate debate. WellPoint rivals Cigna and UnitedHealth Group also hit 52-week highs.

It’s a sign, more than one observer suggested, of victory for private health insurers, which strenuously fought the public option.

"Obviously, the market thinks WellPoint’s a winner," said Daniel Evans, chief executive of Clarian Health, an Indianapolis-based hospital system. "If the public option is no longer on the table, then WellPoint is a winner because it’s not threatened by a government competitor."

Wall Street is what has turned our nation’s health care companies into profiteers.

16 years ago, before most of the insurance companies were publicly traded, they spent 95% of premium dollars on health care. That level is comparable to Medicare, which spends 97% of premium dollars on care. But once these companies went public and started trading on Wall Street, the relentless drive for profit drove down that percentage to where it sits today, at 81%.

-edit-

Wall Street run health care is making huge profits right now. It’s also making Americans sicker and sicker. A health care reform bill that does not take away Wall Street’s power – one without a public option, one that doesn’t mandate insurers spend 90% of their premiums on care, one without strict regulations on denying care or charging more to certain customers – will tacitly support the way the health care business works now, with Wall Street in charge.

The Senate bill, in too many ways, is the Wall Street bill. The House bill stands up to Wall Street. That’s presents real problems for the American people, problems that must be fixed before this bill is sent to the President’s desk.

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/19532

[NNN0LHI]

5. The National Review?

I wonder what Newsmax has to say about this?

Don

[NYCGirl]

7. Townhall's Rich Lowry? His most famous recent quote regarding Palin:

“I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, 'Hey, I think she just winked at me.' And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America.<14>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Lowry

[Bitwit1234]

9. Can any of you in your wildest dreams imagine what the congress

and the bills ready to be passed and passed and all the good stuff the democrats were set to do, IF, AND ONLY IF, Obama had picked Dean as his adviser and chief of staff. Hally lou jah..folks.

[Vidar]

10. K&R.

[Missy Vixen]

11. Howard Dean still screams for me

Let's hear it for the good Doctor!

:woohoo:

[eridani]

12. A mandate for me to pay $125/month for health CARE, not "insurance"

--would be fine by me. SE HR 676.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

13. Rightwinger Rich Lowry?

I love Howard Dean, but I don't think he'd be any more thrilled of Lowry's phony praise of him than Obama was of Palin's "praise".

[girl gone mad]

16. Can you dispute any of the points in his article?

Attacking the messenger is always a cheap tactic.

Lowry makes some very persuasive arguments in the piece. He is correct in pointing out that Independents and Republicans are overwhelmingly against the reform, as is the population as a whole. In the last month, even support from the left has been rapidly deteriorating. I agree entirely with Lowry's assessment on mandates. Yuval Levin's statements is dead on. The bill does nothing, that I can see to contain costs, and in fact it removes one of the biggest cost controls currently in place.

Now that you've heard from a lifelong liberal who agrees with Lowry's opinion, can you address the substance?

[democracy1st]

15. Cmon Kpete we have plenty of left of center articles we can post this guy is BS!

[girl gone mad]

17. Look up.

I extend the question in my previous post to you, as well.

[democracy1st]

19. He wrote "Liberal fascism" and he hates liberals with a passion and lies about it

every chance he gets,I'll pass on this idiot.

[Le Taz Hot]

18. Yay Ben Nelson!

Better? :eyes:

[pundaint]

21. Irrational animus indeed. Is there anything in the actions of the insurance

companies that doesn't deserve our animus? They corrupt our political process. They lie to elders to scare them into submission. They actively seek ways to deny services that have been paid for.