Think REAL: The only Mandate is on the American people to pay insurance companies

[Nikki Stone1]

There is NO mandate to fix the bill in the future. There is only a MANDATE on the American people to pay (on average) 15% of their income--under penalty of fine or prison--to insurance corporations. This MANDATE was the only thing that survived unscathed (without loopholes) during the entire process.

There is nothing in the law that requires revisiting the issue of improving it.

THERE ARE NO COST CONTROLS BUILT IN. So that 15% will go up: American incomes have been flat for 20 years. Look for health insurance costs to eat up what little you have, and this is even BEFORE you pay for any health care.

You can't think positive about a bad bill.

[NightWatcher]

1. there will be no "fix it later". IF they couldnt get the votes today, why are we to think they'll

get it down the line.

[Nikki Stone1]

3. True

This bill IS the best they are willing to do.

[Echo In Light]

4. Oh, now you!...just stop it with your common sense!

:sarcasm:

[Luciferous]

11. Exactly.

[OhioChick]

19. Bingo n/t

[ShortnFiery]

2. You got that right!

"You can't think positive about a bad bill."

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Nikki Stone1]

6. TRUTH: THERE ARE NO COST CONTROLS

None.

And thank you for kicking my thread.

[RaleighNCDUer]

16. There are cost controls built in -

and there are ten thousand million-dollar attorneys busily working at how to circumvent each and every one.

When you come right down to it, a cartel sets its own price and the customers have to live with it - and if you think the insurance companies are really in competition with each other, well, that would explain why you think this is a good bill.

Economic 101 - competition in a free market will reduce costs. For the past 30 years, costs have been on a constant increase - ergo, there is NO competition in this 'free market'. These crooks are running a health care cartel, they are setting the prices, and THEY WROTE THIS BILL.

If you think there is ANYTHING here that will bring costs down, you are delusional.

[Nikki Stone1]

26. +10,000

.

[stillwaiting]

37. + to infinity and BEYOND!

[havocmom]

30. telling someone speaking truth that they are speaking like a RWer

is a RWer-style attempt to silence accurate dissent which is all that is left against the truth.

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Mercuryman]

8. Good post

K&R

[GodlessBiker]

9. I'm sure the Supreme Court will have something to say about the mandate.

[NightWatcher]

10. so now we've got to hope a right wing Supreme Court shoots down Obama's Healthcare Bill?

Oh this clusterfuck keeps getting better and better

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. Especially since states are actually prevented from offering single payer till 2017

Boy, those insurance companies really have us hogtied, on the spit, and ready to roast.

[Luciferous]

12. Yeah, good luck with that one.

[RaleighNCDUer]

17. Oh, I'm also sure they'll have something to say about it.

RAH! RAH! GO TEAM GO! GET THOSE PROFITS AND KILL THE PO'!

[Luciferous]

13. K&R I can't wait to see what justifications the supporters will come up with when

it happens.

[mzmolly]

15. "Five cost controls in the Senate health-care bill" ~ WAPO

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/12/five_cost_controls_in_the_sena.html

[RaleighNCDUer]

18. Let's look at those:

1) Bundling. Pure nonsense.

"Right now, hospitals get paid for each procedure they conduct. If you come in with symptoms of a stroke, they get one check for the diagnostic, one check for the stroke medication, one check for the surgery, etc. And if you have to come back in two week, they get more money for that, too."

Whether you bundle payments for those procedures, or get paid in a lump sum for those procedures, you still have to have those procedures. THAT is where the cost is. If I get a parking ticket for $50, I could pay $25 by credit card, $15 by check, and $10 from my change jar - or I could pay $50 cash. How I pay does not change the fact that it is $50.

How much we are charged is entirely dependent upon how much the insurance companies will reimburse costs, after a certain point of basic materials and labor. And for-profit insurance ALWAYS tags on 30% for their own pockets. So bundling might save 1-2% in administrative costs, but won't touch the insurance vampires' 30%.

2)Prudent purchasing.

"Prudent purchasing means that insurers can't enter, or stay, in the exchanges unless regulators are satisfied that they're doing a good job."

So who regulates the regulators? When a system is set up that puts a small number of people in charge of regulating huge amounts of money - well, look at the SEC in the last couple years.

This is a delusion.

3) Medicare commission.

This is interesting, but I don't see how this has much of anything to do with cost saving.

4) The excise tax on high-value health insurance.

"This is, essentially, a tax on the unchecked growth in premiums."

Klein seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how premiums are marketed. Each and every insurer has high-end policies, and low end policies. The only people who might be affected by overly-costly premiums are those who can AFFORD overly costly premiums. For the vast majority, those who would feel the hit of the mandated purchase, they will have one option - the low cost, high deductible, high co-pay worthless policy that that hope they will never have to use and will avoid using anyway.

Outside 'Cadillac' plans, ALL companies are essentially the same - one's high end premium is close in cost and benefits to another's high end premium; and both offer low end premiums (which nonetheless STILL make the insurer boat loads of money - that 30% off the top that I mentioned before.

5) The individual mandate.

"In the last few days, an odd argument has arisen. The individual mandate, people say, must be sacrificed on the altar of cost control. The truth is quite the opposite. First, the individual mandate lowers average premium costs by bringing healthy people into the system. If the only people buying insurance are the people who expect to need to use it, the average cost will be prohibitively high. But second, the individual mandate is the political spur for future cost controls."

First, the individual mandate lower average premium costs by bringing healthy people into to the system IF there is genuine competition between insurance companies, not collusion between them. Otherwise, it does nothing but increase the profit base tremendously because they won't be paying out on those new bodies. Supposedly profits are to be capped, by mandating on the insurers that 80-85% of premiums must go into health care payments. This mandate is brought to you by Arthur Anderson Inc.

Second, putting the mandate under congressional control is going to PROTECT our money? What congress have YOU been looking at since you got out of college 4 years ago, Klein?

[mzmolly]

20. We disagree. However if you don't like Klein, the CBO may suffice?

70 percent of all privately insured Americans will see a reduction in premiums. 70%.

http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/mar/04/michele-bachmann/bachmann-says-democratic-health-care-bill-wont-low/

"Using the strict, unsubsidized figures, 60 percent of Americans in the private insurance market should see their premiums fall. And taking into account the subsidies, a full 70 percent would see their premiums fall. And almost 94 percent would see their premiums either fall or stay the same. No matter how you slice it, the overwhelming majority are likely to see a decline."

[RaleighNCDUer]

21. The CBO saying that is like a climatologist predicting future warming

based on previous climate patterns.

Maybe you don't get what a fundamental ground shift it is for the government to take our tax money and hand it to private corporations. The so-called cost controls are NOT there - the best lawyers in the country will be working (for $8000/hr) to make sure of it.

And even IF (not that I think for a moment it will be true) the CBO has this right, a 1-3% reduction is not a "drop" in premiums - it's barely a sag, and in five years (about the time the BENEFITS are supposed to kick it) that sag will have vanished.

As long as this is a for-profit enterprise (I refuse to call it a health care system) then mandating we give our money to it is nothing less than a protection racket.

If there was even a provision that subsidies could ONLY be used to purchase not-for-profit insurance, that would be SOMETHING I could support.

But not this.

[mzmolly]

23. I'm gonna go with Klein

and the CBO, sorry. ;)

[Nikki Stone1]

27. It's not disagree. It's the way it is.

.

[mzmolly]

28. No,

it's disagree. One opinion vs. another.

[Political Heretic]

36. Not on this case. One conclusion is based on facts. The other is based on feeling.

[mzmolly]

38. Yes, Klein

laid out the facts nicely. ;)

[Egnever]

34. How I pay does not change the fact that it is $50.

Oh but it does. If you pay $50 cash thats it end of the deal. However if you pay part by credit card then you pay interest or if you pay it off before the interest is due you have still incurred costs that weren't there if you only paid cash with the credit card company as they have to track the transaction and your payment to them to settle the debt. Just because you still only paid $50 does not mean it is the same at all. what bundling is attempting to do is to reduce those transaction fees like if you used the credit card that are invisible to you the consumer but still add to the cost of doing business.

[Political Heretic]

35. neo-classical economic assumptions undergird Klein's opinions - which is why they fail

It's the same ridiculous assumptions, treated as inarguable facts, that have been histrocially proven wrong over and over and over again...

Costs will decrease by increasing demand. Fail. There is no motivation for insurance companies to lower costs because they get a bunch of new well people. None. In fact if I was a CEO of an insurance company, and I was driven by profit, I would already be figuring out how I was going to defend a rate increase for the next year. More people at higher rates means more money. And yet neo-classical idiots with typical pro-market thinking assume that somehow companies will benevolently lower rates because their own costs are not as high (because more well people are part of the pool.) That is such absurd nonsense even a six year old could see it.

The CBO makes the same assumption for its predictions. Which is why its wrong. This is why so many attempts to "score" economic impact turn out to be wildly inaccurate down the road - because some unproven assumptions are treated like scientific laws when they aren't - and then all the data is crunched based on those faulty assumptions.

[Dinger]

22. K & R

[freddie mertz]

24. K & R. It is a bitter bill they are forcing upon us.

But the struggle will not end with this.

It is just beginning.

[Richard Steele]

25. K&R

[arcadian]

29. It's gonna be the next bubble.

[troubledamerican]

31. Thanks, Nikki, for staying true & honest. This has been a bad day.

[Nikki Stone1]

40. I know.

.

[Nikki Stone1]

32. Hmm

..

[leftstreet]

33. K&R

[treestar]

39. I am getting a little sick of the concept that paying for insurance nets you "nothing."

It's illogical and makes the left look stupid.

Argue single payer would be more effective to get care to people, but quit using these illogical and emotional hot buttons meant to stir up people's feelings but not really get anything done.