Well, yeah, there is, as long as they have the power to do anything. Just like it’s a problem if your four-year-old gets hold of a hammer.
How many of those do you think there are? People who want it to go farther, but want to kill what we’ve got and instead go with the nothing-at-all we have as a counterproposal? Your argument, such as it is, is based on that number being large. Well, can you name anybody who thinks that way?
So that’s the objection - that they’re not getting credit for it themselves, not that they actually think it’s bad policy for the country. What a bunch of fucking children your guys are, huh? Maybe they’d have gotten some credit for it if they hadn’t screamed and held their breath until they turned blue about the Kenyan Muslim Socialist and his treasonous henchmen stuffing it down their throats, huh?
Even the most scaremongering estimates of Medicare fraud top out at about 10%. And remember that private insurance gets milked pretty hard, too, probably even more so since the system is set up for it and the regulations against it are looser. Private insurance overhead rates are in the 30% range, not 3% - now how about telling us why you think that is.
See, that just means that private insurance is ten times more efficient. The inefficient government can only milk out 3% for overhead, while the efficient private sector can get 30%.
Wait, you want efficiency at providing service? Why? That’s not what the Free Market is selecting for!
It’s the quickest way for them to burn themselves out and dive into irrelevancy. I’d like to think their ‘shutdown’ maneuver was the peak of their influence, but perhaps that’s wishful thinking.
Arkansas privatized Medicaid, and half the GOP there did end up supporting that. Along with the Democrats nearly unanimously. That could be the future, something more like Ryancare for the entire country. But more likely whatever we have we’ll keep, if it works satisfactorily. WHen it comes to health care, people are risk averse.
Vermont isn’t doing single payer. They will maintain a multi-tiered system. the difference between the system for the non-elderly and Medicare will be even more stark since Vermont’s system must spend less than current health care costs, while Medicare’s budget is unlimited.
Single payer means getting rid of Medicare, or reducing its benefit structure so that it’s affordable for the entire country. Which means paying Medicaid rates instead of Medicare rates.
It entrenches the insurance companies and further subsidizes them with taxpayer dollars.
Your only hope for single payer is that people like me are ready to just throw up their hands and say the heck with it because single payer would be less awful than this mess.
Have you ever filed an insurance claim in your life? I am asking in all seriousness. You keep repeating this talking point. I can only conclude you have never personally encountered the Kafkaesque nightmare that is health insurance “system” in this country. I know very few people who like their health insurance. I know a great many people who tolerate it as opposed the not having any insurance at all.
One example from my own experience: I have pretty good coverage through my employer plan, but the mental health coverage is not great. Even within the limits of that coverage, the insurance company screws up the bills my family therapist submits every month. Every month there’s a mistake on the insurance company’s part, and they usually make a new mistake every month. My family therapist has a full-time billing person on staff just to deal with these sorts of never ending mistakes by insurers.
Another example: My employer’s insurance company “decided” - quite randomly - that we suddenly were not customers any more. The insurance company rejected my employer’s premium payments each month, and started denying all claims. Every month for about 6 months my employer’s accountants had to fight this. Meanwhile, doctors weren’t getting paid, and we employees/patients weren’t getting coverage. Someone managed to fix this before collection agencies got involved, but there were several months where even though I had a card that said I had health insurance, even though the premiums were being paid, I and my family had no health insurance. This started a few weeks after my daughter got out of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. If the hospital where she was born had thought that her stay in the NICU was not covered by insurance, we would have had to move my critically ill newborn preemie daughter to another hospital - one that would have taken our officially non-existent health insurance. adaher do you understand how dangerous it is to move a newborn from one hospital to another, particularly one who had the multiple serious conditions my daughter had? She was in the NICU for medically appropriate reasons. I’ve been in a NICU. Nobody goes there for fun.
As you try to celebrate the joys of the free market, keep in mind these fuck ups are and were all from private insurers. I would have taken my complaints to the state insurance commissions, but those are wholly owned subsidiaries of the insurance industry.
But keep telling me I like my insurance, despite my experience. Maybe after the millionth time I’ll believe you.
The difference is that private insurance companies attempt to root out fraud and abuse, while government programs have a general lackadaisical attitude towards it. Wouldn’t want to do anything that would hinder access, you know.
There’s also a general apples to oranges comparison problem. Medicare doesn’t pay taxes. Private companies do. Some of Medicare’s work is performed by other government agencies. Insurance companies have departments to collect premiums. The IRS collects taxes that fund Medicare. part of the IRS’s budget is administrative costs that should be charged to Medicare.
And of course, there’s that fraud issue, which down here in South Florida it’s replaced drug dealing as the safest way to make big bucks and not get caught. There’s been a few show arrests because the President wants to prove something, but it’s still ridiculously easy to defraud Medicare. They just don’t even try very hard.
Then you don’t have to keep it. Now you can buy a regulated exchange plan that can’t cheat you anymore. It’ll cost you more, probably, but that’s okay.
I’d flip this around and say the government programs attempt to provide services to their customers, while private insurance companies have a general lackadaisical attitude towards it. Private insurers have people who get paid to find ways to deny claims and to stonewall until the customer either gives up or, better yet, dies.
True. And that’s a legitimate conflict of values. Although Medicare should do a better job, because they don’t want to cheat patients. Their motives are purer when rooting out fraud. Whichi s why they should do a better job of it.
But that would cost money. A system that just pays out benefits is cheap. Insurance companies could pull that off, and now with their profits limited anyway, may just not bother to worry about fraud anymore. They are pretty much public utilities now, guaranteed a profit, but not too much of a profit.
To try to get back to what the GOP has learned, notice that the candidate recruitment is decidedly un-tea Partyish except in really red states like Arkansas. It’s actually pissing me off, because as much as the Tea Party screws things up, I don’t want a party of Ed Gillespies either. Not that he has any chance of winning, thank God, but neither a Tea Party dominated party or a business dominated party is a good thing.
The fraud and abuse they themselves are performing?
People go to jail regularly for it.
If the private system is inherently inefficient, and adds so much cost without value to the customer, as you are agreeing, then why not get rid of the thing? What good is it to anybody but their executives and investors? They’re a dead cost to the rest of us, right?
which Fox keeps hammering on as if it were big enough to make the difference, and did not exist among the industry that is one of their key sponsors. You need to change the channel.
Your clue-repellent field is strong! I said I have employer coverage. That coverage meets the PPACA minimums, so I am not eligible for the exchanges. My choices are the plans my employer offers, or the plans my wife’s employer offers, or going without. My employer may not let me go without coverage - I probably have to sign something that says I’m covered elsewhere, the falsification of which would be a termination offense. I’m not foolish enough to try to go without. I’ve seen what medical expenses can do to a family.
Compared to a lot of Americans I am lucky - lucky that my employer offers coverage at all, lucky that said coverage is better than the PPACA minimums, lucky my employer offers more than one such plan, lucky to be married, and that my wife’s employer also offers multiple plans that meet or exceed the PPACA minimums. All of that gives me choices that many people in the US do not have. Even so, I do not like how difficult it is to get coverage for medical issues I have, and I despise how difficult it is to get the claims processed accurately.
Again, I do not “like” my health coverage, but I accept it as better than having no coverage.
My Canadian friends would not think I’m so lucky. They do not have the hassles or the expense that I do.
And this is not even the Obamacare thread! This is about the GOP getting back on a winning track, particularly at the Presidential level. To get back on topic, what do you think the GOP candidates will do (or can do) to turn the Electoral College map to their favor. If you think flogging the Obamacare issue is it, then just say so. Here is a recent Washington Post column about the Electoral College difficulties for the GOP: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-gops-uphill-path-to-270-in-2016/2014/01/18/9404eb06-7fcf-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html I think the story, and the conventional thinking it represents, make an incorrect assumption that VA is leaning Dem at the Presidential level. I think it was well-run campaigns that tilted VA blue in 2012 and 2008, and that a well-run GOP campaign with a popular candidate has a solid shot in VA in 2016 and beyond. That still gives the Blue Team a big advantage in the 2016 Electoral College. What will/should the GOP do about that?
First, I’m not sure it actually costs more, when you count the subsidies that help reduce Medicare’s administrative costs plus the waste and fraud.
Second, competition is essential. I actually have no problem with government-run health care, so long as I retain the option to contract for the same services with someone else, and so long as the public option is allowed to fail financially should it not compete successfully.
There is no electoral college difficulty for Republicans. All of the models correctly predicted the results of the last two elections based on Presidential approval ratings, economic growth, and the unemployment rate. If those things run in Republicans’ favor in 2016, the electoral math takes care of itself.
However, I find this dissatisfying. So I’ll go back to what I said several pages ago: the GOP will do well by governing well. If they govern well, they’ll never have to worry about elections not going their way. If they govern poorly, they have no chance.
So basically, next time the Republicans win, don’t screw it up like last time.
Actually, you can quit your employer provided coverage and sign up with the appropriate exchange. But you would have to tell the exchange you did so and it would make you ineligible for any subsidies that you would otherwise be entitled to, so you would have to pay the entire premium yourself. The stuff I looked at was more expensive than what I pay, but the subsidy would have brought it down to about the same cost to me.
They have already started working on the Electoral College. They have been floating ideas in purple states like Ohio to change how the votes are counted. Instead of the winner of the state taking all the votes, they want to make it so the winner of each congressional district gets 1 vote for that, then the overall winner of the state gets the 2 for the Senate seats. With the gerrymandered districts here in Ohio, that would have given Romney something like 8 votes from Ohio, instead of none.
If it only happens in blue or purple states, they can easily take control of the Electoral College.
Well yeah, they could cheat, but that wouldn’t be right. Plus there is more to winning than just winning elections. A minority can win policy battles if they can drum up public support for their side on that one issue or against the majority party on the issue.
If the public hates you because you’re illegitimate, then sure, you’ll win elections, but you will lose every time you try to do something
Although Benghazi was clearly a greater disaster than 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the Fall of Constantinople combined, you insult the GOP by suggesting they’re not a two-trick party. I think we can also expect a discussion of Monica’s semen-stained dress if Hillary runs.
I agree with your sentiments, but disapprove of the gratuitous insult to children, most of whom have better sense of justice and fair play than the GOP.
Practicing for a stand-up comedy satire gig? Gov. Christie is the most sincere and fair leader you guys have: He just sabotages a few lanes of traffic. The rest of you will deliberately sabotage American health care, sovereign credit rating, and social safety-net if there’s a chance you can blame it on incumbent Democrats.
Practicing for a stand-up comedy satire gig? Gov. Christie is the most sincere and fair leader you guys have: He just sabotages a few lanes of traffic. The rest of you will deliberately sabotage American health care, sovereign credit rating, and social safety-net if there’s a chance you can blame it on incumbent Democrats.