Moi? 
This “adapt” thing is really giving you fits , isn’t it? Oh, well, not my problem.
Nope (and if even if you were right, so what?). Do you really think any government action here is going to forcibly eliminate the private option for anybody? Who’s been selling you *that *crap?
Except, as the law stands now, the government program won’t be able to do 2 or 4 either. It will be forced to either raise premiums or cut benefits.
:rolleyes: If you don’t have a serious argument to make, there’s no need to continue.
It’s been said better. From the hit LP Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine:
We got Medicare anyway, and somehow we’re still free. Imagine that.
Ok, cite for what you think you’re being sold?
Let’s start again. Do you feel that Obama is being truthful, accurate, and not intentionally or accidentally misleading reasonable people when he says that “if you like your health care plan, you keep your health care plan” under his proposed system?
To answer the OP, and leaving aside whether it would be a good outcome or not, I don’t see how it would not end the private insurance we have now. During a speech Obama gave a couple of weeks ago, he pointed out that OF COURSE the public option would be cheaper. After all, they wouldn’t have to see to marketing or profits, and that amounts to, I think he said about 20% right off the top. So if you have two entities, and one can price their good based on 20% less expenditures, how could that not cause the lower price to be so attractive to employers that they would choose the more expensive privte options. Also, as the numbers begin to shift, the private insurers begin to lose economies of scale and doing business becomes even more expensive for them and less expensive for the public option.
If that 20% number is true, his case is made. Why should we pay a 20% margin for what is primarily an actuarial function: you do the math, you set the rates according to the math, who needs a CEO for that?
The unanswered question is in practices. The insurance companies make a profit, but behave in a manner that ought to be criminal, as linked above. If they cannot make an acceptable profit without such practices, then do we continue to condone brutal cruelty to our own people? Why in the world would we do that? Why in the world are we doing that?
And where is all this legendary efficiency, that so naturally springs from the brow of competition? How much of this overhead money is spent screwing people out of what they’ve contracted for?
If the insurance companies can deliver the goods, in a respectable and moral manner, I’m all for it. No problem, free enterprise all the way, I’m on board. But if they can, why haven’t they? And if they can’t, what good are they?
I think what we have is a situation where there is not enough competition. I do like the idea of allowing the companies to compete across state lines. Why not? Plus, if I moved, then I can take my insurance with me.
Can you point to these profits you classify as “criminal”. And please don’t just list some big number without the percent, like some nitwits liked to do in many of the oli-companies-are-evil threads.
It is not the profits themselves which are criminal, but the methods used to obtain them. Just as money isn’t the root of evil, but the love of money.
The problem is, in my estimation, is that they’re NOT criminal. We need changes to the rules and regulations to make some of what they do, in fact, criminal. Now, they are simply immoral. I don’t know of anyone who is a fan of doing nothing.
So the pundits who say “we have the best health care system in the world” aren’t arguing for status quo, but just arguing against making serious and fundamental change to it? Or at least a specific type of serious and fundamental change?
I don’t think insurance companies have a property right in their profit margins, though.
If I own a private security company, I have a right to not have the government just swoop down and nationalize my business without compensation; and for the most part there would seem to be little justification even for the government exercising its right of eminent domain and nationalizing me with compensation, since this is not (as the right is always pointing out) a socialist country.
However–Suppose my private security company has been thriving because the town I live in doesn’t actually have its own police department. Residents have to rely on the county sheriff’s department, which is understaffed and has to cover a much larger area than just the one town; so all the businessmen of the town pay for my security patrols to cover their establishments. Many upper class and even some middle class residents also pay to have my security company watch their homes as well. The poor and some of the middle class, who can’t afford my services (and some of whom live in neighborhoods so bad that I refuse to even send my guys into them) just have to deal with life the best they can.
Now, the town council is proposing to create a professional police force to enforce law and order everywhere within the city limits. This is not a government “taking” against my private security company, and I don’t get to sue anybody under the 5th Amendment. I can either adapt–private security companies do exist and do business, even in communities with “socialized police services”–or I can go out of business. Sucks to be me in the latter case.
I think they’re of varying opinions. I think that the one thing that the group you mention would agree on is that they don’t think a public option is a good one. The reason I’m not an advocate is that I think it will, in fact, put an end to private insurance as we know it. Now, that might be a good thing. But as we get rid of all that we hate about it, might we also lose what is good about it? And once that bell is rung, it’s very hard to unring it.
But I know of not one person who is an advocate of the status quo. Most on the right want tort reform, which would help lower costs, the ability for insurers to compete across state lines, and a change in the rules regarding pre-existing conditions and a company being able to just dump you.
Also, there is a question as to what, precisely, the problem is we are trying to fix. Is it insurance for every single person? And how many people is that? You hear numbers like 47 million. But that includes, for instance, 12 million illegal immigrants, which Obama says his plan would not cover. It also covers a few million who already qualify for Medicaid, but just haven’t filled out the forms. It includes a few million who make over $75,000, who can afford it, but choose to spend their money elsewhere. So how big is the real problem we are trying to fix? The larger it is, the grander the changes that would make sense. But if the numbers are much smaller, and we could accomplish what we want with smaller changes and more regulations, why not do that and not dismantle a health care system that is the envy of the world.
To what degree is the financial catastrophe that people kind find themselves in due to serious illness? If that is the real problem, might there not be other ways around it? If the problem is children, that, too, might allow for a more targeted fix.
But the larger point is that I think virtually everyone agrees something needs to be done. Can you point to anyone who wants things to stay as they are?
I may be getting a bit mixed up on posting what where, given the multiple threads covering the health-insurance proposals. Still, what I’d had in mind on this bit was the other stuff that’s in play: the barriers to selling insurance across state lines, the impending commands to private insurers regarding folks with pre-existing conditions, and so on.
And so when Elvis wrote “It’s stunning to me to see so many people argue that the rights the government should hold primary are not those of the people, but of the insurance companies.” – well, come to look back, I’m not sure anyone in this thread had made that argument when he made that statement, but I replied to the statement without looking to see exactly what “rights” were being touted. As it turns out, I’m not seeing any; I’ll therefore gladly drop the hijack.
I’m unconvinced on the need for tort reform for this particular problem, for reasons mentioned in threads specifically about it. Some of the rest of what you mention, though, I’m viscerally behind.
As for those numbers, much of it was addressed in this reply to a post of yours in another thread. I assume you found the analysis there unavailing?
Well, here’s one, but then, it’s a poster here on the SDMB, and not a policymaker or prominent pundit, so that might not be what you have in mind. However, I believe the idea of this being the only person who believes this way is 0%. And, of course, you did say “virtually,” so you acknowledge that such people DO exist. Whether they’re as vanishingly small a minority as you claim is something not even I know.
(ETA: On second glance, I see I’m the one who used the word “pundits.” And I’m not about to say that Stephe96 is just parroting someone else’s line. So I apologize if I was being unclear. But then, again, it depends on how YOU saw my question, so we’ll let it stand for now, just in case.)
As an aside, I hear the Republicans claim that they have a plan or three of their own. I think this is a good thing; it allows the voters to gauge their seriousness, and to hear what they think the flaws in the system are. I look forward to hearing what they are.
Tort reform is not going to solve the overall problem, but it will help lower costs. At least those that are due to malpractice insurance, both directly and indirectly.
I don’t have problem with most of what brickbacon offered. We both agree that costs must come down. That insurance is effectively out of the reach of many working people who would pay a reasonable amount for it. The question, I think, is to what degree can measures excluding a public option get us there. If we can get there through changes in rules and increased competition, that would be a good thing. If we try that and can’t get there, I’d be willing to consider a public option.
I do think he discounts the point of the cartoon too quickly. My point there, and here, is that the basic argument for this drastic reform is that there are 47 million people who are uninsured. So the thinking is that through this reform we will insure them. But that is misleading. I think we have the right to have a clear understanding of precisely what the problem is now, the way things will be after this reform works it’s magic, and the cost (not just monetarily) of getting from A to B. This “47 million people are suffering without insurance” is too much an appeal to emotion for me. At the very least, 12 million of them are illegals that Obama claims his plan will NOT cover. And whether the numbers in that cartoon are correct or not, the overall number does get whittled down but whatever numbers are in those groups identified.
To be honest, I’m not sure how literal I’d be in interpreting what he said. I took it more of a rant to make a point. (Though I’d like him to clarify for himself.) But you may very well be right about what he believes. And whether he is or isn’t, I guess there are others. It’s just that I’ve never met anyone of that mind, or read or heard that opinion offered. I really find it hard to believe that anyone interested enough in this issue to have a strong opinion would be of the mind that it is absolutely perfect and has no problems. But I’m not playing semantic games with you and trying to win a point by pointing to “pundit”. I accept a much more liberal read of what you were asking and was answering in that vein. I must say, that I do appreciate the responsibility you take with your words and the graciousness with which you are willing to accept some fault that might lie within them.
Hell, I certainly hope so. Something definitely needs to be done. And soon. This is a real problem for a large swath of the populace.
No, I don’t think it would force them out of business, just make them more competitive and lower prices for the private insurance consumer. I mean it’s really quite pussyish, but predictable, for these big, bad, tough Free- Market, Republicans to get all up-in arms about competing with a Free- Market plan to insure the other- what, 17% of uninsured Americans? Hospitals are going to make out, no matter what.
I mean, it’s almost like the capitalists are afraid to compete against socialism. They have the market share!
You’re looking at a pretty minuscule percentage of the costs of the overall problem, though. According to this article,
In short, the tort reform that the right seems to be advocating as one of a handful of improvement strategies would at best affect only a few percent of total health care costs.
Sounds a bit like putting a band-aid on a sucking chest wound because, hey, although it’s not going to solve the overall problem, it will at least help to reduce some of the blood flow. Yeah, you can argue that every little bit helps, but if the bit’s as little as all that, is it really worth advocating it as a significant part of the solution?
“Freedom” under free enterprise includes accepting a risk of failure, no matter how large the enterprise. Or at least it used to, until the last administration starting bailing out everybody with a name big enough to be recognizable.
(I take it you don’t look like Robert Redford )
No, no one has stated that explicitly or even consciously, but it’s still the operating assumption of the OP and a few respondents such as jtgain, isn’t it? Their concerns as stated here are over the insurance companies’ (nonexistent) “rights” to profit margins, not over any rights their customers might have.
Please read my previous posts. I never said that insurance companies have any rights to continue to have their profit margins.
My contention was with Obama’s claim that private insurance will continue to thrive as is, and I contend that is incorrect.