HEALTH CARE REFORM ODDS AND ENDS

According to the Center For Responsive Politics, Pharma and Insurance lobbyists spent over $107 Million dollars in the second quarter of 2009. By contrast, the Securities & Investment Industry spent only $21 Million.  Both industries are facing overhauls.  One industry nearly destroyed our economy, and the other is hellbent on finishing the job.  But pay no mind.  All that money being given to elected officials has nothing to do with the overhauls that are supposed to be taking place.

Republicans in the House and Senate have been stating that they want to fix our health care system, only they want Democrats to admit that our system is the greatest system in the world, first.  Wait a minute…

In other news, the Democratic health care plan apparently includes the Final Solution.  Somehow, Democrats have resurrected Adolf Hitler, and his merry henchmen, Goebbels, and Himmler, and we’re all invited to Die Endlösung.

Republicans continue to lie about their desire to fix the entire system, claiming that between 2000 and 2006, they never had the time to deal with our ailing health care system.  Yeah, because the Do-nothing Congress had better things to do.  Instead, they planned all along to wait for the Democrats to bring it up, so that they could finally work arm in arm with their political brothers in solving this most sensitive of issues.

And they also want you to divert your  eyes from all of the dollars they are raking in from Health Insurers and Pharma.  They claim that insurers only want what’s best for the American health care system…or was that; they only want the best part of the profit from the American health care system?  Either way, Republicans are bending over forward to make sure they get it.

Just because our elected officials are given millions of dollars each year from industries involved in obvious conflicts of interests is no reason to suspect our Senators and Congresspeople of being on the take.  Just because for decades upon decades those industries have pretty much received what they wanted is no reason to believe anything CRIMINAL is occurring.  Right, Senator Boehner?

AMERICAN BUSINESS STRUGGLES TO REMAIN COMPETITVE

Conservatives say that they are for small businesses, and claim that they only want to spur economic growth by encouraging conditions that will allow American Businesses to compete globally.

However, their stance on health insurance contradicts that platitude.  Nothing makes American businesses more non-competitive than the constantly rising costs of employee health care.   There’s a reason.  No other country in the world expects their businesses to pay for its employees health care.  Only in America do conservatives tell small and large businesses alike to suck it up, pay that exhorbitant expense, and stay competitive while doing it.

If only our conservative friends could do math.

MAKING HEALTH INSURANCE UNAFFORDABLE FOR EVERY AMERICAN

I’ve been posting about Health Care reform for quite a while, now.  Repeating the same arguments has become tiring, especially when conservatives have chosen to stick their heads in the sand rather than listen to reason.

But I have a new point to make, and it’s one no one is talking about.  Sure, we’ve discussed social medicine, rescission, pre-existing conditions, and the plight of small businesses who can no longer afford their own health insurance, as well as forty million Americans who have no health insurance.  I’ve approached this debate from the Public Option side, and in my haste to convince people of its merits, I’ve overlooked, everyone has overlooked, one obvious problem.

That problem lies alongside the issue of whether health insurance companies ought to be forced to cover pre-existing conditions.  It has been my stance that health insurers generally only want to write insurance coverage for healthy people, and who can blame them?  There is a vast mountain of money to be made from people who pay premiums, but rarely submit claims.  On the other hand, insurers have fought for decades against providing coverage for pre-existing conditions, and more than once, even recently, have told Congress they will never stop the practice of rescission and rejecting coverage based on health.  So how do we force them to cover these pre-existing conditions, and how do we hold their feet to the fire on rescission?

In truth, there may be no answer.  Like any profitable business, health insurers will only offer a product that they believe will be profitable.  Businesses try their best to operate within the black and white spectrums, leaving the grey areas to fools and the government.  If health insurers truly believed that they could offer a product that would account for pre-existing conditions, and maintain profitability, they would have done it by now.  In fact, we wouldn’t be discussing pre-existing conditions, because they would have been covered all along.

Actuaries at health insurers are experts in statistics.  They have data.  They have data about data.  They have stats for everything that has, can, will, or might affect their bottom line; including pre-existing conditions.  They know exactly how much money will be spent on ten people aged forty with Lou Gehrig’s Disease over the course of their lives, and they know when those ten people will die, based on statistics.  They know how often a sprain is actually a break, when that fact will be discovered, and how much it will cost to rectify the mistaken diagnosis, for anyone, at any age.  They spend incredible amounts of money compiling, sorting, and analyzing this data.  They know how much more money a man who is aged fifty with a blood pressure of 145/95 will cost than a man the same age with a BP of 140/93.  They have their actuarial tables ordered that well.

So you have to ask yourself, why would any and every insurer reject the lucrative business that pre-existing conditions could have been up until this point?  After all, managing and spreading risk is what they excel at.  If you have had a brain aneurysm, they could charge “X” amount of additional dollars, and spread the rest of the cost amongst the healthy, and still be profitable.  Why haven’t they?  Why has no one even tried?  In fact, why do most insurers deny coverage altogether for certain people with certain diseases?

The answer lies not in profitability, but rather affordability.  It’s not that health insurers are uncertain about the costs of someone aged forty-five with Type-2 Diabetes that has just been diagnosed.  They know that cost down to the penny in every location in America. Just ask them; they’ll tell you.  Then they’ll tell you that they just can’t be profitable in such a scenario.  But the truth is that they cannot be competitive, especially when their competitors refuse to offer the same provision.  But even beyond that, the costs associated with covering pre-existing conditions might well drive health insurance affordability right out the window for almost every American.

The loudest voice in this pre-existing condition debate is the fact that insurers won’t even approach offering coverage for them.  They’ve had decades to do it.  They could have devised any number of ways to profit from it, if only they had felt they could do so, and remain competitive.  They could have organized as an industry to solve this problem; could have lobbied each state to write a provision into every policy demanding that pre-existing conditions be covered by every insurer.  That would have provided them with a level playing field, and they could have safely charged appropriate premiums for that provision without compromising competitiveness and profitability.  Yet they have not.

Why not?

I am guessing here, but in my experience with the industry (I sell insurance as part of my advisory practice) if they won’t write the policy, it’s because they can’t make money off of it, or cannot be competitive.  It’s about affordability.  Forcing insurers to cover pre-existing conditions could very well create a situation where those insurers have to raise prices so high that their policies become unaffordable for the majority of Americans.  Insurers profit based on the masses, not on individual policies.  They make the numbers work to their advantage.  Is it possible that by including pre-existing conditions in their policies, there is no way for them to work the numbers to their advantage?  Is it possible that such provisions are so fraught with danger for private insurers that they won’t offer them at any price?

Conservatives claim they want health care reform.  They claim they want private insurers to be allowed to fix the system.  But what if those insurers don’t want to?  What if, even offered vastly higher premiums, they decline to offer a product?  They’ve had the ability to offer such a product since their inception, and have refused.

This question must be answered.  How will forcing insurers to cover pre-existing conditions and not reject customers based on health affect the cost of their policies for most Americans?  Why aren’t the insurers already offering such a product?

Is it affordability?  What do they know that they aren’t telling us?  Conservatives, do you really want to force this issue?  You’ve been so loudly going on about deficit spending and raising taxes on working Americans.  Have you at all considered what forcing insurers to cover everyone would cost?  And if insurers themselves will not offer a product on their own, what does that tell you about its feasibility?

In the end, is the public option the only one that can work?  After all, insurers aren’t stupid. They exist to profit, and they profit by selling to the masses, controlling costs, and reducing claims. Conservatives are asking them to change their business model, throw caution to the wind, and cover everything.  Hypocritically, conservatives are putting themselves into the position of forcing private businesses to do business they don’t want to do.

When all the dust settles, what will be the result?

HEALTH CARE IS RATIONED BY INSURERS

One of the biggest lies the Right has been telling America about any Universal or Public Option for health care reform is that if there is a government option, sooner or later health care will be rationed.

I now invite you, if you are one of the people that still has insurance coverage, to open your plan handbook to the section entitled, “Exclusions and Omissions”.  You see, that’s the rationing part of your health insurance coverage.  It’s legal, because they tell you about it up front (well, not really up front, as most exclusion sections are generally found in the rear of your handbook, and no insurance agent is going to inform you of all the exclusions verbally).

But, Pooper!  If we have a Gubment plan, sooner or later, our health care is going to be rationed!

You have my sympathy, truly.  But, since you seem to be surviving under health care rationing already, I don’t see what the big deal is.  Sooner or later?  How about you try saying, “Way sooner than fifty years ago!”  For as long as private health insurers have run the show, your health care has been rationed. And the tired, old fear that life saving techniques may be withheld due to costs is already here.  Your insurance company most likely refuses to pay for anything they consider experimental; like bone marrow transplants, or such.

NEXT

REPUBLICANS PLAN TO OFFER NO PLAN; BUT TO OBSTRUCT ACTUAL REFORM

A quick fact check for everyone interested in the health care reform debate:  Republicans do not have a plan to offer.  Their only “plan” is to defeat the Democratic plan, and that’s not a plan; that’s just blatant special interest pander-monium.

So, if you happen to be talking to a conservative, and they start attacking the Public Option, ask them what their plan is.  Only, don’t hold your breath; because as with health care reform, Republicans intend to wait until you die before offering an answer.

REPUBLICANS ARE NOT WORKING TOWARD HEALTH CARE REFORM.  THEY HAVE NO PLAN, AND NO PLANS TO OFFER A PLAN.  THAT’S HOW LITTLE THEY THINK OF THE HEALTH CARE CRISIS IN AMERICA.  THAT’S HOW LITTLE THEY VALUE WHAT’S IMPORTANT TO YOU.  AMERICA HAS SPOKEN; REFORM IS NEEDED AND WANTED.  REPUBLICANS HAVE CHOSEN TO SIDE WITH THE WEALTHY HEALTH INSURERS, AND FIGHT AGAINST REAL AMERICANS.

NATIONAL HEALTHCARE: A BREEDING GROUND FOR TERROR?

No kidding, that subtitle was actually on display on FOX News, with Neil Cavuto playing the part of dummy-terrorist-expert-pants.  Watch the video, and see if you can pick out how many times Cavuto and his guest tie universal healthcare with brown, oddity-religionist, muslim doctors.

Seriously, how desperate must conservatives be to start telling their constituents that if  “ObamaCare”  passes, America will become a terrorist haven?  Cavuto’s guest, Jerry Bowyer, of National Review Online said, “If one of your doctors spends all of his time online reading Usama bin Laden Fatwas, somebody’s going to notice that”.

Hey, dumbass, do you really think they’re that stupid?  They’re going to let you see them reading “fatwas”?

DEMS TARGET OBAMA’S SECOND TERM FOR ENACTMENT OF HEALTH CARE REFORM

President Obama and the Democrats get the first verbal bitch slap of 2009, for, of all things, finally having a health care reform bill to pass.

If they got it done, why the bitch slap, you ask?

Because the plan is not scheduled to become effective until 2013.  The plan is called America’s Affordable Health Choices Act” .

That sounds more like a…a….a…cha!!! sneeze than a plan.

That said, there is a public option in it, it seems pretty good; except for the 2013 part.

Let’s break that down.  It’s political, even though Dems will tell you that it will take that long to do this; it won’t.  Nope, it’s sheer politics, as in, “Hey, we gotta get re-electified in 2010 and 2012, and if we put this into place right now, the Repubs are going to attack us over tax increases.”

So they do the next best thing; which is to trumpet their health care reform prowess, and wait until just after President Obama has been re-electified to actually enact it.  Re-electification.  There’s nuthin’ better.

My response, of course?  GET SOME BALLS.

Come on, Dems, what’s good for the country is good enough to enact today.  We don’t need to wait four years; but, wink, wink, just in case…

Good luck keeping people like me silent.  I’ll be trumpeting your success, yeah.  But I’ll be trumpeting your lackaballsical attitude even louder.  I’ll also be laughing AT you, not with you.  Your flagrant politicizing of a national security issue is inhumane and gutless.

Get it done, now!  ENACT IT, NOW!

CONFIDENCE, AND NOT POLICY, STIMULATES AN ECONOMY

I left this comment at a friend’s blog, in response first, to a liberal claiming that the current recession is Reagan’s fault, and second, because one of the commenter’s cited a congressional report as evidence of the same idea.

So we’re down to this?  We’re going to believe a “Congressional” report?  Somehow, you think this congressional report is unbiased?

Let all liberals and conservatives hear this now and understand:

ECONOMICS ARE ALMOST SOLELY DRIVEN BY CONFIDENCE.

Certainly, policy can have an effect on confidence from time to time.  Policy can help create bubbles, but the bubble itself isn’t built by bad policy; it’s built by people who BELIEVE in the value of what they buy.

It’s not surprising that Republicans and Democrats believe their policies drive our economy; after all, you’ve been sold that bullshit for decades, by our elected officials as well as academicians such as Paul Krugman, who is a fine writer and teacher, but as a practicing entrepreneur, HAS ABSOLUTELY ZERO EXPERIENCE.

Sure, there is a place in our society for hacks who write about the economy, but more room should be made for the people who actually drive the economy and thus know how to stimulate it; small business owners and consumers.

However, in America, we don’t do things that way.  We dress a professor in a nice silk suit, give him a microphone, and let him tell everyone how stupid they are if they don’t agree with his theories.

That a man should have won a Nobel prize advancing theories that he himself has never attempted is a prime example of why our nation’s economy is so fucked up.

This country’s economy is stimulated at the micro level, not the macro level.  But if you want to go on listening to hacks, that’s your choice.

Clearly, our recession is not improving.  I work in a profession where I hear the horror stories, and where you can almost taste the fear of everyone you meet.  Since last October, my business is down almost seventy percent, and it is directly related to the fear that individual consumers are still feeling, even after nearly seven months of the latest “stimulus” package.

The work I do for my clients often helps them protect their families and their assets, as well as helps them plan their retirement.  These people listen to me, and know that they need to do something for themselves in order to secure their futures.  But they’re not doing it, and it’s not because they don’t need to, or because a Democrat is in the White House, or Reagan screwed us all twenty-five years ago.  They are remaining frozen because they are afraid.

No amount of stimulus money is going to cure that fear.  No amount of tax cuts will alleviate the anxiety that you might not have a job next week.  Paul Krugman donning a micophone and telling America that the stimulus is working will not cause consumers to spend their money again.  The crisis in America is much deeper than a Nobel prize solution.

We are living amidst a crisis of confidence, and until that confidence begins to be restored, policy will continue to be largely ineffective.

I’M RABIDLY ANTI-HACKER

Sorry that I haven’t been here.  I’ve been dealing with a virus.

A computer virus.  And…I’m effing sick of it.

I’ve got a firewall, for all the good it did me.  What I need is software that will track the virus to it’s source, and attack that hacker’s computer.  I mean, attack it good; take it out, fuck everything up.  And then, send an email to the FBI, with the hacker’s address attached.

I think if hackers knew there was a chance their computer would be tracked and attacked, there would be fewer viruses.  And the fellow who writes this software will become instantly rich…at least until the liberals find a way to sue him for picking on the poor, misunderstood hackers.

Somewhere, Janeane Garafolo is saying, “That’s nothing more than thinly veiled hackerism.”

Yes; I’m a hackist.  I’m rabidly anti- hacker!

I can see it now; Liberals everywhere protesting firewall ownership, because firewalls hurt people.  It would be just like the gun argument.  “You can’t own an attacking firewall!  You could hurt someone!  You might hurt a hacker!  There ought to be a law against firewalls that hurt hackers!”

Can you see it?

CONGRESS NAKED IN CONFLICT OF INTERESTS; HEALTH CARE REFORM

The Center for Responsive Politics has discovered that one in four Congressional members had invested money in health companies in 2007.  Directly from CRP:

Merck, Pfizer and UnitedHealth rank among the top 10 investments in 2007, and are part of an industry that opposes one of the main components of reform proposals–a public health insurance option that would compete with private insurers.

Conflict of interest?  Incredibly there does not seem to be any law that requires our elected officials to recluse themselves from voting on an issue that could affect their personal finances.  How was this Constitutional oversight missed?  We’ve had nearly two-hundred and twenty-two years to fix it, and somehow, we’ve forgotten to?

Go ahead and read the rest of their findings here.