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You are here: Home / Politics / Health Care

Health Care

by John Cole|  May 10, 20059:25 am| 19 Comments

This post is in: Politics

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Am I just being jaded and cynical when I look at arguments like this back and forth between Ezra Klein and the folks at Q and O and all I think is, “Why bother? The debate is over.”

I opposed nationalized health care, but I think I see the writing on the wall. It is pretty clear to me that the corporate interests have determined that they can not sustain their profitability while continuing to offer health care as an employee benefit. This idea that they can not afford health care pops up over and over and over again:

At the same time it announced its new profit figures, GM made it clear that it plans to place the burden of the company

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19Comments

  1. 1.

    Mason

    May 10, 2005 at 9:55 am

    I’m one of the self-employed people paying out of pocket to insure my family, and I’m damn sick of the whining from people on this issue.

    Do people expect their employer to provide life insurance?

    Do people expect their employer to provide auto insurance?

    Do people expect their employer to provide homeowners insurance?

    WHY IS THE EMPLOYER EXPECTED TO PROVIDE HEALTH INSURANCE?!?

    We’re already at nationalized health care, John. It’s just a matter of degree. Ah, the hell with it, now I’m all agitated and need to go take a programming final.

  2. 2.

    Jon Henke

    May 10, 2005 at 10:13 am

    At any rate, I think it is pretty clear that in the not-so-distant future, we will be moving to some form of nationalized health care. Congress and the President paved the way with the Prescription Drug Plan, and the folks at Q and O better recognize that what Congress and the President essentially said with that act was that people have a right to get Prescription Drugs. You don’t have to like it, but you better recognize it.

    Brother, I saw that train coming a looong time ago.

    February 09, 2005

    An army of Hillary Clintons’ couldn’t have done more to bring us to the brink of socialized medicine. At this point, if politics were a game, socialized medicine would be in the Red Zone, and SportsCenter would be telling the Republicans “you cannot stop it…you can only hope to contain it.”

    So, realistically, the only way the GOP can “control” the cost of medicare/medicaid is by discontinuing the farce of a free market in health care, and taking some structural savings that come with the elimination of administrative costs and/or recouping of those newly-available monies in taxation.

    August 27, 2004

    Now, one can argue whether the number of insured people should be legislated higher–i.e., “government provides health insurance”–or whether the government should stay out of it and allow people to make their own choices. We could argue all of that, discuss Canada, per-capita health care spending, a priori economic assumptions on efficient allocation of resources, and the number of MRI machines in Tennessee.

    We could discuss all of that, and and I think we probably will over the course of the next few years. Socialized medicine is coming…

    Honestly, my only realistic objective now is “how do we minimize the damage to our goals and values”. The liberals have quite clearly won the day, and the Republicans carried the ball over the goalpost for them.

  3. 3.

    Jon Henke

    May 10, 2005 at 10:14 am

    We could discuss all of that, and and I think we probably will over the course of the next few years. Socialized medicine is coming…

    That passage should have been in the blockquotes of the last cited bit from Aug ’04.

  4. 4.

    John Cole

    May 10, 2005 at 10:17 am

    Jon-

    Yeah, the debate has been lost, I am afraid. The important thing to do is make sure that when the move is made, we make sure it is more than just a give-away to corporate interests.

  5. 5.

    Dave Straub

    May 10, 2005 at 10:27 am

    John, do you believe corporations are “amoral?” I prefer to believe that markets are amoral, and that corporations certainly have a capacity for immoral behavior — though I don’t believe that’s their default state.

  6. 6.

    Marie

    May 10, 2005 at 12:10 pm

    I agree with you Mason. Employers can’t afford to keep providing health insurance for their employees. There is no cap on it. Our health insurance rates increased 60% last year. As a small business owner, we can’t afford these increases and our customers don’t seem to be willing to shoulder more rate increases.

  7. 7.

    CJ

    May 10, 2005 at 12:47 pm

    The debate on health care is indicative of some of the problems inherent in capitalism. Two perfect examples of this are health care and the law. No one can rightly say that doctors, nurses, and health care companies shouldn’t make money, but the drive for ever increasing profits has some bad side effects that we are witnessing today, e.g. those that can’t pay get left out. No worries when we are discussing the sale of sports cars, but rather troubling when we are talking about appendicitis. The same themes apply in the legal arena.

    CJ

  8. 8.

    Libertine

    May 10, 2005 at 12:58 pm

    There is no right which enumerates that we are all entitled to health care provided by our employers.

    But there is a problem. I own a small business. 4 years ago when I got health insurance it ran me $265 per month. I just got my renewel letter and this upcoming year it will be $450 a month for the same coverage. I have a $1,000 cap on scripts, after the $1,000 all my scripts are out of pocket ($200+ per month).

    Many people are not getting health care they need because they can’t afford it. This is creating a bigger crisis on the horizon when the hospitals are clogged with patients with conditions which could have been prevented if the people could afford health care. Then when they get sick they can’t afford to pay for the medical service…and who ends up picking up the bill…the rest of us with even higher medical costs.

  9. 9.

    Nash

    May 10, 2005 at 3:10 pm

    You mention that corporations are legally responsible to their shareholders. That reminds me that this very status of American corporations is one that could use re-tinkering. In today’s world, most of the power of shareholders is quite dilute and distant, not to be affected in many cases by pro forma meetings. Instead, real power generally lies at a much more closely “held” level–the board or even specific officers. Right or not, that’s the way many corporations work–the “legal obligation” to the shareholder is less an obligation and more of a cover for practices that all to frequently tip from the acceptably amoral to the unacceptably immoral .

    Shouldn’t we re-think this “the shareholder made me do it” and “the shareholder demands quarterly progress” way of regarding American business?

  10. 10.

    Gary Farber

    May 10, 2005 at 6:01 pm

    “I opposed nationalized health care….”

    Those last three words contain such a vast multitude of possible policies! And yet, typically, what those who tend to say the above tend to have in mind rarely tends to be a plan realistically advocated by much of anyone who is a “supporter”; I don’t, myself, know anyone who is for, per se, “nationalizing” health care. I simply know many people, myself included, who think that it’s extremely bad public policy to continue with our present system which a) preserves all sorts of monopolies as it is; b) is incredibly more expensive in overhead than that of any other industrial nation; and c) results in such a vast proportion of the population going without health care. It’s fixing those ends that matters, not some specific means, and I really don’t know of any (remotely mainstream) Democrats who feel differently, though perhaps I’m somehow missing them all. (It’s pretty much like the fact that it’s more or less impossible to find any liberals who are actually simply for “bigger government,” although certainly most liberals tend to favor government working on — in an unspecified fashion — more problems than Old-Fashioned Conservatives (pick a baseline time as you wish) generally do; this may seem like an unimportant distinction, but it’s no less important than, say, noting that conservatives are not actually in favor of unnecessary suffering and heartlessness; on either side, making up (or, in most cases, innocently adopting) straw positions/characterizations to disagree with isn’t helpful.

  11. 11.

    AlanDownUnder

    May 10, 2005 at 6:59 pm

    Nearly all non-US first-world democracies provide better health care than the US and for a smaller percentage of their GDP.

    This observation is something all sides of politics can agree on.

    The rest of the world does it by a variety of measures which will appeal to different ideologies.

  12. 12.

    KC

    May 10, 2005 at 8:17 pm

    I’ll go back to my own experience on this one. I’m diabetic, a contract worker (self employed), and I have lousy insurance. However, the only reason I have any insurance is because I’m a graduate student. If not for the relatively inexpensive private-public student insurance I’m able to get here in California, I would have no insurance at all. Since I have a pre-existing condition, I’m basically priced out of the market. I don’t consider myself broke either. The semi-socialized health plan I’m on, while lousy, at least gives me some protection if something were to happen to me.

    Trust me, I used to have issues with socialized medicine (taxes, inefficiency, etc.). However, these issues slowly disappeared when I lost my job a few years ago and could not get health insurance. I tried everything I could just to get some kind of coverage–I offered to pay for all my prescriptions, as I do under my current plan–but still was priced out of the market. Bottom line: Having had the experience I’ve had, I don’t see any problem with some basic form of socialized medicine. Truthfully, it might even be a good thing for our country.

  13. 13.

    Mr Furious

    May 10, 2005 at 10:23 pm

    “…4 years ago when I got health insurance it ran me $265 per month. I just got my renewel letter and this upcoming year it will be $450 a month for the same coverage.”

    “…Our health insurance rates increased 60% last year.”

    It’s all because of those trial lawyers and their malpractice scam, right guys? Don’t worry, our Prez has a nifty plan to fix that. After that, I’m sure the rates will go right back down again…

  14. 14.

    Libertine

    May 10, 2005 at 10:44 pm

    It’s all because of those trial lawyers and their malpractice scam, right guys? Don’t worry, our Prez has a nifty plan to fix that. After that, I’m sure the rates will go right back down again…

    Yep…Just like the cost of gas will go down because he got the ok to drill in ANWR? ;-)

  15. 15.

    Birkel

    May 11, 2005 at 6:12 am

    Jon and John,

    America’s best hope in all of this is that Europe’s inevitable decline is reported accurately so that we can look across the pond and recognize where we’re headed.

    Creeping socialism… coming soon to a country near you… with all the attendant problems.

  16. 16.

    Jay

    May 11, 2005 at 10:07 am

    Record profits for HMOs and drug firms as health care costs rise 10-15% p/year, yet hospitals lose money, and doctors’/nurses’ salaries stagnate.

    Don’t even START with tort reform – California has had a 250k pain & suffering cap for 10 years, and malpractice rates have gone UP.

    MediCare with a gap policy is affordable and efficient, while the VA manages to provide $8 prescriptions in addition to care.

    It is doable.

  17. 17.

    Kimmitt

    May 13, 2005 at 9:26 pm

    Birkel — twenty bucks, ten years from now. If Europe collapses and we don’t, I’ll send you a twenty. If the US collapses and Europe doesn’t, you send me a twenty. If neither collapses, we buy our girls* liquor and try to get lucky.

    *random guess

  18. 18.

    likwidshoe

    May 15, 2005 at 5:48 am

    AlanDownUnder said, Nearly all non-US first-world democracies provide better health care than the US and for a smaller percentage of their GDP.

    Um. Yeah. Because America effectively subsidizes their drug costs. Gee…I wonder why it is cheaper. Also noted is that the vast majority of new drugs and procedures are American made and researched. The other countries who provide “better” healthcare aren’t living up to their “better” label very well.

    KC said, Trust me, I used to have issues with socialized medicine (taxes, inefficiency, etc.). However, these issues slowly disappeared when I lost my job a few years ago and could not get health insurance.

    Well I’m glad that people like me can provide health care for you KC. I would like free health care as well. Must be nice. Thanks for contributing to the problem.

    Libertine said, Yep…Just like the cost of gas will go down because he got the ok to drill in ANWR? ;-)

    Way to bring an irrelevant topic into the thread. Anyways…it’s not to ensure price, it’s to ensure supply. You have your non sequitur all messed up buddy.

    As to the problems of our health care – there are many. Rising malpractice insurance, government meddling, the lack of free market because we are over insured (you read that right), the fact that America effectively subsidizes the drugs in those oh-so-wonderful socialist systems, living longer, the list goes on. Fixing only one or partially fixing a couple (about the best we could hope for at this point of big government and a socialist indoctrinated public) won’t help the problem much. It will only slow down the inevitable crunch.

    I would suggest that the biggest problem is too much government. The health care industry woes in America are often pointed to by the left as an example of the “free market” failing us. But it’s hardly a free market with a few regulations. It’s closer to being one of our most subsidized, regulated, and taxed industries we have. So the government creates the problem and then offers the solution! Nice parlor trick,..but I ain’t buying.

    As for those of you who endorse socialist, err… I mean “single payer” or “universal coverage” health care – do you guys ignore history and simple economics? The only way to cut costs in a socialist system is to limit service and ration. What are you solving? And before you give me the canard that other Western countries somehow have better health care because of some really small variations in such things as infant mortality – stop. And take a look at those numbers again. They’re so statistically small as to be irrelevant.

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  1. Balloon Juice says:
    December 29, 2005 at 10:14 am

    […] I have stated repeatedly that I think the fight over some form of nationalized health care is over, and that we will one day have a European-style system in place. The only question is when big business will successfully pressure the government to take over. […]

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