Krugman today:
That’s especially true for health care, where growing spending has made the vested interests far more powerful than they were in Nixon’s day. The health insurance industry, in particular, saw its premiums go from 1.5 percent of G.D.P. in 1970 to 5.5 percent in 2007, so that a once minor player has become a political behemoth, one that is currently spending $1.4 million a day lobbying Congress.
Free market innovation, bitches!
asiangrrlMN
Gee, who could have imagined that the insurance companies would hike the premiums when they have almost a complete monopoly on the healthcare biz? And who could have imagined that they would become so powerful that Congresspeople would do cartwheels to stay in their (insurance fuckers) good graces? Only the terribly shrill Paul Krugman would dare suggest such a thing!
Where are my smelling salts, Maude? Krugman is getting feisty again!
Face
What’s this got to do with fantasy football?
Zoogz
Which makes me laugh even louder when someone comes up with the “well, you have churches and neighbors” defense against a public option/single payer.
I’m fairly sure the neighbors and/or churches managed to get some of the now-absent 4% back then.
Crashman06
Was at a friend’s house the other day for a house warming party. Her brother brought her a book as a gift; something from Ayn Rand. She was happy to receive it. I thought to myself: “Note to self: Do not take seriously anything she says about politics or economics ever again.”
Kryptik
Obviously, it just proves that people are satisfied with their insurance, otherwise they’d chip in to lobby against the insurance companies. I’m sure 5 dollars from each unsatisfied person would be enough to thwart them!
If they don’t like it enough, they should form their own lobby. Until then, they should just STFU and use some Robitussen!
Signed,
Billionaires for Wealth Care
flukebucket
Which makes me laugh even louder when someone comes up with the “well, you have churches and neighbors” defense against a public option/single payer.
I love that too. Churches and neighbors my ass. If you have a spouse or child who has a brain tumor and you are about to lose every damn thing you have what good is prayer and a plate of home made cookies?
r€nato
@Zoogz:
So my health care (or yours) should rely on the kindness and goodwill of neighbors and my local church?
You know, when that organization which donates medical services in third world countries came to Los Angeles, I was ashamed that it had come to this. But I am CERTAIN there were glibertarians who smiled smugly and said, “See? That’s how it should work! We don’t need no stinkin’ big government to provide medical care! There are plenty of private initiatives to fill that need for the poor! The invisible hand works!”
If anybody seriously proposed that our police protection or fire protection or building and maintenance of public roads should rely on haphazard private volunteer efforts, people would look at them like they were nuts (except for fellow glibertarians).
Tax Analyst
“I love that too. Churches and neighbors my ass. If you have a spouse or child who has a brain tumor and you are about to lose every damn thing you have what good is prayer and a plate of home made cookies?”
Well, at least you won’t be hungry…at least until the next day.
Comrade Jake
I think a case can be made that this stems largely from the insanity that we rely on health insurance to pay for *everything* health related. Probably it should really only be there for catastrophic illnesses, in which case we might have Geico selling it for $500 a year on the teevee.
r€nato
well, see, they are all ubermenschen who never get ill and never have to rely on anybody else for help or assistance…
Pablo
I do all my banking in Galt Gulch where we have no pesky, socialistic FDIC.
Dork
eye’m in yo farmacy, killin yo pr0scr1bshun m3dicin3 planz
Joey Maloney
Krugman is getting
feistyshrill again!Fixt.
Zifnab
@asiangrrlMN: Imagine, if insurance companies can do this with insurance premiums, what could an oil company do in a similar situation. Why, people would be talking about gas in the $4-$6/gal range!
Wait, I’m sorry. Let me tone it down a bit. I’m becoming shrill.
Roger Moore
@Comrade Jake:
Catastrophic care only insurance is just “you can always go to the emergency room when you’re sick” written large. For a big chunk of the population, it would wind up institutionalizing the problem of putting off problems until they get too big to ignore and very expensive to treat. Any insurance company with half a brain would want to throw in routine checkups and simple preventive care for free because they’d drive down total costs.
ironranger
In Joe Conason’s 2003 book “Big Lies”, there is a chapter on charity.
He wrote, “According to a study prepared several years ago by the Century Foundation, the TOTAL assets of America’s 34,000 foundations (not the annual income from their endowments) add up to around 10% of current government expenditures on social welfare & related domestic programs.”
And, “Charitable groups lack the resources to sustain the nation’s poor at even the most minimal level of survival-let alone to help them escape poverty.”
That has stuck with me ever since I read it. I just wonder how much less available money charities have now in 2009 plus we have a lot more uninsured & underinsured people who need help.
So the message from public option/single payer opponents must be just shut up & die.
James Gary
I don’t think you guys understand..the reason we’re paying more for insurance is because WE’RE RICHER NOW THAN WE WERE IN 1970. WE HAVE MORE MONEY.
I know this is true because Betsy McCaughey used this exact same “argument” on the Brian Lehrer (www.wnyc.org) show this morning. She sure is one smart lady!
Mark S.
This reminds me of that McCardle WaPo chat where she argued “Actually, health care insurers are not especially profitable.” Not especially profitable enterprises apparently can spend a million dollars a day in lobbying.
RSA
In Galt’s Gulch, there is no health insurance. Rugged individualists just suck it up and deal with the pain if on some rare occasion they get sick; they even operate on themselves when necessary, carefully evaluating the utility of pain-killers and anesthesia as they go.
Chad N Freude
@Crashman06: Maybe she needed a doorstop.
Zifnab
@Comrade Jake: Define “catastrophic illness”. Is breaking your arm catastrophic? How about a funny shaped mole that your doctor suggests be removed to head off cancer?
Is a $10,000 hospital bill catastrophic? How about a $5000 bill? How many days do you have to stay in as a patient to qualify? What about outpatient surgery? What about chronic conditions like diabetes or glaucoma or high blood pressure?
What happens if I’m making less than $1200 / month and I break my finger? We’re talking about a doctor’s bill in the $600 range, bare minimum. How do I pay for that and still make rent, utilities, and groceries?
The bottom line is that, if you’re in the top 10% of wage earners, health insurance reform probably isn’t for you. Emergency rooms aren’t getting packed with rich people. Millionaires aren’t the ones worried about going uninsured. People need coverage for the little things – the flu shots and the routine check ups and the fevers and the twisted ankles – that still manage to cost more than a middle class or lower class family can afford.
I can’t tell you how many of my friends have forgone visiting a doctor with chronic stomach pains or sprained wrists or nasty headaches, because they simply couldn’t spend hundreds of dollars on doctors bills. These are the people health insurance reform are for. People who can’t afford 50% copays and quadruple digit deductibles. Or people who have no insurance at all.
Chad N Freude
@Mark S.: That’s what makes them not especially profitable.
Warren Terra
OT, but relevant, John Scalzi has a good post on the prospects for health care reform. He’s optimistic, and I hope he’s right.
Mark S.
@James Gary:
Jesus, McMegan used that same argument in the aforementioned WaPo chat:
This argument works with the rubes who have never been out of the country and think everywhere else is like Afghanistan.
JenJen
Premia!!! LOLZ! Good one, Doug.
Ole
Ironranger – why certainly. But you’re free to shut up and die in a place of your own choosing; and the local vicar will be delighted to come pray with our in your final hours.
All while the friendly neighbors shout “The Lord’s will be done! Hallelujah!”, munch brownies and drink root beer on your porch.
A much better option for all than our only slightly lousy Stalinist medicine here in Denmark …
Chad N Freude
@Mark S.:
She’s really training hard for the Gold Medal in the Idiocy Competition. That may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I’m trying to think of something stupider, but so far no luck.
Sloth
True enough, they don’t actually report a lot of profits. They pay their CEO’s just about the highest salaries out there and they have insane admin overhead and so on.
But there is not a lot of actual “profit” reoprted to wall street.
Accountants rule.
freelancer
@JenJen:
@DougJ:
Did we just start a thing? False pluralisms? or is it Pluralisses?
I hope this catches on, I for one find it amusing to read about on many bloog. Too much?
Comrade Jake
@Roger Moore:
I’m not saying that should be the beginning and ending of health care. Far from it. I’m just putting it forward as an explanation as to why insurance expenses have skyrocketed compared to the seventies.
I’d say a case can be made that the government should cover/subsidize the annual checkups for everyone. So the private insurance would simply be for everything beyond the basics, or in effect catastrophic events.
It’s not completely clear to me that the preventative care always keeps costs down. I imagine there are some things, that just due to the statistics involved, don’t turn out to be cost-effective. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be done, but I don’t think all preventative stuff necessarily saves money, particularly if you’re looking at doing it for millions.
ironranger
@Ole:
Yup, & the friendly neighbors will be freed of dropping coins in those donation cans at the supermarkets. It’s all good.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Mark S.: I have made this argument before. In the UK my sis and bro in law are both CNA’s (or the equivalent of course) who work in a residential school for handicapped children, teenagers and young adults. They are not earning a fortune (better than CNAs over here though I think) they are not paying much more in taxes than we do over here and they have no worries about health issues. They own a nice house, in a nice neighborhood, get six-weeks paid vacation a year, and guess what they have a MUCH higher standard of living than any working schlub that I know over here (including me and I am in the legal community). They consider it a tragedy if they can’t go “abroad” at least twice a year (usually Europe, sometimes a cruise, other times Vegas – bro in law likes to gamble). Utilities are cheaper, food is cheaper, in fact about the only things that are more expensive are gas, booze and cigarettes. Best of all they are never in a position of being one major illness away from bankruptcy. If that is sochilist then sign me the fuck up.
Chad N Freude
@Everybody who’s amused by Latin plurals:
Several of my friends drive Prii.
Warren Terra
@ JenJen, #25
When I saw “Premia” the first time, I thought it pompous and, worse, wrong – but at least according to a comment thread at Crooked Timber it’s a standard term in specialized literature.
noncarborundum
@flukebucket:
Well, I doubt the prayer does much good, but I wouldn’t sneer at the plate of cookies. My son was diagnosed with brain cancer when he was 4 years old, and my wife and I spent pretty much every waking hour for the next 5 months either with him in the hospital or at work (he’s recovered now, 10 years later, though disabled). Life would have been a whole lot more difficult if the neighbors hadn’t pitched in to fix us dinner for the first few weeks and otherwise help out.
That said, I’d rather have done without the neighbors than without the doctors and medicines that my insurance paid for.
JenJen
@Warren Terra: I guess Doug will have to answer this one definitively, but I was under the impression it was a delightful little dig at everyone’s favorite economic expert at The Atlantic.
freelancer
@Warren Terra:
I assumed DougJ was being self-depricating because of this thread 2 days ago:
https://balloon-juice.com/?p=26127
If I’m wrong, that’s even better.
Da Bomb
@Crashman06: Or maybe she needed toilet paper.
Docrailgun
Why would the plural be “premia”? Aren’t we writing in English?
Mnemosyne
@Comrade Jake:
It’s actually more complicated than that. It’s possible that it’s more expensive to do preventive care, but it’s also probable that having preventive care for everyone would lead to greater productivity, which would pay for that preventive care. Looking at it as strictly as an expense that will have no benefits is the wrong way to look at it.
freelancer
@Docrailgun:
A meme grows in BJ.
Mnemosyne
@noncarborundum:
That’s the kind of thing that neighbors and friends can do very well — taking care of the everyday practicalities (meals, lawn mowing, laundry, etc.) while you deal with the big stuff. The problem comes in when rightards and libertarians insist that the neighbors should also handle the big stuff like paying for chemo.
scav
@Mnemosyne: Not to mention, but is being alive cost-effective in the long run? Anybody run the figures yet? Sheesh, yeah, remind me what the price point of a grandmother or the ability to chew is.
Chad N Freude
@Docrailgun:
We’re writing in English, but we’re also showing how well-educated we are.
noncarborundum
@Mnemosyne:
Well, yeah. That’s why I wrote that second paragraph.
Warren Terra
@ JenJen, #36
Don’t get me wrong, it looks absurd to me and I’m sure people use it pompously in the hope they’ll sound knowledgeable. Certainly McArdle uses it. But some genuinely smart folks do too.
R. Porrofatto
@Warren Terra: It’s not all that standard — isn’t even in my American Heritage Dictionary, and you won’t even find it at dictionary.com. Some extremely obscure, or in McArdle’s case pretentious, writers may use it in an economics jargon-y way, but you’ll notice that the above writer doesn’t, but he’s only a Nobel prize-winning economist.
freelancer
@R. Porrofatto:
Whatever the use of ‘premia’ is perfectly cromulant.
Chad N Freude
@R. Porrofatto:
It’s Latin, the lingua mater (mother tongue in English) of English. (Along with a bunch of other languages. Mater was a real slut.)
DougJ
I guess Doug will have to answer this one definitively, but I was under the impression it was a delightful little dig at everyone’s favorite economic expert at The Atlantic.
That is correct. She always says “premia”.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Warren Terra:
[from the John Scalzi post you linked to]
Now this is full of win.
Mnemosyne
@noncarborundum:
I may not have been clear, but it was more of a “hallelujah!” to emphasize what you said than a disagree.
SiubhanDuinne
I think I still have a dusty, silverfish-infested, mouldering old paperback copy of Atlas Shrugged languishing on my bookshelves. It’s been a while but I seem to recall that when Dagny Taggart crashed her plane in Galt’s Gulch and was nursed back to health by John Galt his own self, she didn’t have to show a Blue Cross card or pay a $20 deductible for the crutches or pain pills. Instead, I think JG just took it out in trade, if you take my meaning (and I think you do).
Origuy
@Chad N Freude: English is a Germanic tongue. Latin just got brought into the mix through the French-speaking Normans, plus church and scientific terms that found their way into common speech.
Origuy
I was in an independent bookstore last week which had books from the reading lists for local schools. One of the books was The Fountainhead. I was tempted to look at the book lists to see which school had it on their list. I decided I’d rather not know.
Chad N Freude
@Origuy: Yes, but then the joke doesn’t work.
Chad N Freude
@Origuy: “Take me, Howard Roark”. Yes, we need this in our local schools.
Say what you will about the book, the movie is a major hoot.
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne 3:45 pm
Of course I meant “co-pay,” not “deductible.”
jacksmith
NO CO-OP’S! A Little History Lesson
Young People. America needs your help.
More than two thirds of the American people want a single payer health care system. And if they cant have a single payer system 77% of all Americans want a strong government-run public option on day one (86% of democrats, 75% of independents, and 72% of republicans). Basically everyone.
According to a new AARP POLL: 86 percent of seniors want universal healthcare security for All, including 93% of Democrats, 87% of Independents, and 78% of Republicans. And 79% of seniors support creating a new strong Government-run public option plan, available immediately. Including 89% of Democrats, 80% of Independents, and 61% of Republicans, STUNNING!! Senator Max Baucus, You better come out of committee with a strong government-run public option available on day one.
The History:
Our last great economic catastrophe was called the Great Depression. Then as now it was caused by a reckless, and corrupt Republican administration and republican congress. FDR a Democrat, was then elected to save the nation and the American people from the unbridled GREED and profiteering, of the unregulated predatory self-interest of the banking industry and Wallstreet. Just like now.
FDR proposed a Government-run health insurance plan to go with Social Security. To assure all Americans high quality, easily accessible, affordable, National Healthcare security. Regardless of where you lived, worked, or your ability to pay. But the AMA riled against it. Using all manor of scare tactics, like Calling it SOCIALIZED MEDICINE!! :-0
So FDR established thousands of co-op’s around the country in rural America. And all of them failed. The biggest of these co-op organizations would become the grandfather of the predatory monster that all of you know today as the DISGRACEFUL GREED DRIVEN PRIVATE FOR PROFIT health insurance industry. And the DISGRACEFUL GREED DRIVEN PRIVATE FOR PROFIT healthcare industry.
This former co-op would grow so powerful that it would corrupt every aspect of healthcare delivery in America. Even corrupting the Government of the United States.
This former co-op’s name is BLUE CROSS/BLUE SHIELD.
Do you see now why even the suggestion of co-op’s is ridiculous. It makes me so ANGRY! Co-op’s are not a substitute for a government-run public option.
They are trying to pull the wool over our eye’s again. Senators, if you don’t have the votes now, GET THEM! Or turn them over to us. WE WILL! DEAL WITH THEM. Why do you think we gave your party Control of the House, Control of the Senate, Control of the Whitehouse. The only option on the table that has any chance of fixing our healthcare crisis is a STRONG GOVERNMENT-RUN PUBLIC OPTION.
An insurance mandate and subsidies without a strong government-run public option choice available on day one, would be worse than the healthcare catastrophe we have now. The insurance, and healthcare industry have been very successful at exploiting the good hearts of the American people. But Congress and the president must not let that happen this time. House Progressives and members of the Tri-caucus must continue to hold firm on their demand for a strong Government-run public option.
A healthcare reform bill with mandates and subsidies but without a STRONG government-run public option choice on day one, would be much worse than NO healthcare reform at all. So you must be strong and KILL IT! if you have too. And let the chips fall where they may. You can do insurance reform without mandates, subsidies, or taxpayer expense.
Actually, no tax payer funds should be use to subsidize any private for profit insurance plans. So, NO TAX PAYER SUBSIDIES TO PRIVATE FOR PROFIT PLANS. Tax payer funds should only be used to subsidize the public plans. Healthcare reform should be 100% for the American people. Not another taxpayer bailout of the private for profit insurance industry, disguised as healthcare reform for the people.
God Bless You
Jacksmith — Working Class
Twitter search #welovetheNHS #NHS Check it out
(http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/why-markets-cant-cure-healthcare/)
Senator Bernie Sanders on healthcare (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSM8t_cLZgk&feature=player_embedded)
American HEROES!! :-) Click replay to play http://bit.ly/j31oU
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbWw23XwO5o) CYBER WARRIORS!! – TAKE THIS VIRAL