The Times has the first of what I’m sure will be many “we can’t afford it” pieces about mandatory employee insurance, pitched to get one interest group an exemption. This one is from the nursing home lobby, though I’m sure we’ll see one from every service industry that’s built on low-wage employees.
After you’ve shed a tear for the mom-and-pop independent nursing homes that will be put out of business by Obamacare, ask yourself this: where were the nursing home lobbyists when we were debating HCR? Were they pushing to have universal government sponsored healthcare (Medicare for all), so their clients wouldn’t have to worry about how they were to pay for insurance for all their employees? Or were they calling that socialism?
I don’t know the answer to that question, because the Times’ reporters didn’t bother to ask it, but my guess is that the nursing home associations opposed Medicare for all, just like every other business. And, if so, fuck them and their “we can’t afford it” whining.
jcgrim
Exactly. They always find money for what they want.
Linda Featheringill
I am sure that some people associated with nursing homes are generous and caring.
However, the business end of nursing homes is run by people who are double-dipping exploiters: They exploit the weak and the ill for money and exploit the hell out of their workers, extracting much more labor than they pay for.
Of course they “can’t afford it.”
Valdivia
And apparently it’s also the new RyanCare rollout week. Curious to see if better pr fixes the perception by the public that it’ll screw them. Bets?
Omnes Omnibus
I am sorry but I just can’t find it in me to feel sorry for any of these businesses. Does this make me a bad person?
agrippa
I agree.
ChrisS
Why do I get the sinking feeling in my gut that there’s going to be a whole lot of people having grandma move in with them and life expectancy post-65 dropping like a stone while medical care gets exponentially more expensive?
Fucking rain.
Linda Featheringill
@ChrisS:
Yeah. Depressing but realistic.
ChrisS
@Omnes Omnibus:
Globalization was supposed to be this great thing where we outsourced some jobs in exchange for greater economic growth .. a rising tide that will lift all boats as it were. However, somewhere after application, the wealthy managed to convince most Americans who just lost jobs and real wages to give the wealthiest 1% a massive tax cut financed by future generations on top of all the wealth they just fell into through globalized free trade.
Fuck corporations.
Linda Featheringill
Way, way OT but more cheerful:
nytimes.com/2011/05/17/world/europe/17france.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
Strauss-Kahn and France’s reactions to allegations of rape.
Better than a soap opera. I really liked the blogger who said something to the effect that we in France tolerate stuff but the IMF has Anglo-Saxon morals.
Heh-heh.
ETA: A member of the Socia!ist party as leader of the IMF? Fuggum.
Maude
@Valdivia:
This fits the definition of insanity. Ryan’s plan failed the first time, so he does the same thing again, expecting a different outcome.
Valdivia
@Maude:
But maybe he can get that ‘serious’ ‘courageous’ spin to play again so that no one will notice he is doing away with Medicare!
SteveinSC
My experience with the nursing care industry was not a happy one. Families are not together anymore so “granny” can’t take one of the upstairs rooms and the kids can help clean her ass when she (or he) shits the bed. The minimum wage crowd that the nursing homes employ need watching all the time, not just when the families come to visit, but throughout the day and night to keep them from abusing the near helpless seniors. Fuck these New-York-Stock-Exchange-traded “Mom and Pop” companies.
bkny
what are the salaries of the ceos of these healthcare companies..
4tehlulz
@Omnes Omnibus: Not really; nursing homes are among the most parasitic entities in the American health care system.
mikefromArlington
Fuck yeah!
Odie Hugh Manatee
Ship the old people to China, problem solved! Then they don’t need nursing homes nor employees. We’re outsourcing everything else, why not outsource old people?
If the money grubbers could do it you know that they would.
dmsilev
@Valdivia: Yeah. Ryan has an Op-Ed in today’s Trib about the need for a serious debate on the budget. Here’s his definition of serious:
So, “serious” == “a combination of demagoguery about my opponent’s views and lying about my own budget”.
Valdivia
@dmsilev: as Chait pointed out in TNR he has been lying about his own budget and ACA in order to get people to buy his product, his shiny Galtian production. Asshole.
dmsilev
@Valdivia: His statement about taxes deserves a nomination for “weasel-wording of the day”:
“create space for lower rates to provide incentives” == “Cut taxes on rich people and corporations”. Also, it needs to be repeatedly pointed out that the Ryan budget specifies precisely zero “loopholes and carveouts” to be eliminated, but goes into loving detail about which tax rates should be reduced.
Valdivia
@dmsilev:
not just weasily but bad weasel wording. I am an attentive reader and by the third word of explanation I was lost. Also–permanently higher taxes? God I hate this guy.
DanF
This. I’m at a large state university that is self-insured. Our recent measures to rein in healthcare costs are to get us to all lose weight and get the remaining few dozen smokers to quit. We’re measuring our cholesterol levels and will be charging those who don’t meet certain target bio-metrics more for their health insurance. Awesome. Invasion of privacy AND a larger bill if you are unable to lose weight and/or refuse to take cholesterol lowering medication. I wouldn’t be as upset with our genius administrators *if* they had been out front lobbying for universal healthcare, but were they? Of course not. They also have a huge hospital system they run. Insanity.
Just Some Fuckhead
@ChrisS: Medical care costs are still rising out of control so the situation is going to continue to deteriorate straight across the board. But everyone has to buy health insurance now so yay.
rikryah
they’re all punk ass bitches.
Chris
@Linda Featheringill:
It’s a center left and fairly moderate party. And the Socia!ists were never the hard left movement, nor the party-of-the-workers, that their name may be thought to imply. The Communists had them beat on both counts.
Viva BrisVegas
@DanF:
Are your administrators aware of recent research showing that there doesn’t seem to be much correlation between high cholesterol and serious heart attacks? Or that three quarters of all heart attacks occur in people with fine cholesterol levels? Or that the side effects of anti-cholesterol drugs may be offsetting any benefit of reduced risk of heart problems?
Also it might be worth noting that even the most nanny state socialized medicine regimes don’t require the level of intrusive personal health management your employers seem to be requiring of their employees.
So I guess it looks like freedom is only freedom if the government takes it away, if a corporation takes it, it must be something else.
ChrisS
@Just Some Fuckhead:
How much of that cost is the AMA restricting medical schools and restrictions on who can do what? How much of that is people choosing expensive end-of-life treatments with marginal benefits?
I watched a family friend die of colon cancer last year. He was 74, a lifetime of beer and hamburgers (though he didn’t carry a lot of extra weight). He had had three heart attacks and two by-pass surgeries between 50-something and 70. After being diagnosed with a secondary cancer, he then went on chemo for a year, but progressively grew worse before passing away just after Christmas with his two newest infant grandchildren. Those last two years of life must have been exceedingly expensive and he was on medicare.
The kicker? He was pretty much your standard quasi-racist good ol’ cranky white guy that had supported his family for 40 years through his own business and he hated the idea of medicare and social security.
jayackroyd
No, of course they weren’t lobbying to increase the role of the public sector.
This is just an illustration of the way the Administration, and the Senate leadership, considered it vital that the private sector “stakeholders” preserve their revenue, and their profit stream.
We had another illustration early last week, when Maine received a waiver for the state’s insurance companies from the 80 percent medical/loss ratio requirement. The Maine ratio, 65%.
bit.ly/kqIk0k (PDF)
Ten other states have applied for waivers.
bit.ly/mdvzuY
jayackroyd
@ChrisS:
French people drink and smoke their way through their lives. Mortality and morbidity stats are better than the US stats, at half the price per capita. Blaming the patients while claiming to know what end of life treatments are “marginal” is dodging the issue.
Background material on this subject here:
bit.ly/iovddM
Germany in the following table, because the German system is most like the US system:
Price
USA, health care price per person, per year, 2008: $7,538
UK, health care price per person, per year, 2008: $3,129
Germany, health care price per person, per year, 2008: $3,737
Percent of GDP Spent
USA, health care as a percent of GDP, 2008: 16.0%
UK, health care as a percent of GDP, 2008: 8.7%
Germany, health care as a percent of GDP, 2008: 10.5%
Sly
Rather like McDonalds.
“You’re massive government throat-ramming will interfere with our ability to offer incredibly shitty and overpriced insurance to our wage-slaves!”
Villago Delenda Est
Before I’d start making assumptions that nursing homes are “mom and pop” operations, I’d take a closer look.
While they’re careful (like the funeral industry) to maintain an image of “locally owned”, there are a lot of chains of nursing homes out there who rake in huge profits by preying on the vulnerable…both the patients and their families.
The profit motive must be removed entirely from the health care field. It actively works against economic efficiency in this case, because health care isn’t like pins.
Just Some Fuckhead
@ChrisS: There was a candidate in the primaries who continually made the point that if we made health care affordable, people would be able to afford it. Unfortunately, he didn’t get elected. But he’s running again in 2012 so hopefully we can get him elected this time.
ChrisS
@jayackroyd:
I’m not blaming patients or people necessarily.
I have a hard grasping what could be done to reduce medical costs besides keeping the buffet line open to everyone for whatever reason. Especially since I’m hitting my middle years now after being mostly healthy for the past 37 years (two trips to the ER for broken bones and one surgery for a benign tumor). I’m moderately healthy, but I’m not sure I want to struggle through my dotage racking up massive medical bills. Additionally, my mom is hitting her mid-60s and isn’t in a great place financially and her husband isn’t exactly a healthy nut. I can see significant strain on household budgets if they have to absorb increased energy and medical costs with decreased wages.
So it leaves me a little bummed out and anxious over “what if” scenarios.
Roger Moore
@Viva BrisVegas:
This stuff is rarely about trying to save money or help people’s heath. It’s about taking advantage of an excuse to control their lives outside work. If they thought they could get away with it, they’d be making rules about with whom and how often their employees have sex. I’m sure they’d have some lame, superficial explanation- too many partners increases the risk of STDs!- but it would really be about exerting control over the most intimate details of their lives.
jayackroyd
@ChrisS:
Like I say in that link, pick one of the systems that work–the VA socialized medicine program, the Medicare single payer program, or one of the European heavily regulated insurance programs, as in Germany. This is a solved problem in the rest of the OECD. Germany has participation rates over 99.5% with no individual mandate, while using a variety of regulations and market mechanisms to deliver better care than the US at about 60 percent of the cost per capita.
Or see Ezra: bit.ly/hvIBXv pre-WaPo
But you have to be willing to have providers, and, more importantly, the men in the middle, lose revenues. Obama and the Senate leadership never put that on the table. The individual mandate was intended to make up for the reduced medical-loss ratio. And, as I noted above, that’s also subject to, err, change.
Villago Delenda Est
@Sly:
Where in, and of this I have little doubt, kickbacks are involved from the health “insurance” thieves to the company’s management.
jayackroyd
@ChrisS:
Also, this long chart explodes the various myths.
bit.ly/lm1RWg
The problem is that US citizens pay twice as much for pretty much everything.
Villago Delenda Est
@jayackroyd:
The problem with US health care is that there is a parasitic, cancerous growth on the US health care system.
If it is not removed, the patient will die.
It’s that simple.
Villago Delenda Est
@jayackroyd:
The problem with US health care is that there is a parasitic, cancerous growth on the US health care system.
If it is not removed, the patient will die.
It’s that simple.
Lee Baker
I’m not sure if “assisted living” facilities are in the nursing home category. They should be. I put “assisted living” in quotes because it turned out that when my Dad wanted assistance — pulling on his socks — well, that cost extra. The base rent wasn’t cheap, but the labor was all minimum wage and the food to die for — literally. It’s a growth industry and its all markup.
jayackroyd
@Villago Delenda Est:
Sure, that’s one way to put it. But if you are gonna put it that way, the cancer has metastasized. Telecomms, banks, big Pharma, Big Ag, defense–in fact pretty much every private/public partnership advocated by Third Way proponents–has created a culture of cronyism and corruption.
Or, if you prefer, neo-feudalism.
Why, for instance, is there not an ATM in every post office,connected to an account at the Fed for every American?
zmulls
It always surprises me that businesses are not in favor of universal health care. It seems counterintuitive to make health care part of an employer’s responsibility. The amount of money and time wasted in every company hiring people to deal with the “benefit packages,” to sort out options and help people sign up — it’s staggering in terms of lost productivity.
If there were a universal program, employers would have more money for wages (and bonuses) and could reduce administrative staff in favor or productive staff. It seems like an attractive thing for employers, to get out of the health care business….
Don
@Roger Moore:
Oh come on, did your tin-foil hat slip and start letting the crazy rays in? This sort of paranoia & fear-mongering is silly. The vast majority of businesses take steps they think benefit them. They might be stupid ones or based on bad or outdated evidence – as BrisVegas asserts about new theories about cholesterol and heart attacks – but the idea that anything resembling a significant quantity are actually interested in their employee’s home lifes is just inane.
I’m sure many businesses are run by folks who wish their employees had no other ties or interests other than what benefits their bottom line, but to suggest they have an interest that isn’t motivated by what best benefits the corporation is whackadoodle.
jayackroyd
@zmulls:
The short answer is that they ARE doing so. You have to understand that, like pensions, the deductibility of health care coverage was a huge benefit to senior management when there were higher marginal tax rates. Getting great medical care at a fraction of the cost was a lot better than paying 90 cents on the dollar in taxes. Likewise, deferring income through pensions was a great way to save money on taxes.
The government did require in order for a company to have tax deductible benefits for senior management, they had to offer them to everybody. Now, with tax rates at the top brackets historically low, they are doing all they can to shed benefits.
And that’s why you need an individual mandate, to force people to buy
crappyBRONZE health care insurance they don’t want, as employers shed health care coverage.There are some good things in the PPACA–like the extension of Medicaid. But there are many, many bad things, things that cannot be fixed going forward the way SS was fixed by gradually extending the eligible population.
singfoom
Gah, I like how the first comment on the NYTimes story is a “$25 dollars? I bet that lady has a cellphone that she could dump and have insurance instead.” More and more of the mounting evidence that the true citizens of this country are incorporated, and the rest of us have no rights.
What’s it going to take? When is it going to break? I never thought the American dream would be slugging through jobs for a non-livable wage and then being called out for costing your employer too much.
I’m only in my early thirties, but this has been obvious to me since high school. Can any of the old BJers here point to the year that we passed the precipice?
When companies decided that they shouldn’t actually take care of their employees? That they are Hourly-Billable-Units or whatever?
Fuck, this makes me sick.
Roger Moore
@Don:
I’m sorry, but if there’s one lesson from the financial meltdown it’s that management does not deserve a presumption of competence and goodwill. The typical upper management type deserves to be treated as a self dealing, sociopathic asshole until proven otherwise. When management implements a program that is unlikely to achieve its stated objective but which does give them control over their employees’ private behavior, I’m going to assume that it’s because they want an excuse to control their employees’ private behavior.
Squat6971
Single-payer health care for all, i.e., Medicare for All. Solves all these problems in one fell swoop
PWL
It’s a bad habit of American business–to whine “we can’t afford it,” or “we can’t do it,” and buy off a bunch of politicians to make sure they don’t have to afford it, or don’t have to do it. Made them lazy, sloppy, and arrogant.
I think the best example of this comes from the early 70’s, when the American auto industry whined that they “couldn’t possibly” meet the emissions standards the government was putting into place–while at the same time, the Japanese auto industry was meeting or exceeding those standards….
OzoneR
@singfoom:
I’m not that old, but my guess is late 1960s. Civil Rights and Abortion were wedge issues conservatives were able to use to flip the votes of people who disagreed with them otherwise. That also allowed them to infect their minds.
catdevotee
@PWL: I also remember that requiring seat belts would put the automotive industry out of business, because they just couldn’t afford it. Then years later, we heard the same argument about air bags.
ChrisS
and as noted by Obama and Steven Chu recently, refrigerators just couldn’t be made any more efficient.
Until, you know, they were … now they’re half the price and use a quarter of the energy.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Don: You think it’s tin-foil hat insanity to think that big business men tend to be power-tripping sadistic sociopaths?
I think you need to spend more time looking at reality.