Paul Krugman Simplifies Health Care Reform For You
The invaluable Paul Krugman explains health care reform for easy understanding:
The essence is really quite simple: regulation of insurers, so that they can’t cherry-pick only the healthy, and subsidies, so that all Americans can afford insurance.
Everything else is about making that core work. Individual mandates are a way to prevent gaming of the system by people who don’t sign up until they’re sick; employer mandates a way to hold down the on-budget costs by preventing a rush by employers to drop insurance; the public option a way to create effective competition and hold costs down further.
But what it means for the individual will be that insurers can’t reject you, and if your income is relatively low, the government will help pay your premiums.
Let me summarize the Republicans plan: status quo.
Now, that’s easy isn’t it?
In other health insurance reform (preferred term now) news:
The health insurance reform bill was voted out of the final House committee late on Friday after a deal was struck between the Blue Dogs and the Progressives. I’m sure you’re surprised to learn that no Republicans voted for the bill. This means that a bill can be voted on by the House when they get back from their August recess. The House leadership has also promised to allow a floor vote on a single-payer healthcare bill. The amendment is sponsored by Rep. Anthony Weiner (yes, this Anthony Weiner). It’s sure to fail but it allows the Progressive Caucus to register support for single-payer.
In the Senate, the secretive negotiations between know-nothings Baucus and Conrad with know-nothings Grassley and Enzi continue. Baucus has now set a date for the end of negations as September 15, perhaps realizing that he’s getting played by Republicans. He’s now threatening to pass a bill out of the committee without Republican support. Perhaps the threats of voting him out the of committee chairmanship are working.
Nebraska “Democratic” Senator Ben Nelson threatens to kill health insurance reform because groups are running ads in his district urging him to support it. Keep in mind Senator Nelson is set, he has a gold-plated government-run health care plan. I’m sure Nelson’s plan will work because we all know that sitting back quietly and hoping someone will notice you is how you get things done in American politics.
Hey! Republicans have put out their own health care plan! Guess what it is? Health insurance deregulation. We all know that deregulation worked great for the banking industry, what’s not to love?
Tags: Health Care Reform, Paul Krugman
Except, of course, that the Democrats are lying to you! That shouldn’t be a surprise: Democrats always lie. President Obama isn’t in the least interested in the plan that is on the table, save as a way to run private insurance companies out of business and get to single-pater. In his own words . . . .
And Republicans are lying to you, and Dana is lying to you. Wow, this is easy when you use troll rules.
UI,
It’s rude not to use Paul’s full title…
Paul -Shill for Enron- Krugman
Republicans:
“Iraq has weapons of mass destruction” – OOPS!
“Deregulation brings prosperity” – OOPS!
“We want to get government out of your lives” – Terri Schiavo – OOPS!
“George Bush protected our country” – 9/11, anthrax, Katrina
It’s rude not to use anoni’s full title, either: That’s shit-for-brains anoni to you.
See how easy it is to be a conservative troll?
You know what my problem is with all of this. It’s providing an argument based on an assumption that is never supported. So Dana states that Obama wants to run private insurers into the ground. OK, great, and that’s bad because, why? Perhaps it really is the worst thing in the world, but nobody has ever proven it to me.
Am I supposed to buy into this fetish about the markets in each and every industry on faith or what? So the US health care system is bad. Exhibit A – we spend like double per capita than everyone else. Exhibit B – US infant mortality is very poor. Exhibit C – General life expectancy is poor (ranked like 50th, something like that). This is all brought to you by the private insurance companies.
So maybe running them out of business is really, really terrible, but maybe you should try to explain to me why that is.
I’m interested in the fact that the so-called part of business doesn’t have much faith in private insurance companies to get off of their butts and actually compete for business. They actually want this business to act like the welfare queens they are. Any insurance company that takes 25-40 cents on the dollar for overhead has plenty of room to compete, I think. Especially since non-profit insurance companies do pretty well on much less overhead.
Well, efficiency aside, I think they’d argue that the public option would be heavily subsidized and not-for-profit ergo it would beat the “for-profit” private firms.
So is human health a valid “for-profit” enterprise? Should it be? If you say yes than you’ll need to address ethics and morality concerns… like why is Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, OK?
They do argue that the public option will be heavily subsidized — except that the subsidies that would exist are those that would get people into the option in the first place. They are not providing a subsidy for individual services — and neither does Medicare or Medicaid or the VA. So they are passing along one more argument with no basis in reality — at least no basis in any of the bills that exist today.
Personally, I’m not especially interested in the question as to whether or not health insurance is a valid for-profit enterprise. If the for-profits can deliver health care to everybody without the cherry-picking; for a reasonable price; for a price that is well-managed; and delivers better outcomes than they do today, I don’t much care if they make money at it. But since private health insurers now have incentives that privilege their executives and shareholders over the people who pay their premiums, I would look at the private plan option as a good adjustment to those incentives.
Socialism , Socialism.
When Congress passed the Price Anderson Act in 1954 to assure that the FOR PROFIT STOCK HOLDER OWNED companies who build nuclear power plants wont be held responsible for the $BILLIONS in damages in case of an accident
that was just fine. No “Socialism” comment was found.
But when 40 million Americans do not have health care, and can not get insurance because of pre-consisting conditions which would cut into the Companies profit margin it’s SOCIALISM.
I just don’t see the morality in this.
Your post misses a few key points. The GOP is not against health care reform but they are against Obama’s approach which moves patients further from their doctors, pulls them into a government system which does not cut costs and does nothing about malpractice/errors.
The plan by Sen Wyden Oregon (d) and Bennett Utah (r) is a much better plan and Dr. Coburn (r) from Oklahoma also has a nationwide plan.
If Obama wants to start reforming health care he should start with Medicaid and medicare to better serve those individuals because the path the plans are on now can not be sustained.
The hatred for insurance companies is obvious but over 40 states have insurance commissioners to regulate them, what are they doing?
All along the way it would be smarter to have each state have a Universal system with Medicaid/Medicare dollars thrown in to help.
It is all laid out:http://delawarerepublican.wordpress.com/drtv/
Mike Protack
an airline pilot dat nose healthcare! u in da wrong profishen Mike!
In a study of 15 metro areas it was found only it was found 55.4% of physicians are currently accepting medicaid patients.
Medicaid is taxpayer funded, government administered and resembles the public option
Physicians are being reimbursed below their costs. If the recipients could get private insurance there would be no problem with dropping patients.
Mike Protack
No need to simplify as it’s already simple…more govt, more taxes, less healthcare…