House insurance bill
I've got mixed feelings about the health care bill that passed in the House. I mean, on one hand, it's a stinker. It's expensive in an inefficient way, more concerned with keeping insurance companies profitable rather than helping people. I deeply dislike the whole bit where people will be forced to get insurance or face additional taxes, which is idiotic - if you're too poor to pay for insurance you're going to be further taxed?! In addition to being stupid and cruel it is also regressive. Also, it won't cover everyone. They admit to about ten million Americans not being covered, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't closer to twenty million due to the various pressures that will be put on people not to use the system (many Americans avoid public assistance because it marks them in other people's eyes as welfare kings or queens, and any regulatory process dependent on proving one's poverty to a government official is humiliating). Lastly, it has no chance of working in the long run. Because it serves, primarily, as a prop for the faltering health insurance agencies and big pharma, because it's in the bill that the government can't negotiate for lower prices and by design the government insurance will have no price advantage over private insurance, it will not control costs. We'll be here, again, in ten or so years with health costs eating about a quarter of our collective income.
On the other hand, it might get a bunch of people insured. That's a pretty big other hand. The number will be, quite likely, around twenty million (I think the 36 million the government claims is going to turn out to be an exaggerated estimation).
If I was in the House, I wouldn't have voted for the bill, though. I think that the incrementalist approach doesn't work, here. The problem is private insurance companies. The only solution that can possibly work is a solution that reduces private insurance to irrelevance. Only then, with the government as the insurer, reducing overhead to about a tenth of private insurers, and able to negotiate en masse for drug treatments and streamline efficiency through the system will costs be gotten under control.
On the other hand, it might get a bunch of people insured. That's a pretty big other hand. The number will be, quite likely, around twenty million (I think the 36 million the government claims is going to turn out to be an exaggerated estimation).
If I was in the House, I wouldn't have voted for the bill, though. I think that the incrementalist approach doesn't work, here. The problem is private insurance companies. The only solution that can possibly work is a solution that reduces private insurance to irrelevance. Only then, with the government as the insurer, reducing overhead to about a tenth of private insurers, and able to negotiate en masse for drug treatments and streamline efficiency through the system will costs be gotten under control.