Even before Obama takes the reins in January, his party plans to start issuing health-insurance mandates to the American people-- and pay for it with expanded entitlements. Max Baucus (D-MT) will introduce legislation that goes beyond Obama's pledge to mandate coverage for all children, instead mandating that all adults also get insured. And if they can't afford it? Well, Medicare is solvent, isn't it?

quote:

Without waiting for President-elect Barack Obama, Senator Max Baucus, the chairman of the Finance Committee, will unveil a detailed blueprint on Wednesday to guarantee health insurance for all Americans by facilitating sales of private insurance, expanding Medicaid and Medicare, and requiring most employers to provide or pay for health benefits. Aides to Mr. Obama said they welcomed the Congressional efforts, had encouraged Congress to take the lead and still considered health care a top priority, despite the urgent need to address huge problems afflicting the economy. Mr. Baucus would create a nationwide marketplace, a "health insurance exchange, where people could compare and buy insurance policies. The options would include private insurance policies and a new public plan similar to Medicare. Insurers could no longer deny coverage to people who had been sick. Congress would also limit insurers ability to charge higher premiums because of a person's age or prior illness." People would have a duty to obtain coverage when affordable options were available to all through employers or through the insurance exchange. This obligation "would be enforced, possibly through the tax system," the plan says.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/w...int&oref=slogin

What could possibly go wrong with this scenario? For one thing, Medicare could collapse — and it's about to do just that. In three years, Medicare will spend more than it gets in Part A (hospital coverage) premiums from Social Security, and this is just the beginning of the long twilight of the Baby Boomers. That will create a deficit in Medicare that will either have to be absorbed from the general fund or alleviated by cost reductions.

Instead of looking to restore some sort of stability to the already-failing Medicare structure, Baucus wants to hang more cost onto it. He doesn't stop at Medicare, either. His program will put the same burden on states through Medicaid. That will create even more instability in benefit plans and force more public funds on that level to get spent on coverage.

The result? Taxes will go up at both the state and federal level across the nation, and it won't just be the "rich" that feels the pinch. Tax rates will necessarily rise as deficit spending explodes. The dollar will weaken once again, thanks to the enormous debts that this will generate, and the capital needed to restore the economy will get lost in the monumental expansion of government control this will require. Baucus thinks that magically insuring people will eliminate costs, but it just transfers it instead to the least-efficient model: government bureaucracies.

Instead of reforming entitlements, the Democrats plan an expansion of them. The collapse will come quicker than anyone predicted. I guess that qualifies as "change", and you'd better believe it's coming.

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/11/...alth-insurance/

Yeah, that's a pretty terrible idea...

They should tax all Americans to fund health care for every American, like they do in every other civilised country (and many not-so-civilised countries)

Withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan would pay for these programs alone.

___________________

Won't happen. Obama will open the door for a universal system, but it'll be quite a while before there's a chance of everyone being covered, "forced" or not. This country's employer-provided system is too entrenched for it to be changed with a single piece of legislation.

quote:

Originally posted by Krypton Withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan would pay for these programs alone.

I wouldn't be so sure about that...

But even if true, it would only be paying for insurance for those in poverty and those nearing retirement (which are both relatively good ideas, if too simplistic.)

Requiring every adult to purchase health insurance on the other hand costs the government very little -- but it has serious misallocative effects for which I can see no corresponding benefit. If someone can afford health insurance but doesn't want it, why shouldn't that be their business?

The issue here appears to be that the government wants to require insurers to charge low-risk individuals more in order to subsidize insurance for high-risk individuals. The purpose of the "requirement" is to ensure that the low-risk individuals are participating -- if they are subsidizing high-risk individuals, after all, premiums will be relatively high compared with their actual needs, which presumably would provide an incentive to many of them to simply opt-out. The more who opted out, the higher the premiums of those still participating would go and, presumably, the more would choose to opt-out and, or so the reasoning goes, the system would essentially collapse upon itself.

The logic of it is fairly sound; the problem is that it rests upon a set of values which are, at best, subjective (and I can't agree that the government can justly force them upon those of us who do not agree.) Essentially it makes the value judgment that ensuring affordable, private insurance for individuals who place the heaviest health care burden on society is of greater importance than preserving the liberty and autonomy interest of those who place the lightest burden on society in being able to choose how best to manage their own risk, rather than having it dictated to them by almighty government.

To dredge back up a concept from The17sss' earlier thread: this value judgment is the antithesis of "live free or die." It reflects precisely the opposite value judgment: that the protection of life through the provision of health care ought to supercede the freedoms of individuals to manage their own risks as they see fit. And anyone who genuinely believes in "live free or die," as I do, should therefore be opposed to it.

Moreover, it seems to me to be highly analogous to our friendly neighborhood Prop. 8 -- in both cases you have a large group of people, possibly a majority, with one set of subjective values trying to impose those values upon those who have other values by force of law. I think the fact that many people have intuitively opposite perspectives on the two issues provides an effective litmus test for the ever-present stench of hypocrisy. If you believe in the will of the majority above freedom, then you should support both, if you believe the contrary, then you should oppose both. Any other position is likely to require some philosophical acrobatics -- and you'll be hard pressed to convince me that they're anything but post-hoc rationalizations.

To avoid confusion, it should be noted that this misallocation is quite independent of the wealth of the respective individuals (although that could be mitigated with an extremely restrictive definition of "affordable.") The idea of forcing everyone to purchase health insurance places the bulk of its burden upon the people who can afford it -- but just barely. For the wealthy, it is likely to be largely a minor inconvenience. In this respect, I would have to say that even George's idea (and I'm not at all endorsing it) is superior to the one being advanced here.

quote:

Originally posted by Krypton Withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan would pay for these programs alone.

I'm sceptical about all these wild and wonderful figures branded around for the cost of these two wars. Usually the ones announcing such figures are those vehemently opposed to the war, so have an obvious agenda that might very well "fudge" their figures.

I am convinced that they include in their figures the defence budget for each year, meaning war or no war, those soldiers etc would still be getting their pay cheques and whatever else the budget was created for would still be spent.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a definitive figure showing the amount extra to the defence budget being spent on these two wars - which of course there will be, but whether that is enough to cover a universal health service is another matter.

The last paragraph of that quoted article does indicate compulsory coverage, though that is coming from a Congressional Democrat. My understanding is that Hillary advocated compulsory coverage for all Americans and Barack does not. Color me skeptical, but I'll wait to see whether anyone above an unnamed "aide to Mr. Obama" throws their full support behind such a plan.

That's not to say that universal coverage is a bad thing. However, I think Obama has been pretty clear that he's looking to achieve universal access to coverage - clearly a more well-defined issue of right v. forcing Americans to opt in to a public system.

___________________

quote:

Originally posted by Arbiter If someone can afford health insurance but doesn't want it, why shouldn't that be their business?

This is where I see this thread go awry - you've highlighted the single most distinguishable difference between Hillary Clinton and Obama on healthcare.

___________________

quote:

Originally posted by George Smiley I'm sceptical about all these wild and wonderful figures branded around for the cost of these two wars. Usually the ones announcing such figures are those vehemently opposed to the war, so have an obvious agenda that might very well "fudge" their figures. I am convinced that they include in their figures the defence budget for each year, meaning war or no war, those soldiers etc would still be getting their pay cheques and whatever else the budget was created for would still be spent. I'm not sure I've ever seen a definitive figure showing the amount extra to the defence budget being spent on these two wars - which of course there will be, but whether that is enough to cover a universal health service is another matter.

Adjusted for GDP growth, you can see that we've nearly doubled defense expenditures since 2000 - jumping from 360 to 595 billion each year. Granted, defense expenditures are still rising, so that 595 figure isn't an average of the seven fiscal years in between, but it gives you an idea of the cumulative costs of our current foray into the Middle East and Central Asia.



http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=539

___________________

But 2000 is when Bush and the neoconservatives rose to power with their main aim of making America the dominant military power in the world capable of fighting numerous simultaneous battles anywhere across the globe. Dramatically increasing defence spending was one of their main ambitions, so again, that graph doesn't necessarily tell us how much extra has been spent specifically on the decision to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq

Perhaps my skepticism was short-lived. From Krugman:

quote:

Hopeful signs on health care This is very big news. One of the key questions about the new Democratic majority was whether Congress would try to play it safe, backing down on big ideas about reform, especially on health care. You can view the whole chorus about how we’re still a “center-right nation” as an attempt by the usual suspects to scare Democrats into scaling back their ambitions. But now Max Baucus — Max Baucus! — is leading the charge on a health care plan that, at least at first read, is more like Hillary Clinton’s than Barack Obama’s; that is, it looks like an attempt at full universality. (The word I hear, by the way, is that Obama’s opposition to mandates was tactical politics, not conviction — so he may well be prepared to do the right thing now that the election is won.) So this looks very good for the reformers. There’s now a reasonable chance that universal health care will be enacted next year!

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/20...on-health-care/

___________________