Healthcare Reform Whoppers: Yes, but….. March 20, 2010
Posted by rickpa in Uncategorized.5 comments
Factcheck.org goes a long way to show the misleading hyperbole in this debate, but I have some thoughts of my own.
1. “Premiums would largely stay the same. The change in the average premium in the large group market would be between 0 percent and a 3 percent decrease, for instance, compared with where they’d be under current law in 2016.”
In real national healthcare, your tax is the premium. In this plan, you pay your premium, and will likely pay more in taxes to cover anyone who can’t pay that premium, so you WILL pay more either way.
2. It’s government-run health care.
No. It’s government controlled health care. It has been government controlled healthcare for decades, ever since the early 70s when Richard Nixon created more government alphabet soup than Campbell’s! Well… more than any other president.
3. If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.
Liking your plan has long been a luxury most never had, and most still won’t have.
4. The bill cuts Medicare by $500 billion.
I am not sure if it’s true, but I have heard that more than any other insurance plan, the biggest denier of claims is Medicare. Whatever the case, here we have the Republicans pulling the same dirty polemic trick that Democrats compulsively commit in flagrant delicto. They call a decrease in an increase a cut. In other words, Medicare will not be cut, spending on it will increase, but not as much as it currently increases,
5. The health care plan would be the largest middle-class tax cut for health care.
Even if totally true, it’s simply not believable. If taxes don’t go up, premiums must go up. There are millions of uninsured to be covered, our good wishes won’t do it, and we can’t deficit spend at ever increasing rates forever. But really! Are taxes going down for the middle class? No. Are insurance premiums going down for the middle class? Maybe a little, or maybe they’re going up. Mr President, just because Americans are born every minute, it doesn’t mean we’re all buying this!
6. Medical malpractice is the biggest driver of health care spending.
Medical malpractice may not be a main driver of costs, but it is the main reason our healthcare providers are herded into monopolies and oligopolies in our communities. Especially for OB/GYN doctors, who pay annual malpractice insurance premiums averaging $100,000.00 annually. Because doctors must pool their resources to stay in practice, we have gone from private practice, to corporate health care. In areas too sparsely populated to host large group practices, there is a doctor shortage. Medical malpractice is why.
In Summary:
In my view, we have neither free market or government health care. Our health insurance companies are no less than Freddie Macs & Fannie Maes, private for profit entities that are tied to the regulation of the state’s command, yet consumed by their need for profit. They are already too big to fail, but as their demands increase even further to go beyond the role of enterprise, further into that of social engineering, they will collapse just like our financial center did under similar pressure to produce non-existent capital on behalf of government social engineers who wanted inflated housing for everyone for little interest, and no ability to pay.
We are so screwed!
