Tag Archives: politics

Four Pillars of a Health Care System?

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The Wall Street Journal posited this in a Wednesday op-ed.

1. Provide a path to catastrophic health insurance for all Americans.

The WSJ then supports this with old saws: being covered generally leads to better medical results, health insurance is good for the wallet, and so on.  Then they want a government solution—while they carefully avoid saying how they would pay for it:

The ObamaCare replacement should make it possible for all people to get health insurance that provides coverage for basic prevention, like vaccines, and expensive medical care that exceeds, perhaps, $5,000 for individuals.

Those Americans who don’t get health insurance through employers, or Medicare and Medicaid, should be eligible for a refundable tax credit….

They don’t even say why catastrophic health insurance should be particularly targeted by Government.  They ignore an actual market solution for this: free market competition, accompanied with lower tax rates (which leave more money in people’s pockets), and no annual or income caps or requirements for high deductible insurance plans (and no requirement for any insurance plan at all) on Health Savings Accounts.  Folks are fully capable of making their own decisions about the structure of their health insurance plans without the Know Betters of Government holding them by the hand.  And insurance companies, in a fully competitive environment, are fully capable of developing and delivering the products actual customers want without Government mandates.  If that includes catastrophic insurance plans, those will appear.

2. Accommodate people with pre-existing health conditions.

See above regarding free markets.  Of course such coverage would come at a higher cost than other sorts of health coverages; the risk being transferred to the insurer is higher.  But even this risk is not certain.  Folks who’ve had a heart attack (or more than one), for instance, have a preexisting condition (unless a single heart attack has occurred sufficiently far in the past that a medical doctor (the patient’s, not the insurer’s or a Government hireling) says it’s a one-off and not preexisting), but not everyone who’s had heart attacks will have their next one simultaneously.  Even a preexisting condition can be amortized across time given a free market that allows pooling of [those who’ve had heart attacks] so that premiums can be adjusted to match the actual payout requirements, the actual risk—just like “ordinary” insurance plans.

So as long as someone remains insured, he should be allowed to move from employer coverage to the individual market without facing exclusions or higher premiums based on his health status.

This conflates two separate questions.  The preexisting question is addressed just above.  The mobility of an insuree (or someone who’d like to buy a health insurance plan) is separate: and yes, in a free market environment, an insuree would be able to take the plan he’s purchased, whether originally obtained through his employer (unless it was the employer who actually did the purchase and the premium payments) or bought on the individual market, with him wherever he went or to whatever job he moved.  The latter case, too, would reduce or eliminate the need for the new employer to offer health insurance coverage through his benefits program.

3. Allow broad access to health-savings accounts.

There should be a one-time federal tax credit to encourage all Americans to open an HSA and begin using it to pay for routine medical bills. And HSAs combined with high-deductible insurance should be incorporated directly into the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

Another Government solution—again carefully unpaid for—and it’s much too timid.  I addressed HSAs and their market availability above.

4. Deregulate the market for medical services.

This is the only move necessary.  It’s the move to enable the free market solution.

Full stop.

Obstruction

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With full control of Congress and the White House, Republicans have anticipated being able to repeal the law using a special budget maneuver that would allow them to get around a filibuster by Democrats in the Senate.

Yes and no.  The budget maneuver is reconciliation, and it’s usable only on budget matters.  That means that Obamacare will be defunded pretty straightforwardly, but the law itself still will be on the books—for a future Progressive-Democratic Party-controlled Congress to re-fund using the same budget reconciliation maneuver.  The law itself needs to be fully repealed, too; defunding it can only be a stop-gap measure.

Eight honest Progressive-Democrats are going to have to find the moral courage to step up and support actual repeal.

And there’s this.

[T]o replace it, they likely would need the support from eight Democrats and all 52 Republicans in the Senate (if Republican John Kennedy wins a December 10 runoff in Louisiana) to reach the 60 votes needed to clear the chamber’s procedural hurdles.

That procedural hurdle is the filibuster.  For this, too, eight honest Progressive-Democrats are going to have to find the moral courage to step up and support replacement with legitimate health insurance market paradigms.

Fat chance, but the fight needs to be carried out loudly, with no room for Senate Progressive-Democrats to hide behind their excuses and their crocodile tears over Americans being too stupid to take care of themselves and so need these Know Betters to do for them.

Senate Minority Whip Richard Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, predicts Republicans will have difficulty passing a replacement health law.

Yup.  Look for continuation of Progressive-Democrats’ past six years of obstructionism into the next two or more years.

The Diversity Officer Doesn’t Understand

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Recall the Somali student at Ohio State University who attacked so many of his fellow students because he blamed the US for anti-Muslim fervor in Burma and who “wanted to kill a billion infidels.”

Stephanie Clemons Thompson, Ohio State University’s Assistant Director of Residence Life, put this up on Facebook, according to Debra Heine of PJMedia:diversityofficercompassionHeine has already addressed the pain of his fellow students whom he attacked and other of his fellow students, pain which Thompson has chosen to ignore.  I’ll just note that Thompson plainly does not understand family, community, association.

Artan removed himself—no one removed him—through his own criminal acts from his earlier status as a Buckeye, from his membership in the OSU family, from his membership in the community of the United States.  He created himself an outlaw.  Thompson should review her Locke, which she surely read in her own freshman General Studies coursework.

Oh, and Thompson appears to have taken down her Facebook post.  Apparently she doesn’t even have the courage of her own conviction.

Nominations for HHS and CMMS

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President-Elect Donald Trump has nominated Congressman Tom Price (R, GA) to be Secretary of Health and Human Services and Seema Verma to be Administrator of HHS’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  The two are well positioned and experienced to spearhead the effort to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a health insurance environment that actually will provide low-cost, broad-ranging health insurance in a competitive market.

Senate Democrats already are digging in their heels, though.

The incoming Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, said he’s urging his Democratic colleagues to give Mr Price “a thorough, thorough vetting,” and said Mr Price’s Medicare proposals are tantamount to privatizing the program.

Here comes another Democrat effort at Borking a nominee.

And about that bit concerning privatizing Medicare: Schumer and his colleagues loudly object to that (recall their dishonesty about pushing Grandma off a cliff), but they also very carefully decline to say either what is so bad about Americans exercising their own judgment concerning their money and their health care (instead of Democrats’ judgment) or what a Democrat solution would look like—except to continue throwing money at the problem even though their prior 40 years of throwing money at it has produced nothing but wasted dollars.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

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Michigan elects its appellate court judges from each of four geographical districts, centered on Detroit, Troy, Grand Rapids, and Lansing.  Now the State’s government is playing games with that process.  Judge Donald Owens, of the Lansing district, intends to resign just before his term expires.

A Michigan appeals court judge is resigning four hours before his term expires on 1 January, allowing Governor Rick Snyder to pick a replacement.

No special election will occur; this will not be a particularly temporary appointment.  The appointed judge will serve until the next general election in the State.

The move might be convenient to Conservatism (Snyder is a Republican, which makes him conservative relative to the State he governs), this time, but only this time, this short-term time.  The move sets an ugly example, however.  We can argue the merits of elected judges vs nominated and legislatively confirmed or rejected judges, but the Michigan law is quite clear in its intent.  This move is nothing more than a naked attempt to circumvent Michigan’s law, the will of Michigan citizens as expressed by their elected representatives having passed this law, and the will of Michigan citizens as expressed by their election of their judges.