Let Them Eat Cake: The Anomaly Of Compulsory Private Health Insurance

[Rajiv]

Let Them Eat Cake: The Anomaly Of Compulsory Private Health Insurance

by Ellen Brown

“Let them eat cake,” the notoriously callous words ascribed to Marie Antoinette, were probably said a century earlier by Marie-Thérèse, the wife of Louis XIV. But whoever said them, the mindset the statement conveys of an aristocracy oblivious to the realities confronting the poor is still with us today.

“Congressmen, what shall we do about the 30 million Americans lacking health insurance?”
“Why, that is simple. Force them to buy it. Fine them heavily if they don’t!”
“What if they don’t have the money?”
“Then take it from those who do!”

The health reform bills now coming through Congress are not focused on how to make health care cheaper or more effective, how to eliminate waste and fraud, or how to cut out expensive middlemen. As originally envisioned, the public option would have pursued those goals. But the public option has been dropped from the Senate bill and radically watered down in the House bill. Rather than focusing on making health care affordable, the bills focus on how to force people either to buy health insurance if they don’t have it, or to pay more for it if they do. If you don’t have insurance and don’t purchase it, you will be subject to a hefty fine. And if you do purchase it, premiums, co-pays, co-insurance payments and deductibles are liable to keep health care cripplingly expensive. Most of the people who don't have health care can't afford to pay the deductibles, so they will never use the plans they are forced to buy or be fined.

To subsidize those who can’t pay, the Senate bill would make families earning two to four times the poverty level who don’t have employer-sponsored insurance surrender 8% to 12% of their income to insurance payments, or pay a fine. In another effort to make the insurance payments “affordable,” the Senate bill calls for the lowest cost plan to cover only sixty percent of health care costs.

“In other words,” writes Dr. Andrew Coates, “a guarantee of insurance industry dominance and the continued privatization of health care in every arena.”

Medical Tyranny by the FIRE Sector

Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, is quoted as warning two centuries ago:

“Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an underground dictatorship. . . . The Constitution of this republic should make special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom."

That time seems to have come, but the dictatorship we are facing is not the sort that Dr. Rush was apparently envisioning. It is not a dictatorship by medical doctors, who are as distressed by the proposed legislation as the squeezed middle class is. (For a withering analysis by an outraged M.D. of the nearly 2000 - page House bill, see here.) The new dictatorship is not by doctors but by Wall Street -- the FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) sector that now claims 40% of corporate profits.

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[don]

Re: Let Them Eat Cake: The Anomaly Of Compulsory Private Health Insurance

Good post, Rajiv

from The FIRE Handbook, Illustrated Edition

[KGW]

Re: Let Them Eat Cake: The Anomaly Of Compulsory Private Health Insurance

I'm hoping for an early death. . .For this "plan," that is. . .

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: Let Them Eat Cake: The Anomaly Of Compulsory Private Health Insurance

Re-Elect No One. RENO

[Rajiv]

Re: Let Them Eat Cake: The Anomaly Of Compulsory Private Health Insurance

Also this from Washington's blog - Liberals and Conservatives Question Constitutionality of Healthcare Legislation

Both progressives and conservatives question the constitutionality of the healthcare bill. Specifically, people from across the aisle say that the government cannot force people to buy private health insurance.

On the left, progressives such as law school professor Sheldon Laskin, anti-war activist David Swanson, and Miles Mogulescu are calling the bill authoritarian and unconstitutional.

On the right, Senators John Ensign, Mike Johanns, Lindsay Graham and Jim DeMint and the state attorneys general of Michigan, Washington, South Carolina, and perhaps other several other states are contesting the constitutionality of the mandatory insurance provision in the healthcare bill.

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: Let Them Eat Cake: The Anomaly Of Compulsory Private Health Insurance

Here is what to me is a telling headline with regard to the probable perception of the President and the democratic party on the passage of the healthcare bill. It is also telling as to how the ABC news looks upon the event.

Senate OK's Health Care Bill in Victory for Obama http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=9421830

Would it not be appropriate if headline read Senate OK's Health Care Bill in Victory for American citizens." Assuming that were in fact the case. However, legislation reflecting a victory for voters would not be in keeping with the priority of politics across both parties in the US: Self (of the elected official), re-election of Self, Party, Monied-interests, voters.

I hope the judiciary will find the legislation unconstitutional, but heaven knows how long that will take.

Fuck all the bastards. Re-elect none of the useless bastards. RENOTUB Or for the more civil among us, substitute "buffoons" for "bastards."

[phirang]

Re: Let Them Eat Cake: The Anomaly Of Compulsory Private Health Insurance

Private, compulsory health insurance is UNCONSTITUTIONAL and will fail in the courts.

THIS ISN'T THE GOAL: THE GOAL IS PUBLIC OPTION. The current bill is merely a tax-raise. The real change will come in the revision after the compulsory private insurance is found unconstitutional.

This is merely another stepping-stone in turning the US into the UK.

Time is on "their" side, I assure you.

[BrianL]

Re: Let Them Eat Cake: The Anomaly Of Compulsory Private Health Insurance

...Would it not be appropriate if headline read Senate OK's Health Care Bill in Victory for American citizens."...

As wonderful as that would be, I don't think it is possible. From my perspective, the country seems torn fundamentals. Without some external force, there will always be a lot of jobs that don't help with health care costs nor pay enough for people to afford to get even basic help.

I had a friend - someone who went back to a trade school at 24 after making some bad decisions in the past - who came down with pneumonia. She was barely making ends meet working two jobs totaling 30 hours a week on top of full time course work to cover her education and living expenses.

She put off going to the doctor due to the expense for 3 weeks. Even the cost of the antibiotics were going to be problematic. I think the estimate from the doctors offices she'd called was something like $400 for the visit and another $100 for medicine. I dread to think how many people she potentially infected in that time. She wouldn't accept charity until her jobs told her not to come in any more, at which point a friend managed to get her an antibiotic (not sure where the got it from).

Frankly, I doubt people could come to a consensus on how an ideal system would handle this case, let a generalized national solution.

[Rajiv]

Re: Let Them Eat Cake: The Anomaly Of Compulsory Private Health Insurance

Even if she had health insurance -- and given her financial circumstances, I doubt that she would have been able to afford the co-pays

[jacobdcoates]

Re: Let Them Eat Cake: The Anomaly Of Compulsory Private Health Insurance

BrianL,


Sorry to hear about your friend, but I think it is a fine example of how America is becoming a 3rd world county again.

[flintlock]

Re: Let Them Eat Cake: The Anomaly Of Compulsory Private Health Insurance

The wife of a friend recently had to go into the hospital for 10 days with pneumonia. He got the bill from the hospital about a month later. $96,000! About half that amount was for drugs. He said some doses were $1200 each.:eek: Of course that bill reflects the price before it are "readjusted" to take into account the negotiated price from her insurance company. They can afford the co-pays this time, but her health remains bad and now she can't work so will eventually lose her big corporate insurance package, throwing them into the thrilling world of finding private health insurance for two fifty somethings, both with pre-existing conditions. They always lived a financially conservative lifestyle, but medical is the financial Achilles heel of most baby boomers these days.

In what other industry to we throw around fake prices then come back later with more realistic ones? ( Okay, used cars!)It's not like anyone without insurance is paying that full amount( most either don't pay at all or negotiate their own payment). So why put it out there? Kind of hard to have "competition" and "free enterprise" when it's so hard to find out what things really cost.

Seems to me we have a three-way war going on in health care between Patients, Providers, and Insurance companies. All working against each other. We need to find a way to work together before we end up with a lose/lose/lose situation for all three.

[Raz]

Re: Let Them Eat Cake: The Anomaly Of Compulsory Private Health Insurance

The wife of a friend recently had to go into the hospital for 10 days with pneumonia. He got the bill from the hospital about a month later. $96,000! About half that amount was for drugs. He said some doses were $1200 each.:eek: Of course that bill reflects the price before it are "readjusted" to take into account the negotiated price from her insurance company. They can afford the co-pays this time, but her health remains bad and now she can't work so will eventually lose her big corporate insurance package, throwing them into the thrilling world of finding private health insurance for two fifty somethings, both with pre-existing conditions. They always lived a financially conservative lifestyle, but medical is the financial Achilles heel of most baby boomers these days.

In what other industry to we throw around fake prices then come back later with more realistic ones? ( Okay, used cars!)It's not like anyone without insurance is paying that full amount( most either don't pay at all or negotiate their own payment). So why put it out there? Kind of hard to have "competition" and "free enterprise" when it's so hard to find out what things really cost.

Seems to me we have a three-way war going on in health care between Patients, Providers, and Insurance companies. All working against each other. We need to find a way to work together before we end up with a lose/lose/lose situation for all three.

I agree with you.

Tonight my wife and I had dinner at a fine Mexican restaurant with another couple. The husband is a barber who cut his middle finger so badly at Thanksgiving that he had to go to the hospital later that day.

They cleaned the wound and glued it to closure. Then a doctor came in to look at it - no sutures were placed.
His bill from the hospital was $1,190.00 and the physician charged him $600.00 !!!:eek:

He wasn't making this up. We have a real problem but I'm not sure how to fix it.

[grapejelly]

Re: Let Them Eat Cake: The Anomaly Of Compulsory Private Health Insurance

I agree with you.

Tonight my wife and I had dinner at a fine Mexican restaurant with another couple. The husband is a barber who cut his middle finger so badly at Thanksgiving that he had to go to the hospital later that day.

They cleaned the wound and glued it to closure. Then a doctor came in to look at it - no sutures were placed.
His bill from the hospital was $1,190.00 and the physician charged him $600.00 !!!:eek:

He wasn't making this up. We have a real problem but I'm not sure how to fix it.

pretend your dog had gotten a cut. You'd go to a vet, ask how much it costs. The vet would tell you. You'd say "go ahead" and pay when you left. Bill would be maybe $300.

That's what you do. Simply get government out of health care. The difference between veterinary medicine and human medicine is primarily that one is a private market system and the other is a government cartel system.

Eliminate employer deductibility. Make medical costs fully deductible by the consumer, both insurance premiums and health care expenditures. Encourage health savings accounts by making a medical reserve fund deductible and tax free as well.

[Rajiv]

Re: Let Them Eat Cake: The Anomaly Of Compulsory Private Health Insurance

Grape,

How do you cover the bottom 40% of income earners in their later years when the medical costs become really high -- Do you just say tough luck -- too bad you are poor?

And you do know what happens to pets when they become too expensive and inconvenient to keep.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Let Them Eat Cake: The Anomaly Of Compulsory Private Health Insurance

Grape,

How do you cover the bottom 40% of income earners in their later years when the medical costs become really high -- Do you just say tough luck -- too bad you are poor?

And you do know what happens to pets when they become too expensive and inconvenient to keep.

When the purpose of healers is to promote health, then oftentimes many can be healthy at modest cost. When the purpose of medicine is to generate wealth, then only the wealthier will be able to afford medical services.

We must decouple our medical (and drug and agriculture) industries from wealth production and reconnect them to promoting health.