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Your Political Zen Koan of the Day
Okay, I'm preaching to the choir here, but I'm hoping if I seed this comment on several blogs, it might start a "meme", and non-bloggers might actually start asking each other these questions.
So riddle me this.
If the Obama/Geithner financial bailout plan is such great shakes…
(where bankers bid "sky's-the-limit" on "toxic" securities, while the US government underwrites 85 cents of taxpayer money on each dollar bid, in order to entice the bankers to bid higher on these discredited securities and thus get the credit market “flowing” again) …
…then why shouldn't we apply that same principle to the Health Care crisis?
Why shouldn’t the government simply pay 85 cents on the dollar whenever a health insurance company buys up a "claim risk" -- (a person who likely has health problems and therefore isn't profitable; these people are typically denied insurance).
We’ll entice the insurers just like we do the bankers!
That outta get the "frozen" health care market flowing again. And once people have insurance, they’ll receive wonderful preventive care and stay healthy forever and all our health care problems will be over with.
The official bipartisan storyline says that, apart from rejecting unhealthy unprofitable people, millions of poor Americans are priced out of having their own health insurance, because these same poor people without insurance drive up emergency medical costs, and thus contribute to the shocking health care inflation. Which means they themselves price themselves out of the market -- due to not joining the System like good citizens. (It's not because the health industry, for example, abuses patent powers, or spends billions lobbying Congressmen, or anything like that.)
So if the government just pays 85% of the cost of acquiring new clients -- like we're about to do for the bankers -- then health insurers can remove the "risk premium" when they offer insurance to poor people. Insurance will immediately become affordable for everyone. Prices will plummet, everyone will participate, and everything will be hunky-dory. We'll insure the sick and insure the poor.
And we'll only need to print up another elevendy-quintillion worthless dollars in order to do it. If the Geithner Banking plan can (in some bizarre parallel universe) be called "Market-Based", as opposed to Nationalization, Socialization, or just a plain-ole Handout... then my own Health Care Solution also meets those requirements.
[/sarcasm]
Howcome the one is a “serious” proposal but the other is not?
Who decides the priorities, that the Banking Crisis must be dealt with immediately by piling up stacks of money from here to Saturn, whereas the Health Care Crisis has been simmering for upwards of 20 years?
So riddle me this.
If the Obama/Geithner financial bailout plan is such great shakes…
(where bankers bid "sky's-the-limit" on "toxic" securities, while the US government underwrites 85 cents of taxpayer money on each dollar bid, in order to entice the bankers to bid higher on these discredited securities and thus get the credit market “flowing” again) …
…then why shouldn't we apply that same principle to the Health Care crisis?
Why shouldn’t the government simply pay 85 cents on the dollar whenever a health insurance company buys up a "claim risk" -- (a person who likely has health problems and therefore isn't profitable; these people are typically denied insurance).
We’ll entice the insurers just like we do the bankers!
That outta get the "frozen" health care market flowing again. And once people have insurance, they’ll receive wonderful preventive care and stay healthy forever and all our health care problems will be over with.
The official bipartisan storyline says that, apart from rejecting unhealthy unprofitable people, millions of poor Americans are priced out of having their own health insurance, because these same poor people without insurance drive up emergency medical costs, and thus contribute to the shocking health care inflation. Which means they themselves price themselves out of the market -- due to not joining the System like good citizens. (It's not because the health industry, for example, abuses patent powers, or spends billions lobbying Congressmen, or anything like that.)
So if the government just pays 85% of the cost of acquiring new clients -- like we're about to do for the bankers -- then health insurers can remove the "risk premium" when they offer insurance to poor people. Insurance will immediately become affordable for everyone. Prices will plummet, everyone will participate, and everything will be hunky-dory. We'll insure the sick and insure the poor.
And we'll only need to print up another elevendy-quintillion worthless dollars in order to do it. If the Geithner Banking plan can (in some bizarre parallel universe) be called "Market-Based", as opposed to Nationalization, Socialization, or just a plain-ole Handout... then my own Health Care Solution also meets those requirements.
[/sarcasm]
Howcome the one is a “serious” proposal but the other is not?
Who decides the priorities, that the Banking Crisis must be dealt with immediately by piling up stacks of money from here to Saturn, whereas the Health Care Crisis has been simmering for upwards of 20 years?
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