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2010-03-29 Home Front: Politix

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Posted by Nimble Spemble 2010-03-29 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11134 views ] Top

#1 This article is bull$hit. First, the dispute over the proper way to attend to an aging population's increasing healthcare liabilities is in no way comparable to the crisis over slavery. Not even close. Forget it.

Second, this is stupid:
For example, the new law takes away from insurance companies the right to charge for insurance based on actuarial risk which is the essence of insurance.

The notion that for-profit health insurance companies should be able to cherry-pick healthy patients and, en masse, say f&&& off to sick patients, is, in an advanced democracy, absurd. The essence of HEALTH insurance is that SICK PEOPLE should not have to worry about losing all because of the profit imperative of companies that add no value whatsoever to the health care system. They're nothing but parasites, adding needless cost and complexity and doing zip for efficiency, or price transparency and with it consumer choice.

And yet this idiotic bill PRESERVES and even RAISES the profit margins of these parasites!

The whole point of health care reform was to eliminate needless cost and needless complexity. In short, to end this tax on the populace imposed by the insanities, and casual everyday cruelties, created by this absurd system of for-profit insurers cherry-picking healthy people and denying benefits to people who actually need care.

A pox on both your f&&&ing ignorant houses. We have two incompetent parties conspiring, through this idiotic pi$$ing match, to either bankrupt the nation or to deny care to Americans who need it. F%%% you both.

Posted by lex 2010-03-29 00:12|| 2010-03-29 00:12|| Front Page Top

#2 Don't hold back, Lex. But, if you don't mind subsidizing the insurance plan of a family making nearly $90,000, make a donation to the IRS in excess of what they usually confiscate from you.

You'll feel better.

I live in Texas and we have no stomach for this kind of blatant maldistribution. We'll do whatever it takes and you can bet it will be 'peaceable'.

Posted by Gomez Threter7450 2010-03-29 00:27|| 2010-03-29 00:27|| Front Page Top

#3 f you don't mind subsidizing the insurance plan of a family making nearly $90,000,

I DO MIND! I wanted an end to the bizarre and cruel practice of cherry-picking, AND an end to the bizarre and utterly senseless preservation of for-profit insurance that adds hundreds of billions of dollars in cost for no discernible social benefit.

The goal was to LOWER COSTS and expand coverage. Tweedledum doesn't give a f*** about the former, and Tweedledee doesn't give a f**** about the latter.

And so we now have the worst of both worlds. A pox on both your f***ing houses.

We need a new political class in this country.

Posted by lex 2010-03-29 00:35|| 2010-03-29 00:35|| Front Page Top

#4 You do realize that health insurers get only 4% of overall healthcare spending, right? Doctors, hospitals, medicines and tests are what drive up healthcare costs.

Posted by Gomez Threter7450 2010-03-29 00:48|| 2010-03-29 00:48|| Front Page Top

#5 "The notion that for-profit health insurance companies should be able to cherry-pick healthy patients and, en masse, say f&&& off to sick patients, is, in an advanced democracy, absurd. "

It is the notion that people can decline health insurance to pocket some extra cash when they are healthy and then demand to be placed on insurance when they get sick that is absurd.

The notion of employers paying for health care came out of WWII regulations that prevented employers from increasing wages. The government was afraid that the major defense industries would bid labor costs through the roof. So what the companies did was offer "fringe benefits" like health coverage instead.

We need to wean ourselves off of employer-based health care and put individual policies with people making their own choices in its place. Employers should simply stop providing health insurance at all.

People should be allowed to band together and get insurance at group rates. Do you have any idea how many people stay in dead-end jobs or jobs they hate just because of the health insurance? If they had their own individual policy, they could go where they want, when they want, for employment.

Your health insurance should be just like your car insurance, homeowner's insurance, and life insurance. It should be your own individual policy. We need to get employers completely out of the health insurance equation.

Posted by crosspatch 2010-03-29 00:51|| 2010-03-29 00:51|| Front Page Top

#6 Weneed to get employers completely out of the health insurance equation.

I agree totally. McCain's approach was only a half-step toward this end. The rest of the deal has to be to eliminate profit from health insurance. The for-profit insurers add nothing: they don't improve price transparency and thus enable informed consumer choice, they don't reduce bureaucracy and red tape, they don't improve medical efficiency or better medical decision-making. They are simply arbitraging the actuarial tables. They're screwing us.

That the GOP refused to stand up against these parasites is to their shame, and not in any way some kind of badge of heroic defense of "liberty" or the free market. These parasites have destroyed the essence of a free market, which is consumer choice based on price transparency.

If you're upset about Barry's Botchjob, don't leave the GOP off the hook. They ignored this firebell in the night for decades, and only now are beginning to get serious about ending the national scandal that is denial of benefits for "pre-existing conditions." They deserve Barry. They created him.

Posted by lex 2010-03-29 01:01|| 2010-03-29 01:01|| Front Page Top

#7 Youdo realize that health insurers get only 4% of overall healthcare spending, right?

Nice try, but no go. It's the idiotic reimbursement SYSTEM created by the insurers that forces so much unnecessary cost on the docs. Start with the need for FT billing and "business office" warriors sent out daily to do battle over reimbursement with the insurers' back-office shock troops. Then look at the underlying reasons for unnecessary procedures-- not just tort madness but also (surprise, surprise) the idiotic reimbursement system that was created by... the insurance companies!

You do realize, don't you, that Cigna and the other major parasites were popping champagne at news of the passage of this botchjob? And that Government Sachs has a strong buy recommendation now for health insurance stocks?

Free market, my a$$. There's no consumer choice to speak of in the US private insurance market. No price transparency, no transparency about benefits, and little real option for the ultimate consumer to shop around.

The worst thing about this stupid pi$$fest is how American voters are lining up behind either the Sharks or the Jets. BOTH parties have botched this system. Neither party has a solution that will both contain costs and stop punishing ordinary Americans who, through utterly no fault of their own, fall seriously ill. Fu$$ both the Obama-morons and the Tea Party fools.

Posted by lex 2010-03-29 01:12|| 2010-03-29 01:12|| Front Page Top

#8 So, tell us Lex...now that you've made the insurance companies the evil villains...what's your plan? Do you think the federal government would be more cost efficient? Keep in mind that insurance company profits are less than .05% of what this country spends on health care annually.

Do you think that neither Medicare or the VA deny coverage for a lot of procedures and care? Do you seriously think that more than 150 new government bureacracies (and that's just a start) with their attendant bloated high salaries would work better? Just remember that they will have no rules to follow and no insurance commissioner to answer to. Audits? Forgedaboutit...all the employees will be unionized.

The process is not perfect and reforms need to be made, but be careful what you wish for because it may (will) be a lot worse. Only a Socialist tool would not see the pitfalls of single-payer government-run system. I mean, c'mon...it's worked so well in other countries.

Posted by Gomez Threter7450 2010-03-29 02:08|| 2010-03-29 02:08|| Front Page Top

#9 Stop denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, period. Pay for it by expanding the risk pool to include, yes, healthy young people and by eliminating the idiotic arms race between dueling business offices, of payers vs providers that imposes far more costs on the system than are indicated by your very limited metric of "insurance company profits." It's this stupid feature more than any other that makes our pseudo-free market, non-system far more INEFFICIENT than those of Sweden or Switzerland or France-- all of which deliver excellent medical care at a fraction of the per-GDP cost of ours.

Me, I'm with Gary Becker. Make health care spending tax deductible up to maybe 10k per year for a family of four, and allow purchasing nationally.

Gary Becker is a founder, along with his friend and teacher the late Milton Friedman, of the Chicago school of economics. More than four decades after winning the John Bates Clark Medal and almost two after winning the Nobel Prize, the 79-year-old occupies an unusual position for a man who has spent his entire professional life in the intensely competitive field of economics: He has nothing left to prove....

I begin with the obvious question. "The health-care legislation? It's a bad bill," Mr. Becker replies. "Health care in the United States is pretty good, but it does have a number of weaknesses. This bill doesn't address them. It adds taxation and regulation. It's going to increase health costsnot contain them."

Drafting a good bill would have been easy, he continues. Health savings accounts could have been expanded. Consumers could have been permitted to purchase insurance across state lines, which would have increased competition among insurers. The tax deductibility of health-care spending could have been extended from employers to individuals, giving the same tax treatment to all consumers. And incentives could have been put in place to prompt consumers to pay a larger portion of their health-care costs out of their own pockets.

"Here in the United States," Mr. Becker says, "we spend about 17% of our GDP on health care, but out-of-pocket expenses make up only about 12% of total health-care spending. In Switzerland, where they spend only 11% of GDP on health care, their out-of-pocket expenses equal about 31% of total spending. The difference between 12% and 31% is huge. Once people begin spending substantial sums from their own pockets, they become willing to shop around. Ordinary market incentives begin to operate. A good bill would have encouraged that."

Posted by lex 2010-03-29 02:26|| 2010-03-29 02:26|| Front Page Top

#10 "You do realize that health insurers get only 4% of overall healthcare spending, right?"

"Keep in mind that insurance company profits are less than .05% of what this country spends on health care annually."

Which insurance company do you work for, troll?

Source for these statistics?

You know that the insurance industry has too much money when they can afford to have people monitoring even blogs like this.

According to HHS statistics in 2005 (most recent I've seen) doctors fees account for roughly 18% of the total cost of health care. Total amount kept by the insurance industry out of the premiums for services they covered they covered for that year? 22%. Most of the rest went for hospital corporations (NOT doctors) long term care (like nurses, physical therapy, elder care) and lab tests (you at least got that part right).

Imagine a bank which charged 20% interest for a mortgage like in the Carter days merely for moving around a few papers and moving your money from your hand to the mortage holders and you have a pretty good idea of how health insurance works.

That .5% number is distilled oil of BS. Anyone who has ever owned a business knows the accounting calisthenics that produce a number like that. How many hundreds of thousands of employees in the insurance industry are getting healthy salaries? How many buildings and other items of real estate are purchased using corporate money to make the "profits" look smaller for the IRS and local taxing authorities?

The truth is that while the "profit" your industry shows the IRS is small, the overall size and more imnportantly COST of your industry is gigantic. Cigna and Metlife may not show a "profit" as defined by corporate tax law, but they are enormous, well funded bureaucracies, all bankrolled by premiums that smaller companies and individuals thought would be going for actual health services but instead are being shunted into salaries of paper shufflers and their managers and "infrastructure" in the guise of buildings and real estate and IT equipment.

I've owned a small business for 23 years and I've had the chance to observe first-hand how the health care system works, not only as a patient but as a purchaser of health insurance. There are excesses by doctors but the insurance industry is way, WAY more to blame. They have literally no incentive to be efficient in their current form because inefficiency increases their gross pay, and that's just how it is.

Posted by no mo uro 2010-03-29 06:57|| 2010-03-29 06:57|| Front Page Top

#11 For the life of me I cannot understand why anyone calling himself conservative would want to defend the current system. It does not empower consumers or small businesses. It stifles new business creation. It hurts competitiveness. It burdens families with children.

US private insurers are objectively anti-business, anti-family, and pro-ObamaCare. Why are their absurd privileges defended by people who champion families, business, and individual choice?

Posted by lex 2010-03-29 10:29|| 2010-03-29 10:29|| Front Page Top

#12 Hey lex. Why don't you tell us what you really feel! LOL. You do have a lot of good points. I don't like the current system. I don't like what Obama has shoved down our throats. I get emails from the FBI and nearly every one of them have cases where various people are prosecuted for health care fraud; individuals, clinics, and doctors alike. That's got to cost a lot of money. Obama completely ignored tort reform in an effort to throw a sop to the trial lawyers. The unions also got sweetheart deals as did some of the states. He didn't stop health care corruption; he institutionalized it. I know a doctor who practices in a group. The doctor was advised to prescribe more diagnostic and imaging procedures because not enough were being ordered. These are apparently revenue/profit generating.

The Kansas-Nebaska Act of 1854 redux? WTF. It was a prelude to the Civil War. I don't see that health care legislation is going to lead to another civil war. The writer is stretching.

Posted by JohnQC 2010-03-29 10:51|| 2010-03-29 10:51|| Front Page Top

#13 lex, I don't think anyone likes the current system all that much. But since most people think it is a competition between the devil you know (current system) and the monstrous, putrid sac of corrosive pus that just got passed....most people will go for the former, even with all its flaws.

Posted by Cornsilk Blondie 2010-03-29 11:02|| 2010-03-29 11:02|| Front Page Top

#14 Well said Blondie. No sense wailing away at the darkness. We've already identified the culprits. Now if we can only survive until November.

Posted by Besoeker 2010-03-29 11:06|| 2010-03-29 11:06|| Front Page Top

#15 'IF' the government had demonstrated by fact and deed an effective and efficient Indian Health Care system, Veterans Administration, and Military Health Care [Walter Reed Scandal(c) wasn't that long ago] would there be the level of resistance we witness now? Unable and unwilling to clean their own house [and truthfully show the real costs] the government is not in any position to be an viable alternative.

Posted by Procopius2k 2010-03-29 11:22|| 2010-03-29 11:22|| Front Page Top

#16 Here's a suggestion to the GOP leadership: quit bitching and propose a better system. Talk up real and thorough reform, root and branch. The status quo is not acceptable. It's bankrupting many millions of normal, financially responsible families and will bankrupt the nation soon enough.

Posted by lex 2010-03-29 11:37|| 2010-03-29 11:37|| Front Page Top

#17 Source for these statistics?

Mitch McConnell made the statement on the floor of the House and Politifact backed him up...100% on the Truth-O-Meter.....Troll.

I've never worked for an insurance company, but neither have I been the CEO of a hospital, earning half a million annually, either. Why don't we slam them as well? Hell, why don't we slam any private company (including those we work for) for daring to want to make a profit?? Troll.

If you want to paint with the 'evil' brush, why not take on the trial lawyers? Even the Democrats have admitted that they're the ones preventing any semblance of tort reform in this country. Zero is afraid of them.

And guess what? France has tort reform, which is part of why they can keep costs lower (their docs are also paid much less there). But, again, careful what you wish for. Close examination reveals they are inching slowly back to the private system and anyone with a brain can figure out why.

An overwhelming 87% of this country is perfectly satisfied, not only with their health care plans, but with the health care they receive (can you say that about those foreign countries you all seem to so admire?). But, by all means, let's get rid of private industry, hand it over to the government (they do everything so well), so we can be just like them.

We've always had catastrophic policies for health care. We pay low premiums and pay for routine costs from our HSA (evil tax break!!) We always laugh when we get a statement showing what the doctors/labs have charged and the fraction the insurance company decides to pay. They know the demographics of our area and we get the best care at the most affordable prices. No complaints so far and it's been years.

We own two homes here in South Texas. One on the mainland and one on the Gulf Coast. Of course, we couldn't afford to own beach property without some kind of risk management, so here in Texas our beach home property goes into a risk pool, in which all insurance companies are more or less forced to participate. It keeps premiums affordable by spreading the risk. We lost a good portion of it to Ike, but rebuilt within a year with no hassles, no stress, no out-of-pocket expenses. Evil insurance company finally had to pay up after 20 years! Let's eliminate them and hand all insurance over to the Government because that will surely be a pleasant experience!

In the meantime, those of us that have practiced personal responsibility and are working to enjoy a rewarding retirement, can now subsidize those 26-year old 'children' and families earning $88K, because God forbid they should have to pay their own insurance. Throw in paying their mortgages as well, and HELL yeah, there will be a revolt! Bring it!!!

Posted by Gomez Threter7450 2010-03-29 12:17|| 2010-03-29 12:17|| Front Page Top

#18 Point of information: Several of the larger companies I have worked for were self-insured, but did use insurance companies to the processing.

I wonder how that sort of thing plays into the costs/percentages numbers?

Posted by Bobby 2010-03-29 12:22|| 2010-03-29 12:22|| Front Page Top

#19 According to HHS statistics in 2005 (most recent I've seen) doctors fees account for roughly 18% of the total cost of health care. Have a link for this? I've been looking for one for years. Also a link for the insurance companies' take of the total cost of health care.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-03-29 12:30|| 2010-03-29 12:30|| Front Page Top

#20 What is bankrupting millions of people is the lack of jobs.

I just went through losing my cobra and I will say it has been an interesting experience getting a new policy. I am 63 so I need some catastrophic coverage for two years. I got bids from five differnt health insurance providers and to my suprise they were all within $100 of each other. I question if there is competition in this industry.

Posted by bman 2010-03-29 12:37|| 2010-03-29 12:37|| Front Page Top

#21 2008

Posted by Beavis 2010-03-29 12:57|| 2010-03-29 12:57|| Front Page Top

#22 You know, if you have a pre-existing condition, then it is no longer insurance, it's getting someone else to pay for your treatment of your condition. I'm all for preventing insurers from not insuring those people and preventing them from being dropped. But the fact is they DO and WILL cost more and therefore should shoulder a higher percentage of the burden. Anyone who thinks the current system is good isn't paying attention, but anyone who thinks what just passed is reform is stupid. It will increase costs and it will cause primary care shortages.

Posted by AllahHateMe 2010-03-29 13:08|| 2010-03-29 13:08|| Front Page Top

#23 Point of information: Several of the larger companies I have worked for were self-insured, but did use insurance companies to the processing.

I wonder how that sort of thing plays into the costs/percentages numbers?

Mr. Wife's company does the same. Any company that has a payroll large enough to closely resemble the general population does the same -- the insurance company charges a small fee for doing the paperwork, a large enough cost savings that the practice spread rapidly once the idea was publicized.

Nonetheless, my doctor's office spent in total about a month of man-hours arguing with them to continue covering my key medication, and in the end lost. It's an orphan condition, the medication costs over $900/month, and we weren't willing to publicly fight Mr. Wife's employer to make it happen.

lex, insurance is a bet against a catastrophic occurrence. For the young and healthy, the odds are low catastrophe would occur, so their costs of health insurance is low. For the older and unhealthy, the odds are high, and it's only fair that the insurance cost is high as well. If you don't like the bet, keep your money in your pocket against the costs that will surely come, because it certainly isn't fair to force the young kids just starting out to pay for you -- unless you chose the gold-plated insurance policy that you didn't need back when you got your first job.
Likewise, life insurance is cheap when you're young, but very expensive when you're older than 65 and much more likely to die in the near future. It's not about fair or unfair, but the iron-clad laws of probability.

As for France, they are starting to cut back on what they cover, closing hospitals, and talking about raising premiums and co-pays, because the costs have gotten so high they're threatening the fiscal solvency of the government. It's not as bad as Britain, but rapidly heading in that direction. You damage your argument by raising a point that leads to the opposite conclusion.

Posted by trailing wife 2010-03-29 13:27|| 2010-03-29 13:27|| Front Page Top

#24 Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF). If you don't like your provider, you can still fire them and get another. Anyone tried to fire FICA lately?

Posted by Besoeker 2010-03-29 13:35|| 2010-03-29 13:35|| Front Page Top

#25 Isn't the question not about health care but about immortality? Do we as a general population today have better health care than 1950, 1970, 1990? Or did we have ready access to better procedures, protocols, and pharmaceuticals back then? Does anyone really want to trade today for back then? Are we just not a bunch of little Pharaohs looking to consume the GDP for a ever lasting life for ourselves and our loved ones?

Posted by Procopius2k 2010-03-29 13:54|| 2010-03-29 13:54|| Front Page Top

#26 For the life of me I cannot understand why anyone calling himself conservative would want to defend the current system.

True. What is badly needed is a complete deregulation of the entire medical sector to include, of course, the insurance companies.

Posted by AzCat 2010-03-29 13:56|| 2010-03-29 13:56|| Front Page Top

#27 AH #19

I don't have an exact link but I can get you started here:

http://www.hhs.gov/

Please do NOT be drinking anything when you open this or the mugs of Pelosi, Obama, and Biden will cause you to spray your monitor, and that's before even reading the story on page 1.

To everyone else, I never advocated Obamacare. Government has the anti-Midas touch, everything it lays its hands on turns to excrement. But that doesn't mean I can't point out the problems with the current system. And the idea that health care is too expensive because doctors are overcharging and making too much money has no basis in reality. However, promoting that notion does help people who have an irrational hatred of the medical profession feel good. And it does do marvelously in terms of distracting peoples' attention from the bulk of problems we have in health care which are, in, truth, related to the purposeful inefficiency of the insurance system done to increase the equity they can accumulate.

If everyone had high (5-10 grand) deductible plans, market forces would drive down the cost of health care. (See Besoeker's comment about BLUF.) Most of people's needs fall below that in any given year. They could spend (or not) that money as they see fit instead of having it go through the insurance industry's conduit, where one fifth of it stays instead of going for actual treatment. Because the bulk of health care spending would be done without the insurance industry siphoning off one fifth of everything people spend in premiums, you not only get the market savings, but also 20% of the first 5 or ten grand's worth of health care on everybody.

Of course, since this would drastically reduce the gross sales of the insurance industry, they've lobbied mightily to prevent it from happening.

Tort reform? Of course, but again, the mighty trial lawyers' lobby will never allow this cash cow to be euthed while a Dem is in the White House.

Does the inability to deal with mortality brought on by the increasing irreligiosity of our time play into all this, as P2K says? Of course, but I don't know how to fight that on the short term. If you have the attitude that you will spend literally every penny of everyone else's money to stay alive, bad things will happen.

Posted by no mo uro 2010-03-29 14:22|| 2010-03-29 14:22|| Front Page Top

#28 I think most thinking people would be in favor of health care reform. Lord knows the sytem needs it. The abomination the donks passed was passed with no bipartisan support. Some donks were opposed to the bill. Basically, the donks said shut up and take this bill, we know what is best for all of you. The arrogance of the process was astounding. There were a lot of fixes that could have been made without all the payoffs (bribes) for votes, arm-twisting, blatant arrogance and insults, that would not have involved turning the entire system on its head and shaking it by its toes. Fix what is broke and go on--gradual fixes are generally more acceptable to people than remaking an entire industry and system.

Posted by JohnQC 2010-03-29 14:28|| 2010-03-29 14:28|| Front Page Top

#29 A trunk's root and branch proposal is here. They didn't make it up yesterday. Why don't you ask the MSM why you've never heard about it?

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2010-03-29 14:31|| 2010-03-29 14:31|| Front Page Top

#30 I agree, whoever wrote this is 'way overstating his case, but still ... lex, are you seriously arguing that some sort of single payer system with compulsory membership will do a better job than leaving matters to free economic transactions between consenting adults?

Well, I mean, look at how much more efficient the post office is compared to FedEx and UPS. And how many Americans go north into Canada to take advantage of their superior health care system. And how much better a Lada built in the USSR was compared to a Honda built in Marysville, Ohio.
[/sarc]

Posted by Mike 2010-03-29 16:15|| 2010-03-29 16:15|| Front Page Top

#31 Lex are you truly stupid or are you just working real hard at it?

The GOP has had a plan out there for a long time. A simple Google search would have shown you what the MSM has been trying to ignore and bury for a couple of years.

Try educating yourself before you start braying.

Posted by Beldar Threreling9726 2010-03-29 16:37|| 2010-03-29 16:37|| Front Page Top

#32 Lex is not stupid. Just frustrated like the rest of us. Maybe lex has had a bad personal experience with the current system. There many such stories. It is stacked against us--the rates keep going up, my retirement keeps going down.

There are many suggestions to make the health care system better. The donks weren't buying any of that and now they own the new health care system. They carefully didn't craft the legislation to really kick in until 2014--after the 2012 election--probably no happenstance. The taxes to pay for it will begin immediately. That can work against them in 2010.

Posted by JohnQC 2010-03-29 18:38|| 2010-03-29 18:38|| Front Page Top

#33 And 2012.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2010-03-29 18:59|| 2010-03-29 18:59|| Front Page Top

#34 "A pox on both your f***ing houses"

That's my line

/m/

Posted by Mercutio 2010-03-29 19:05|| 2010-03-29 19:05|| Front Page Top

#35 I'd sooner be trapped in a room with a spider monkey wielding a chainsaw than have the dipstick in the oval office dictating my health care. My survival rate with a spider monkey is probably equal to that if I needed catastrophic medical under Obamacare and got left on a stretcher in the hallway somewhere for too long.

Posted by GirlThursday 2010-03-29 19:11|| 2010-03-29 19:11|| Front Page Top

#36 Another nice try from Beldar. Ryan's plan is OK as far as it goes, but it took the GOP 8 years to even come up with a decent plan, and of course $5700 is chump change for most of the population, so few families would adopt it while there's a serious risk that many employers would dump it.

Posted by lex 2010-03-29 20:26|| 2010-03-29 20:26|| Front Page Top

#37 Hate to point out the obvious, but HEALTH CARE IS NOT LISTED UNDER THE ENUMERATED FEDERAL POWERS.

Posted by Barbara Skolaut 2010-03-29 20:48|| 2010-03-29 20:48|| Front Page Top

#38 Barbara, obviously you haven't read the new, improved Constitution that the Democrats are using.

Posted by Rambler in Virginia 2010-03-29 21:28|| 2010-03-29 21:28|| Front Page Top

#39 Oh, I've read it all right, Rambler.

It says we should sit down and shut up; the DemoncRats are in power now, and they'll do whatever they have to to make sure it stays that way. >:-(

Posted by Barbara Skolaut 2010-03-29 21:55|| 2010-03-29 21:55|| Front Page Top

#40 A nice demonstration of the economic illiteracy that is becoming, bar none, THE greatest burden on our society. "Arbitraging" the actuarial risk, einstein, is exactly what insurance does, and contrary to your idiotic, absurd allegation, insurance provides tremendous economic benefit, when it's actual insurance. Your level of illiteracy, like my brother's, probably would prevent you from realizing that the profit margins of publicly-held insurance companies - like all companies - tells the tale. Their margins are modest and declining - nothing special for their sector. GS's stock picks are about as valuable as their mortgage derivative record.

Please show me the millions of bankrupted families - would they be some of the ~~40 million~~ ~~30 million~~ ~~20 million~~ ~~10 million~~ - oh hell, "lots and lots, really!" of families desperately in need of the titanic mess just disgracefully passed and signed by the quota hire? Your conscience bothering you? Fine. Work up a voucher program for the means-tested needy, while pushing through de-regulation to get real competition to clean up the waste imposed by bureaucracy- and managed-distorted-regulated competition.

Move to Sweden or France if your ignorance of their realities is so pristine, as it appears to be. No loss for us.

Health is not a public good, therefore non-profit is not an appropriate approach. Yes, it is exactly that simple. But as I said above, fundamental economic illiteracy - in this case teamed with arrogance and a blind compulsion to run other peoples' lives - will remain with us, even if the (slightly) b-slapped electorate throws on the brakes in November.

Posted by Verlaine 2010-03-29 23:53|| 2010-03-29 23:53|| Front Page Top

#41 I say it again: I'd sooner be trapped in a room with a spider monkey wielding a chainsaw than have the dipstick in the oval office dictating my health care.

Posted by GirlThursday 2010-03-29 23:59|| 2010-03-29 23:59|| Front Page Top

23:59 GirlThursday
23:57 trailing wife
23:53 Verlaine
22:26 abu do you love
22:18 Old Patriot
22:13 DarthVader
22:09 DMFD
22:03 DMFD
21:55 Barbara Skolaut
21:51 tipper
21:45 Redneck Jim
21:37 Asymmetrical Triangulation
21:32 ryuge
21:29 notascrename
21:28 Rambler in Virginia
21:25 KBK
21:21 Redneck Jim
21:17 Dave D.
20:59 Pappy
20:59 Frank G
20:59 gorb
20:48 crosspatch
20:48 Barbara Skolaut
20:47 john frum