Month: September 2009

Over the weekend, I happened to hear a piece on NPR about young adults without health insurance. Why didn’t they have coverage? Because they couldn’t afford it. One young lady explained that it was a simple choice between paying for insurance or paying the rent. One Democratic Senator they interviewed agreed that this was a problem, and the answer was the individual mandate, or as I prefer to call it mandatory insurance. How exactly forcing people to buy something they can’t afford solves anything, I don’t know.

And that’s where the public option comes in. The insurance companies have proven that given the chance, they will raise prices and deny coverage whenever possible, or offer “affordable” plans so spartan that they don’t actually cover anything. A public option that anybody can buy into keeps the insurance companies honest, because We The People can say “enough of enriching my **** insurance company!”

We The People understand this. Alas, our Senators do not. They are so beholden to special interests that they have killed the public option, or threatened to load it up with nonsense and requirements and triggers and abortion bans and only lobbyists know what else. Our healthcare debate has become so tortured that other world leaders are asking our President what the heck is going on.

If they pass nothing more than mandatory insurance and a few cosmetic reforms, Howard Dean correctly predicts a backlash.

Not everyone agrees that the public option is dead, but it sure looks to be in critical condition.

If this is what we are left with, let’s just scrap it all. Let’s put together 5 pages of legislation that does the most critical things we need out of health insurance reform:

1. Outlaw pre-existing conditions in all forms and for every purpose including pricing, coverage, and claims.
2. Regulate rate increases, perhaps indexed to inflation (CPI increase + 5%?).
3. Put doctors, not insurance clerks, in charge of making medical decisions.
4. Change the tax code so that everybody can deduct health insurance premiums even if they don’t itemize and even if they aren’t self-employed.

I think everybody except insurance companies and their purchased members of Congress can agree that these things are essential. If we can’t agree on anything else, let’s not make things worse.

I’m going to start by pointing out that not only are real wages down to levels not seen since 1997, not only is the poverty rate up to a level not seen since 1997, health coverage is down. One in every 20 people who had coverage from their employers last year don’t have it anymore. The only coverage gains were for government insurance programs such as Medicare (hrm, pesky socialism!) Moreover, income hasn’t kept up with reality for the last 40 years. No wonder things seem tight!

So despite the fact that We the People are  being squeezed, we get “reforms” that protect the profits of insurance companies, and helpful advice to not need coverage. Nothing is being done to make sure that “coverage” actually “covers” us. Nobody is offering to let Joe and Jane Average buy into government coverage programs that are actually known to work (and work pretty well for the most part).

Open Left is a little behind me on this one: the Democratic Party and its candidates don’t get a dime from me until they start to deliver on some of their promises. In the meantime, every time the Party calls me, I will be sending money to organizations that actually campaign for my interests. Don’t tell me the party has to be “centrist” to get “bipartisan support,” because the majority of people support a very progressive agenda by their standards, and bipartisanship once again means “do it the Republicans’ way.” Don’t tell me to be reasonable, because there is no reason we can’t do this right. And finally, don’t tell me that we can’t get it done in Congress, because they have majorities in both houses.

The party ran on hope and change. It’s time to deliver

In closing: VW’s 240 MPG car will go into production; wouldn’t it be nice if employers followed the law?; a follow-up on different ways to measure unemployment; Levi’s got it together; heart attack rates fall 17% after public smoking bans; the paradox of thrift; send the crooks to prison; scumbag banks; safety tips; and finally, Happy Equinox.

Pretty much everybody has been focused on the Baucus Plan, announced this morning. Despite the fact that a public option is supported by the majority of the public and doctors, it has no public option. Instead, it has a watered down co-op provision. The CBO says that a public option would reduce premiums for everybody — and the average family health insurance policy now costs $13,375 annually! That’s more than double what it was in 2000 — the co-ops are only available to employees if the plan at work is not “affordable” (meaning 10-13% of income depending how you calculate it). No word on whether the co-ops are available to the self-employed. And for all that it has been pitched as something that can get bi-partisan support, not a single Republican supports it. It’s just another mandatory insurance plan with bells, whistles, and gifts to insurance companies.

So why exactly is anybody willing to compromise and support this?

If we can’t have real health insurance reform, let’s just get the few things everybody can agree needs to happen: make rescission illegal; make “pre-existing conditions” a thing of the past. I bet they could get that written up into a 3 page bill tomorrow and pass it by the weekend if they wanted. In an ideal world, give states the right to regulate rate increases (or just cap them at the rate of inflation) and let everybody deduct health insurance on their taxes. But please, let’s stop pretending that the crock of **** being stirred on Capitol Hill is good for any of us regular people.

In closing: One drug bust every 18 seconds, and that’s a decrease; former CNBC anchor complains that Americans are held hostage by Wall Street; on independent contractors, the DOL, and the IRS; Americans agree on how to fix Social Security (but will Congress do what needs to be done?); humans still evolving; Does Kanye have Asperger’s Syndrome?; and hiking safety tips.