Yes, the situation will clearly be worse if any of the things being talked about pass.
There is one ultra right wing combination that even Obama is trying to avoid, a mandate and no public option. If this happens, it will be a full scale fascist health policy if there ever was one.
Have any governments ever even contemplated trying to force people to pay for a private product, and a very overpriced one at that? I doubt any state in the history of the world has ever even talked about something this looney. I say "try to force," because of course in real life you can not actually force someone to pay for something that they do not have the money to pay for, or that they think is a very bad deal.
As for those who do have some money, how exactly will the US Government force someone to pay, will the US Government be garnishing wages and seizing bank accounts for Blue Cross?
Anyone who is at risk of running out of money to pay for housing, food, and other things that are even more basic necessities than health care, who voluntarily pays for the grossly overpriced private health insurance, is a fool. Both now and regardless of what changes. In this economy, probably at least 100,000,000 people are at such risk.
[The above is in response to this article.]
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Insanity as Policy
As the article states, mandates have always failed.
And there could not possibly be a worse time than right now to start one. Generally speaking, the people without health insurance are under more financial pressure right now than anytime in decades, so millions and millions are going to hide out and if necessary pay penalties rather than buy the way overpriced insurance. The poor are poorer than ever.
Meanwhile, the US Government is racking up massive deficits due primarily to funding war, existing health care, and ransom payments to bankers and the like. (The bankers have been holding the economy hostage, in case you forgot.) The wealthy are all too used to ultra low taxes. So just how will the US Government foot the bill to pay for the tens of millions who can not reasonably pay for health insurance?
The current "those who get sick go to the emergency department and then file bankruptcy" system, as insane as it is, is far cheaper than actually, truly insuring everyone at present prices would be.
This twisted scheme to delay the ultimately necessary single payer system seems to be nothing more than something from Obama Fantasy Land, quite honestly. I wouldn't be surprised if nothing at all passes. But nor would I be surprised if it does pass, because insanity as policy has become more and more common in recent years.
And there could not possibly be a worse time than right now to start one. Generally speaking, the people without health insurance are under more financial pressure right now than anytime in decades, so millions and millions are going to hide out and if necessary pay penalties rather than buy the way overpriced insurance. The poor are poorer than ever.
Meanwhile, the US Government is racking up massive deficits due primarily to funding war, existing health care, and ransom payments to bankers and the like. (The bankers have been holding the economy hostage, in case you forgot.) The wealthy are all too used to ultra low taxes. So just how will the US Government foot the bill to pay for the tens of millions who can not reasonably pay for health insurance?
The current "those who get sick go to the emergency department and then file bankruptcy" system, as insane as it is, is far cheaper than actually, truly insuring everyone at present prices would be.
This twisted scheme to delay the ultimately necessary single payer system seems to be nothing more than something from Obama Fantasy Land, quite honestly. I wouldn't be surprised if nothing at all passes. But nor would I be surprised if it does pass, because insanity as policy has become more and more common in recent years.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
The US Health Care System and the US Economy: Both are Sick and Destined to get Sicker
This article nails it.
The main point Mr. Lindorff makes is that the US health system becomes less functional and more destructive to physical health and economic health every year, and anything that Obama is talking about will not only not change that, but may very well increase the rate of disintegration.
I would add that it obviously should not be forgotten that the US health care system is so expensive and so bad that it is also helping to destroy the economy as a whole. Ironically, this process is very much like how a tumor eventually destroys the whole body.
The only way to single payer that I see is simply to do nothing until the system collapses even more so than now, at which time single payer will be the only possible option, which of course it is in the long term.
Lindorff thinks that if the "public option" becomes real along with a mandate, that the system will collapse at the same rate or more quickly. So although Lindorff thinks that the reform would be nothing other than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, I personally fear that this "reform" would delay the collapse of the system by, I don't know exactly, maybe 25 years. (Maybe I'm too much a pessimist!)
Predicting the timing of collapses is difficult, and I do not know, even to the nearest decade, when the system, as it is now, will be considered collapsed completely, just as I was unable to chronologically accurately predict the timing of the economics collapse, although I did get it right to the nearest 30-40 years!
In the meantime, should Obama's reform pass, there would be a continuation of untold health and economics miseries for everyone other than, of course, the wealthy. Due to the "mandate," the misery would spread to those who have tried to opt out of the disaster of a system.
Maybe, possibly, a full scale public option would have really helped 30-40 years ago when costs were still only high instead of off the deep end. But Obama is a generation too late. Today, health care goods and services costs are far too high for anything like this to work substantially. Moreover, the insurance company lobbyists will prevent a full scale public option from coming into existence.
So it would be better that nothing be implemented at all until the system is so collapsed that everyone except for the huge insurance companies has come to their senses and is ready to go with single payer.
A COUNTERPOINT
I don't think you really disagree.
I said I didn't know when the current system will be considered collapsed by a big majority. 25 years is a very rough estimate of the additional years before the system is considered collapsed (above the baseline of current policy) if the public option and the mandate are enacted, not a prediction for how long the realization of collapse takes if they are not enacted.
And I think you don't understand what a collapse means here. And this gives me a chance to add something, the one thing I didn't go back and add in before...
Whether the system is considered collapsed in 10 years or 25 years or 40 years is not ultimately relevant; ultimately, there will either be single payer or there will be, like some countries in the hardcore 3rd World, essentially no system at all except for the wealthy. The fact that there is not one single reputable country which doesn't think single payer is necessary is something to keep in mind here: that many countries can not be wrong.
The number of uninsured in the US is roughly 50 million right now; estimates of the number of seriously underinsured range up to another 50 million. The entire population is 306 million. Now here is one of my main points restated: regardless of exactly how many years it takes until the great majority (most everyone other than the insurance companies and many die hard right wingers) agree that single payer is necessary, it is clear that the system is in an advanced state of collapse right now as we speak. Over about 40 years of extreme inflation, and especially now in this current economic debacle, costs have become a truly crushing burden.
Therefore, the number of uninsured and the number of underinsured is poised to rise at a very rapid rate over the next 5, 10, and 20 years. The rate of uninsured is undoubtably spiking as we speak. There could very easily, for example, easily be 70-75 million uninsured by about 2020. There could easily be 100 million uninsured by about 2030. And the percentage of the economy taken over by health care, already extremely high, is poised to go much higher in the years just ahead.
So this is the kind of collapse that even some working for insurance companies realize is coming down the pike. That's why some of the insurance company lobbyists are not shutting the door completely on this "reform".
But when I say collapse, I mean collapse; no economy can operate with 25% of the income going to the health care industry and with about 30% of all adults with no clear means of obtaining health care. Ultimately, the health care industry is not important enough to an economy to sustain that percentage. As for the percent uninsured, once it exceeds about 25% of the population, no one will be able to pretend anymore that the US is not a third world country. So at that point, either single payer will come into being or everyone with a brain will be clear as to what kind of country this really has become due to right wingers.
So in a broad historical sense, there really isn't all that many years to wait before single payer is the only real option.
However, if the "public option" and the ultra regressive tax (the "mandate") are enacted, this is the thing that could delay the inevitable for, as I said, maybe roughly 25 years. Because now the number of uninsured, at least on paper, would not be going up, but down! But who knows how inferior the "public option" coverage might be, and the economic life span of the public option, as noted by Lindorff, would be limited.
But although the public option would not be a real solution (especially since it would not be a real public option due to the lobbyists) it would be a feel good measure in the short term. Millions opted out of this disaster of a system would have a choice they don't have any choice now. A limited choice is better than no choice at all.
The cost problem, from an economics perspective, is bigger now than the health care distribution problem. And again, with the public option and the mandate, there would be very little or no real cost control due to patient dumping, due to refusal of the lobbyists to allow a single government agency to negotiate costs, due to refusal under this scheme of practitioners to give up lavish salaries, and perhaps for other reasons.
As for your main point, I disagree that the US will become a hardcore third world country with absolutely no response from the population or the elected politicians. There is a big difference between a country with third world tendencies, and a full scale third world country. I think that single payer will be one thing that is finally enacted so that the US will avoid reaching the kind of absolute rock bottom that you envision.
A COUNTERPOINT
Wow, we're on the same side but you think I'm living in a fantasy world. Careful there. Me thinks you doth protest too much, laugh out loud.
You somehow extrapolated incorrectly several times and stated my opinions incorrectly. For example, I don't think the government cares much about low or moderate income people at all. That is ridiculous to me. I can't see how you could think that I do think that from my essays. I mean, I have a hunch that the average person thinks I'm off the deep end about the current relative uselessness of the government, laugh out loud.
But seriously, as bad as things are, we have not hit rock bottom yet, nor will we in my lifetime. There is no currency in the World that can replace the dollar as main reserve currency for (here we go again with the waiting years) at least 25 years.
Also, some of the things you describe seem worse than even rock bottom, laugh out loud.
Before you jump off the bridge, consider, for example, that the current economics "collapse" is arguably not a true collapse yet. The number of non-farm jobs is still in excess of 130 million, having peaked at a little over 137 million in 2007. Almost 43% of the population (the gross population, which includes children and elderly) still has a job, the same percentage as in 1993, and far higher than the 29-30% which was the case from 1945 to about 1963. The peak percentage employed was just about 47.5% in 1999.
Real wages may be declining, but the rate of decline is painfully slow for anyone wanting a completely new system within the next quarter century.
Are you sure it's just that you wish the system would collapse faster than it actually is? I wouldn't blame you for that, because something much better almost always follows a collapsed system.
I inadvertantly realized during this discussion that the single payer thing will be the primary "Battle of the Bulge" for the US as to whether it becomes a true Third World country or not. There will be a time, 20-75 years in the future, when it is one or the other: either single payer will be adopted or the US will be a true Third World country indefinitely. The public option and mandate postpones that day of reckoning but can not cancel it out completely.
The main point Mr. Lindorff makes is that the US health system becomes less functional and more destructive to physical health and economic health every year, and anything that Obama is talking about will not only not change that, but may very well increase the rate of disintegration.
I would add that it obviously should not be forgotten that the US health care system is so expensive and so bad that it is also helping to destroy the economy as a whole. Ironically, this process is very much like how a tumor eventually destroys the whole body.
The only way to single payer that I see is simply to do nothing until the system collapses even more so than now, at which time single payer will be the only possible option, which of course it is in the long term.
Lindorff thinks that if the "public option" becomes real along with a mandate, that the system will collapse at the same rate or more quickly. So although Lindorff thinks that the reform would be nothing other than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, I personally fear that this "reform" would delay the collapse of the system by, I don't know exactly, maybe 25 years. (Maybe I'm too much a pessimist!)
Predicting the timing of collapses is difficult, and I do not know, even to the nearest decade, when the system, as it is now, will be considered collapsed completely, just as I was unable to chronologically accurately predict the timing of the economics collapse, although I did get it right to the nearest 30-40 years!
In the meantime, should Obama's reform pass, there would be a continuation of untold health and economics miseries for everyone other than, of course, the wealthy. Due to the "mandate," the misery would spread to those who have tried to opt out of the disaster of a system.
Maybe, possibly, a full scale public option would have really helped 30-40 years ago when costs were still only high instead of off the deep end. But Obama is a generation too late. Today, health care goods and services costs are far too high for anything like this to work substantially. Moreover, the insurance company lobbyists will prevent a full scale public option from coming into existence.
So it would be better that nothing be implemented at all until the system is so collapsed that everyone except for the huge insurance companies has come to their senses and is ready to go with single payer.
A COUNTERPOINT
logarithmic June 16th, 2009 2:36 pm
Tremaine,
Totally disagree with your analysis, and the point of collapse is much sooner than 25 years. I've heard health experts say the system will implode in less than a decade.
Your analysis suggests that as things worsen, there will be more pressure brought to bear on our legislature to move left and provide healthcare for the general population. It fails to recognize that there are many who support the current system, that our Congress is at a once in a lifetime crossroads where the Democrats actually run both houses and the presidency, and that the powers that control the debate (the media, the health care industry, the AMA) will still be in power in the future and even more concerned with protecting their status and bottom line as the general population becomes poorer.
From a long term perspective, it is clear that since the Vietnam War and the Reagan error, the effects of government policy have been to strip the population of their financial wherewithal. Think about immigration, minimum wage, healthcare, anti-union bias, war spending - anything that would help the general worker has been attacked and disparaged.
We are seeing the Brazilianization of our economy (something I have said was happening even during Reagan's terms - when the industrial rust belt became a tragic reality). Over half of our workforce will be unemployed or destitute in the next two decades. The upper 1% represented by our Congress will only get stronger in the future. The time to act is now.
I don't think you really disagree.
I said I didn't know when the current system will be considered collapsed by a big majority. 25 years is a very rough estimate of the additional years before the system is considered collapsed (above the baseline of current policy) if the public option and the mandate are enacted, not a prediction for how long the realization of collapse takes if they are not enacted.
And I think you don't understand what a collapse means here. And this gives me a chance to add something, the one thing I didn't go back and add in before...
Whether the system is considered collapsed in 10 years or 25 years or 40 years is not ultimately relevant; ultimately, there will either be single payer or there will be, like some countries in the hardcore 3rd World, essentially no system at all except for the wealthy. The fact that there is not one single reputable country which doesn't think single payer is necessary is something to keep in mind here: that many countries can not be wrong.
The number of uninsured in the US is roughly 50 million right now; estimates of the number of seriously underinsured range up to another 50 million. The entire population is 306 million. Now here is one of my main points restated: regardless of exactly how many years it takes until the great majority (most everyone other than the insurance companies and many die hard right wingers) agree that single payer is necessary, it is clear that the system is in an advanced state of collapse right now as we speak. Over about 40 years of extreme inflation, and especially now in this current economic debacle, costs have become a truly crushing burden.
Therefore, the number of uninsured and the number of underinsured is poised to rise at a very rapid rate over the next 5, 10, and 20 years. The rate of uninsured is undoubtably spiking as we speak. There could very easily, for example, easily be 70-75 million uninsured by about 2020. There could easily be 100 million uninsured by about 2030. And the percentage of the economy taken over by health care, already extremely high, is poised to go much higher in the years just ahead.
So this is the kind of collapse that even some working for insurance companies realize is coming down the pike. That's why some of the insurance company lobbyists are not shutting the door completely on this "reform".
But when I say collapse, I mean collapse; no economy can operate with 25% of the income going to the health care industry and with about 30% of all adults with no clear means of obtaining health care. Ultimately, the health care industry is not important enough to an economy to sustain that percentage. As for the percent uninsured, once it exceeds about 25% of the population, no one will be able to pretend anymore that the US is not a third world country. So at that point, either single payer will come into being or everyone with a brain will be clear as to what kind of country this really has become due to right wingers.
So in a broad historical sense, there really isn't all that many years to wait before single payer is the only real option.
However, if the "public option" and the ultra regressive tax (the "mandate") are enacted, this is the thing that could delay the inevitable for, as I said, maybe roughly 25 years. Because now the number of uninsured, at least on paper, would not be going up, but down! But who knows how inferior the "public option" coverage might be, and the economic life span of the public option, as noted by Lindorff, would be limited.
But although the public option would not be a real solution (especially since it would not be a real public option due to the lobbyists) it would be a feel good measure in the short term. Millions opted out of this disaster of a system would have a choice they don't have any choice now. A limited choice is better than no choice at all.
The cost problem, from an economics perspective, is bigger now than the health care distribution problem. And again, with the public option and the mandate, there would be very little or no real cost control due to patient dumping, due to refusal of the lobbyists to allow a single government agency to negotiate costs, due to refusal under this scheme of practitioners to give up lavish salaries, and perhaps for other reasons.
As for your main point, I disagree that the US will become a hardcore third world country with absolutely no response from the population or the elected politicians. There is a big difference between a country with third world tendencies, and a full scale third world country. I think that single payer will be one thing that is finally enacted so that the US will avoid reaching the kind of absolute rock bottom that you envision.
A COUNTERPOINT
logarithmic June 16th, 2009 6:26 pm
"Regardless of exactly how many years it takes until the great majority(most everyone other than the insurance companies and many die hard right wingers) agree that single payer is necessary, it is clear that the system is in an advanced state of collapse right now as we speak."
***********************
Awfully generous of you. Only 60% or so are for single payer (something that would be hard to define if you were to ask most what the term even means). Die hard rightwingers put Bush in power two straight elections and gave him majorities in both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court. Die hard rightwingers have the power to force us to live in a country where there is NO healthcare access for the vast majority. You minimize this threat and I don't.
***********************
"So at that point, either single payer will come into being or everyone with a brain will be clear as to what kind of country this really has become due to right wingers. So in a broad historical sense, there really isn't all that many years to wait before single payer is the only real option. "
***********************
People like me can already see what this country has become due to rightwingers, but also due to those in denial like yourself. You think our country has some long term lease on life. Not going to happen. Besides the healthcare debacle, the country will have to cope with dwindling oil supplies, a military unhampered by budget constraints due to militarism and false flags, a global threat to its currency as the world's reserve, and a global threat from greenhouse gasses. In your timeframe, 30 to 50% of the world's species could be extinct, oil could be $1,000 a barrel, and the entire Southwest abandoned due to lack of water. You simply do not get it.
************************
"Over about 40 years of extreme inflation, and especially now in this current economic debacle, costs have become a truly crushing burden."
***********************
Only to the great unwashed. Like minimum wage, or welfare reform under Clinton, or energy prices. You seem to believe that the government truly cares about the unwashed. This is a false belief. It has been proven time and time again that it cares only for those who write the checks. And those who write the checks can afford healthcare, at almost any price.
***********************
"The cost problem, from an economics perspective, is bigger now than the health care distribution problem."
************************
This really goes without saying.
************************
"As for your main point, I disagree that the US will become a hardcore third world country with absolutely no response from the population or the elected politicians. There is a big difference between a country with third world tendencies, and a full scale third world country. I think that single payer will be one thing that is finally enacted so that the US will avoid reaching the kind of absolute rock bottom that you envision."
***********************
It already is becoming a hardcore third world country. Stay up with the news. They are now bulldozing large tracts of old suburban homes in Flint, MI. Homeless camps are springing up around the country. The State of California is technically bankrupt and will run out of cash within weeks (http://www.cnbc.com/id/31390835). And the BRIC and SCO are plotting against the dollar (http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson06152009.html). If the dollar loses its reserve currency status, all hell will break out. Here's what Chris Hedges posted on Common Dreams just yesterday (http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/15-0):
"The cost of daily living, from buying food to getting medical care, will become difficult for all but a few as the dollar plunges. States and cities will see their pension funds drained and finally shut down. The government will be forced to sell off infrastructure, including roads and transport, to private corporations. We will be increasingly charged by privatized utilities—think Enron—for what was once regulated and subsidized. Commercial and private real estate will be worth less than half its current value. The negative equity that already plagues 25 percent of American homes will expand to include nearly all property owners. It will be difficult to borrow and impossible to sell real estate unless we accept massive losses. There will be block after block of empty stores and boarded-up houses. Foreclosures will be epidemic. There will be long lines at soup kitchens and many, many homeless. Our corporate-controlled media, already banal and trivial, will work overtime to anesthetize us with useless gossip, spectacles, sex, gratuitous violence, fear and tawdry junk politics. America will be composed of a large dispossessed underclass and a tiny empowered oligarchy that will run a ruthless and brutal system of neo-feudalism from secure compounds. Those who resist will be silenced, many by force. We will pay a terrible price, and we will pay this price soon, for the gross malfeasance of our power elite."
You are living in a fantasy world. Reality is changing far quicker than you're aware of. Good luck my friend.
Wow, we're on the same side but you think I'm living in a fantasy world. Careful there. Me thinks you doth protest too much, laugh out loud.
You somehow extrapolated incorrectly several times and stated my opinions incorrectly. For example, I don't think the government cares much about low or moderate income people at all. That is ridiculous to me. I can't see how you could think that I do think that from my essays. I mean, I have a hunch that the average person thinks I'm off the deep end about the current relative uselessness of the government, laugh out loud.
But seriously, as bad as things are, we have not hit rock bottom yet, nor will we in my lifetime. There is no currency in the World that can replace the dollar as main reserve currency for (here we go again with the waiting years) at least 25 years.
Also, some of the things you describe seem worse than even rock bottom, laugh out loud.
Before you jump off the bridge, consider, for example, that the current economics "collapse" is arguably not a true collapse yet. The number of non-farm jobs is still in excess of 130 million, having peaked at a little over 137 million in 2007. Almost 43% of the population (the gross population, which includes children and elderly) still has a job, the same percentage as in 1993, and far higher than the 29-30% which was the case from 1945 to about 1963. The peak percentage employed was just about 47.5% in 1999.
Real wages may be declining, but the rate of decline is painfully slow for anyone wanting a completely new system within the next quarter century.
Are you sure it's just that you wish the system would collapse faster than it actually is? I wouldn't blame you for that, because something much better almost always follows a collapsed system.
I inadvertantly realized during this discussion that the single payer thing will be the primary "Battle of the Bulge" for the US as to whether it becomes a true Third World country or not. There will be a time, 20-75 years in the future, when it is one or the other: either single payer will be adopted or the US will be a true Third World country indefinitely. The public option and mandate postpones that day of reckoning but can not cancel it out completely.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
The Lame "Public Option," Star of the 2009 Health Care Dog and Pony Show
Yes, the public option would be lame compared with single payer even if it was a real, true public option. It would do almost nothing to stop costs from spiraling out of control for example. But making "public option" even more lame, and virtually worthless, is that (as most everyone seems to know here) by the time the insurance companies through their lobbyists get through with dictating the details, it won't really be a true public option.
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STATES ACT TO COUNTER THE DOOMED TO FAIL 2010 US HEALTH LAWS
THINK AGAIN IF YOU THINK BEING FORCED TO BUY INSURANCE IS A GOOD LONG TERM PLAN
