14 thoughts on “Pass This Around…”

  1. But if I go to college for a Queer Studies major, I also have to pay for the rock climbing wall and lazy river. And pay for the salaries and benies for a large number of people who work in “Old Main” from 9 to 4:30 each day, 10 months a year. Not sure what all they do, but there sure are a lot of them.

  2. So your saying governmentall regulation inflates price? But I thoughtthe government is there to protect us from the evil businessmen who want to rip us off? Is everything I have been taught a lie?!

  3. I see where our own Senator Vanilla Fluff (DFL-Small Things) has called for a Congressional investigation & hearings into why the people that make the EPI-PEN (sp?) have jacked the price 1,000% (or so) over the last few years. I’m just going to guess that no Food & Drug Administration types (or really any government employee anti-free market thugs) will be called or sworn in her “investigation”.
    When some youngster with a peanut allergy dies due to sniffing out the PB&J in another child’s lunch and the school didn’t have an EPI-PEN due to it’s price, it will give Senator Fluff yet another chance to get a dead child’s name on a piece of legislation she sponsors. This week she’ll be sponsoring legislation prohibiting “buddy from work sleeping on the couch” in memory of that poor 5-year old girl in Meeker County.

  5. It may be nitpicking, but TVs and healthcare are fairly different beasts. You can go without a TV (and I’ve done so), but when you need healthcare, the demand can be pretty inelastic as compared to the price. If you need cancer care, for example, most people don’t shop based on price, but they tend to buy based on expected result. People will spend far more for a slight upgrade in critical care than they would for a slight upgrade in picture quality, so the demand curve between the products looks very different.

    That said, it’s telling that the only two areas in which medical care costs have decreased in the last 20 years are LASIK and plastic surgery, and both of them are optional treatments and not covered by insurance. And tellingly, the quality of both those services has risen while costs have fallen.

    So yes, competition is a good thing, and less intrusive regulation is also a good thing and both should be inserted into the system.

  6. You can get some elasticity in health care by letting the customer pay part of the bill. For me, it was enough that the nurse called and said it was either lifestyle changes or meds. I chose the former and am currently doing a little of both. For others, we might find that they decide to get some exercise and end the triple cheeseburgers when they start paying thousands in copays, or when the extra weight puts them flat on their back.

    Best estimates I’ve seen are that diet & exercise (and not smoking) could be something like a 10% shift in medical costs, which I think might be a bit low. Can’t prove it, though.

    I’m also seeing some elasticity in terms of cancer/end of life care, where older friends of mine are noting more and more that they would rather die more quickly than to spend the extra months in “chemo fog”–the daze/lack of coherence that often accompanies cancer therapy. So there is probably another 5-10% in costs right there, since a huge portion of medical costs are EOL.

    Not as big a shift as what happens when I don’t have money for TV–I haven’t had a working TV in a couple of years outside my computer–but significant nonetheless.

  7. Health care and TVs are different in regulation, too.

    Imagine if the government said “You’re required to buy a television from Best Buy, Target or Warner ‘s Stellian Appliance or else pay $250 tax. Oh, and it must be 57 inches, LED, Smart-enabled, HD, curved-screen with built-in Wi-Fi and surround sound.”

    No, you don’t need all that jazz to watch re-runs of Magnum PI, but since it’s mandatory, the price will be exorbitant.
    .

  8. I don’t know why conservative candidates don’t make anti-regulations the heart of their campaign. Really, what normal voters is in FAVOR of more regulations?

    It should be low hanging fruit.

  9. I purchase my own insurance. The Government says I have to buy:
    -Mental health insurance
    -In home care
    -Pregnancy coverage
    Also, I won’t go to a doctor unless I am half-dead. I assume my insurance is priced for those who run to a doctor for every little thing.

  10. Chuck, it makes huge sense to to buy the insurance policy you need not the mandated insurance policy that is “designed” to be one-size-fits-all. But to change the insurance delivery system and health care system several things must change.

    ERISA, the Union driven enacting legislation, needs to be re-written or largely repealed as regards health ins, it has fostered an increasingly sclerotic health delivery system in this country.

    People need to understand what it means when your employer buys your health ins, specifically from the insurance co point of view the employer is the customer not the employee which means the ins co is contracting to provide just enough coverage to get you back to work Not enough to make you whole. As ins co call center operators continually inform employees “you are not the customer, your employer is and the policy they purchased dosen’t cover your treatment needs”

    There’s a simple test for the validity of expecting the employer to research, select and pay for employee health insurance. If employer selected health ins is the preferable health care delivery method, why not also have the employer select car ins, house/renters ins, life ins, boaters ins, atv/motorcycle ins, etc. Every argument in favor of employer selected health ins can be made in favor of all the rest. Yet people think you’re a moonbat if you suggest it. And rightly so!

    Health insurance needs to be stripped from the employers and refocused on the individual so that the individual can purchase the policy that best serves their needs at any given point in their life.
    For instance, a printing company in Chanhassen, with 1000+ employees, 900 are under the age of 40 so the policies the company selects & buys for their employees provide very good coverage for pre-natal, obgyn, pediatric, and accident related health needs but limited, minimal coverage for heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, addiction and weight issues for those 100 people who fall outside the company demographic. They are screwed.
    Your employer is tasked with administering your health ins plan which is not what they are in business to do so they contract that work to the ins co they bought the plan from. Do you really think they are going to go to the mat for you when the question is disputed coverage – of course not. They will do whatever adheres most closely to the contract they have with your employer that costs the least, what else would expect.

    Take health insurance away from the employer and suddenly the ins co becomes answerable directly to the people who are utilizing that policy – billing for providers transitions into plain english line items so the customer/policy holder can question and dispute an invoice if necessary. Sure a couple big insurers (I’m looking at you BCBS) will take a hit and may even be justifiably driven out of the marketplace in some states, but the companies that remain will do so because they do not provide substandard coverage.

  11. POD: Jason Lewis had a great line. NAAG (National Association of Attorneys General) can also be known as National Association of Aspiring Governors.

  12. As the guy responsible for getting the company health benefits, I have to say, Sauk, we have never been offered the ability to tailor our coverage as much as you posit. Perhaps that is due to our company size, with 50 to 75 employees in the last 20 years.

    One of the fixes would be to make health insurance deductible by the individual, without the limitation of exceeding 3% of AGI and make it not deductible by the company. Companies would shift those compensation dollars back to direct wages, which individuals would be able to use to pay for the insurance. Individuals would be able to buy insurance more suited to their own specific need.

  13. What Loren says. The unequal treatment of self-paid vs. employer paid health insurance/healthcare costs is one of the biggest reasons insurance really doesn’t meet our needs. My plan now isn’t bad, but there are definitely some things I’d change if I could negotiate it with the insurer directly.

    And as someone who watches his weight, doesn’t smoke, etc., I dare say I could get a better deal.

  14. I also would like to get out of the business of deciding what’s best for our employees and my coworkers.

    And having to try and balance that with what is best for our company.

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