Obama’s relentless push to “reform” health care misses the point – by a mile.
Health care costs in America aren’t attributable to not enough government involvement rather not enough freedom of choice (i.e. free market forces) and even moreso, an epidemic lack of personal responsibility.
Liberals aren’t real big on the personal responsibility deal, and most Americans are oblivious to the fact that a government “reform” of their health care system takes more than it gives – they’re too fat, dumb and happy.
Mostly fat though.
…and it starts with our youngn’s.
Extreme obesity affects about 6.4 percent of children, according to a Kaiser Permanente study that suggests overweight kids are getting even heavier.
What do you suppose the chances are that a fat kid ends up being a fat adult?
Several studies now indicate that obesity in young adult life is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Furthermore, excessive weight during adolescence predicts a number of adverse effects on health later in life, including increased mortality among men.
What are the results of obesity?
- Coronary heart disease
- Type 2 diabetes
- Cancers (endometrial, breast, and colon)
- Hypertension (high blood pressure)
- Dyslipidemia (for example, high total cholesterol or high levels of triglycerides)
- Stroke
- Liver and Gallbladder disease
- Sleep apnea and respiratory problems
- Osteoarthritis (a degeneration of cartilage and its underlying bone within a joint)
- Gynecological problems (abnormal menses, infertility)
Its a list of all the usual suspects of the most costly burdens to our health care system. Meanwhile Barack Obama is vilifying the health insurance companies while Michelle Obama (as much as it pains me to type this) might actually be on the right track in her mission to reduce childhood obesity.
It’s unfortunate that America is being sold the idea that the only solution to health care reform is a massive expansion of government entitlements when the massive expansion of Americans is one of the major factors in our health care “crisis.”
I think you should contact this guy, JRoosh. It sounds as though you have a lot in common.
http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.bd08ee7c7c1ffec87c4b36d501c789a0/index.jsp?doc_name=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Fmail%2Fhtml%2Fmayor.html
Roosh do you favor repeal of McCarran Fergusson?
I tend to favor state regulation over federal regulation, putting the greatest power to make what limits are necessary at the nearest practical level of government to consumers.
The only thing which currently prevents any company from doing business in any state is they don’t want to comply with a specific state’s regulations.
Given that the business of insurance uses an inherently very specialized knowledge, including legal concepts and a very specific language unique to insurance, the average consumer is at a disadvantage and the industry benefits from that disadvantage.
Insurance as a requirement for hospitalization and other health insurance is similar to utilities as being a necessity or near enough one for staying alive. The industry needs regulation to ensure adequate reserves to pay out on policies etc.
So if you can show me any suggestions you have which will promote competition while ensuring solvency, and guaranteeing a fair break to consumers as regards specialized knowledge advantages, I’d like to see it.
Because looking back at the last several decades, when conservatives have had the majority, they have done effectively nothing.
And remembering a ways back Roosh that you commended the awarding of a grant to study diabetes, and that it mattered to you because one of your own children was affected by the illness, I’d really love to see the use of pre-existing conditions for anything by insurance companies outlawed. It affects everyone, but quite possibly it affects children the most horribly.
Please let me clarify; the last thing I wish to do is to intrude on your privacy or the privacy of your family in mentioning this issue of children and pre-existing conditions. I bring it up in the expectation that this is possibly a shared concern where we might find common ground in lookng at changes to insurance and health care. I sincerely hope you will accept my comment in that context and not be offended; offending you was the furthest thing from my intent.
DG said
“The only thing which currently prevents any company from doing business in any state is they don’t want to comply with a specific state’s regulations.”
You are misstating the issue egregiously! If you were honest or knowledgeable you would recognize “they don’t want to comply with 57 (Obama count ) specific state’s regulations and some of those states do empower local authorities ( as trivial a watershed districts) to regulate, tax, and mandate behaviors for businesses operating in their jurisdictions. Do your research before you make overly broad and erroneous statements.
The employer provided healthcare so many people who work for corporations large enough to take advantage of it endorse is for instance only possible because ERISA trumps local/state regulation.
DG said:
Please let me clarify; the last thing I wish to do is to intrude on your privacy or the privacy of your family
If you truly meant that you wouldn’t have made his children an issue – you could have instead had the decency to speak of “anyone who has a diabetic child” rather than making it personal.
DG: I was not offended, I appreciate your consideration but I disagree completely.
If there were twenty or thirty insurance options for my family to shop from individually vs. three or four (due to already overarching government health insurance regulations) that my employer or association can offer in any given state, the competition between the multiple national carriers would eventually eliminate pre-existing condition restrictions just like the free market has done for automotive insurance – which is also required by law.
Costs would be forced down, service and quality would be forced up – just like the car insurance industry has been forced to do as competition has increased.
What we need is for the government to get out of the way, not interfere and control the market even more. We don’t need to go from employer-paid to single-payer, we need to go exactly in the opposite direction.
Furthermore, as a point of clarification, my daughter has Type-1 diabetes which is an inherited auto-immune disorder with onset occurring most often among young children and without regard to lifestyle choices on their or their parents’ parts.
Type-2 diabetes on the other hand, occurs overwhelmingly (but not exclusively) among the overweight, and later in life. Sadly, the two types are increasingly confused because more and more children are succumbing to Type-2 due to increasing childhood obesity.
Type-1 effects some three million wile Type-2 affects six to seven times as many Americans.
You can draw your own conclusions as to how the government or the free market will make the distinction between the two as it relates to costs and pre-existing-condition restrictions. Common sense might be a useful tool here, but unfortunately our Federal Government discarded it long ago.
The only thing which currently prevents any company from doing business in any state is they don’t want to comply with a specific state’s regulations.
Not true…not even close.
If so, then I’d love to hear your explanation of how life, disability, long term care, automotive, worker’s comp, liability, errors and omissions and a litany of other types of insurance products are sold by dozens and dozens of national and international insurance providers and brokers despite regulations that vary from state to state for virtually every type of insurance listed above.
Kel, I did not make Roosh’s children an issue. I addressed him because he is the author of this post, and because it is an issue for ,b>many people, not only his family, one which Roosh would be in a position to address personally – as he has – if he chose.
As to doing my homework, Kel, I worked in the Home Office of one of the largest insurance companies in this country, one that was also multinational, with all lines of insurance, that did business in most of the states in this country. I am quite familiar with addressing the various requirements, filings, etc. that are involved.
Unless you can show me a single state that does not have successful insurance industry participation, your argument is dubious at best.
What will most likely occur if the states do not establish regulation, and any company can write insurance anywhere withouut reasonable compliance is that competition will NOT improve. Companies will operate out of those locations that are favorable to them and not favorable to the customers.
If you want an example of what I’m talking about, think about those states from which the most predatory credit card companies operate.
Unless you want to stipulate some kind of federal regulation which makes all companies operate on a level playing field under the exact same rules, you require them to operate in every state, and you eradicate the use of pre-existing conditions and dumping people from their insurance policies if they become sick – or upping their premiums as was done in one state to get rid of anyone who had certain kinds of legitimate claims. Like the attempt in California to raise premiums nearly 40% to get rid of older, potentially more expensive insurance customers.
Dog Gone, the problem with your justification for socialized medicine is that it does not explain why treating my cold is a collective responsibility.
The plan under consideration does not cover a multitude of special cases. It’s the answer to a question that no one, other than the ruling class, is asking.
DG
Not paying attention:
“Unless you want to stipulate some kind of federal regulation which makes all companies operate on a level playing field under the exact same rules”
== ERISA — But only for employer paid health care – if you are self employed you are subject to a different set of rules dependingin upon which of the 57(Obama’s count) states you happen to live in
DG,
What will most likely occur if the states do not establish regulation, and any company can write insurance anywhere withouut reasonable compliance is that competition will NOT improve. Companies will operate out of those locations that are favorable to them and not favorable to the customers.
So let me get this straight; the entire industry would set itself up to abuse the customer and thumb its nose at the market that would (in the case you’re discussing) support it?
I’m sorry, but this is another left-wing chanting point. Yes, companies will gravitate toward states with more favorable business climates – which is a GOOD thing – but they will provide what people are actually wiling to buy.
Like car insurance; everyone needs it, and just about everyone can afford it. Is the market chaotic? Yes. Tough.
If you want an example of what I’m talking about, think about those states from which the most predatory credit card companies operate.
Again, so what? Don’t use credit cards. Buy the insurance that meets your needs and that you can afford.
Unless you want to stipulate some kind of federal regulation which makes all companies operate on a level playing field under the exact same rules, you require them to operate in every state, and you eradicate the use of pre-existing conditions and dumping people from their insurance policies if they become sick – or upping their premiums as was done in one state to get rid of anyone who had certain kinds of legitimate claims. Like the attempt in California to raise premiums nearly 40% to get rid of older, potentially more expensive insurance customers.
Well, some of those regulations make sense, and some of them are pure madness, but it’s a start.
Medical insurance is not a particularly profitable industry. One statistic you hear is that Medicare lost more last year, through fraud and abuse, than all the profits of all the insurance companies in the US. In my state HMSA, the biggest insurer, lost 4% on revenues in 2009.
Pro socialized medicine people always point to the insurance companies as villains because people are generally happy with doctors, nurses, and other health professionals, and that’s where there money is going. It’s just easier to pick on the nameless, faceless people at insurance companies.
Of the 35 or so industries represented in the Fortune 500, health insurance is the 25th most profitable, with a margin around 2%. Hardly excessive.
But it was never really about insurance companies; they were just a handy scapegoat to sic the ignorant on while socializing the industry.
Actually, in contemplating the example Roosh wrote about of Diabetes, in addition to the problems of pre-existing conditions, I also had in mind the issues of insurance companies declining to cover what they term experimental procedures long after they have become more widely accpeted.
In regards to diabetes for example, particuarlly juvenile diabetes, there are some impressive developments being made in both IVF Stem cell research and in gene therapy. I think that any reform should permit the aggressive use of new treatments and technologies as they become available and are deemed safe.
The affect that health care reform, including insurance reform, would have on research and development of new solutions to health issues would seem, to me, to be encoraged if the use of those procedures and treatments could be marketed and implemented more quickly and to a larger segment of the population. Since KR is a brilliant scientist (NO, I’m not being sarcastic) in this field, I will defer to his insights at least as far as medical devices are concerned.
The affect that health care reform, including insurance reform, would have on research and development of new solutions to health issues would seem, to me, to be encoraged if the use of those procedures and treatments could be marketed and implemented more quickly and to a larger segment of the population.
Dog Gone, what is the subject, object, and verb in this sentence? I can’t make head or tails of it.
“I tend to favor state regulation over federal regulation, putting the greatest power to make what limits are necessary at the nearest practical level of government to consumers.” – Dog Gone
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Ple plea pleeeeaaaase stop it, DG, your killing me.
Ohhh, my ribs
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
*breathe* *breathe* *breathe*
Wow. Are your trying to get me to spit my side and send me to urgent care, Dog Gone?
*breathe*
OK then.
Thank you Dog Gone for asking the question on how ObamaNationCare will affect the medical device industry.
You don’t even have to take my word for it, the major medical device companies that employ thousands and thousands of Minnesotans say the same thing.
The ObamaNationCare Innovation Tax will result in a serious reduction in Research & Development investment.
Dog Gone, not only does the ObamaNationCare takeover mean thousands fewer jobs but also a significant decrease in new lifesaving state of the art medical device technologies.
Instead of saving lives, maybe I should have been a burbot instead.