The argument that if Americans are healthier, have good insurance coverage, and are not in fear for their financial lives if they contract an illness therefore our economy will benefit and life will be better is an honorable and important argument. With Americans visiting their doctors when they need to, receiving predictive tests earlier, and, in general, increasing their economic activity because they are not worried about how to finance debilitating illness is the goal, and has been the goal of conservatives for years. The argument that conservatives have not tried to address the health coverage crisis during the past 20 years, is a lie, in the words of what's her name on MSNBC, it is an L, I, E, Lie.
It is clear that personal responsibility is a concept that no longer applies in what used to be the United States of America. If the government, for instance, asked the insurance companies to offer a catastrophic illness policy, how many of the people now clamoring for the "rich" to pay their healthcare benefits would give up purchasing their Wii games, or flatscreen T.V.s to make sure their families were covered, even if it were on a sliding scale? Not too damn many. So, we have to force them? Is that they deal? And do they pay ANYTHING for it under this legislation? Conservatives have, for years advocated, not only personal responsibility, but health savings accounts (which are very effective) and various other cost-lowering ideas which have been poo-pooed by the left as unworthy. Tort reform has been all but untouchable.
First of all, catastrophic plans are available from insurance companies; they cost approximately $350/month for a family of 4. Yes, there is a pre-existing condition clause, however, the reason insurance companies are forced to put in the pre-existing condition clauses is because they have to take their actuarial information from small pools. They are not allowed, like car insurance companies, to compete nationwide because Blue Cross/Blue Shield, in the olden, golden days of large company purchase of health insurance (Remember? When Mom or Dad's policies took care of everything?), BCBS was regulated by the government and told, "no, no, no; no more monopoly in the insurance market." So, you now have companies that are trying to offer health insurance in small markets like Montana who can only count small pools of relatively unhealthy people (unless they force the pool to be healthy, i.e., pre-existing condition clauses) and their margins are 3.4% which is somewhere around 360th on the "Industry Profitability" chart. Yes, their executives probably get paid some exorbitant amount, but, believe me, if someone asks you to run one of these companies, you'd want the money too.
The POINT of this is that we have regulated the insurance industry into irrelevancy and pre-existing condition clauses. If health insurance companies could operate across state lines (and, yes, get big like BCBS did--hell, do you want the government, i.e., Dept of Motor Vehicles instead?), we could purchase health insurance much like we do car insurance because they would be using much larger actuarial pool data. But do we look to what we have done to private markets first when the problems arise? No, because the Progressives are in charge, and government is the answer to all the questions.
Not in my world. And certainly not to the extent that we will destroy private industry in America that is struggling to provide employment to our population. Think of the rule that if you have less than 50 employees, you won't have to participate in this new program. Think about how you might get around that. I'm going to start a company that advises small companies employing less than 500 people how to break up their companies into smaller companies and get around this bill. People will find a way to survive, and it will add bureaucracy on top of bureaucracy and our country will suffer.
Irresponsible, you say? About the same level of irresponsibility of those who think that someone else (anyone else) should be responsible to pay for their healthcare expenses. How many of the people whining and moaning that insurance wasn't available to them actually took out a catastrophic health policy from a young and healthy age in order to protect their homes? How would you feel if the private mortgage companies required you to carry a catastrophic policy in order to get a home loan (because, frankly, they should have; but Barney Frank and Bill Clinton didn't want that kind of language in the Community Reinvestment Act).
And does any of this address cost? Tell me how making people buy insurance policies addresses the cost of medical care. The overhead facing doctor's and hospitals is largely due to their own insurance liability costs, and don't believe the 2% baloney being floated by those who are trying to defend against Tort Reform. Liability costs are far-reaching and rarely measured correctly; but that is an entirely different discussion.
The simple fact of the matter is that we are about to ruin our economy. Pension funds already stretched to the limits, especially in California will plummet as stock prices of companies once profitable start to fail, Moody's, though I'm sure there will be great pressure not to do it, will have to downgrade the U.S.s credit score (which they should have done long ago), and the CBO scoring of this bill will be an absolute joke, because the interest payments we will now have to make on our debt will sink this country into European-like chaos. Watch Spain in the coming weeks and you will see our future.
The argument that we should have a healthy America and that it will help our economy is like so many other arguments about "fairness." If we were to be fair to everyone, anarchy would be the order of the day because one person's fairness is another person's tyranny. Beware of those who argue that socialized medicine (which is what this is at its heart; the insurance companies won't make it) is only "fair." We're going down the path of destruction of our economy; it's only a matter of time now. Sure, people will have health care, but we won't have any doctors, development of new drugs will be a thing of the past, and only the very rich will receive the health care they need because insurance companies will come up with a new product: the "go to the head of the line" insurance policy, just like they have in Britain. The rich will buy policies that send them to the head of the very long line and they will see the doctors before the poor. So, whereas before, you might have been in danger of losing your house (which is a lie, filing bankruptcy will save it, not to mention the many charitable programs at hospitals nationwide and with doctors everywhere), you will now be in danger of not receiving health care unless you are wealthy. What a (new) deal!
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