With health reform getting dangerously close to an end, seemingly all the players involved in the health-care reform want you to be terrified. The Republicans want to scare with the big S word Socialism and the Democrats want you to believe that this is the salvation that everyone has been waiting for. Of course like dancing in a movie theater, they are very wrong. (That joke comes from the great idea of the local Muvico putting a Salsa dance club in their West Palm Beach location.)
Of course this whole mess currently being debated by the Democrats is huge, it could reshape our entire financial system, remember health care is nearly a third of our GDP. But the bill that is being presented does almost nothing to control costs and will in fact raise health insurance premiums for many people. Of course like eating a 10 pound hamburger, you have to start somewhere, so East Coast Health Insurance actually supports this bill, though we don’t care for it at all, but believe our current course of action is also just as unsustainable. We applaud the Democrats for being courageous enough to risk their political careers on this garbage legislation. Hoorah.
Looking at the numbers, the entire bill is seemingly more expensive than our defense budget, and comes in with a $900 billion price tag. This reflects 10 years and breaks down to a smooth $90 billion per year. Remember however that in the context of health care spending this is actually like a Cuban life raft, very tiny. Health care costs are about 2.3 trillion a year, so this would amount to a small appetizer at an Applebee’s.
Additionally, the bill doesn’t even start till 2014, so this number figured for inflation and with the current rise in health care cots will only be about 4% of the entire American health care spending. in the year 2016 health care is expected to be $3.7 trillion, so it gets smaller each year.
Another great fact is that this bill will kick the health insurance companies right in the groin. While many have speculated that this bill will make them more profits the truth is that only a couple of companies might do better but the majority will take one on the chin and end up in some other business or go bankrupt altogether. By 2019 it is expected to insure an additional 30 million people, of course by that time we will all be wearing 10 pound sunglasses and have skin cancer from global warming but at least we will have health coverage to remove all those sun spots and moles. Additionally, it is estimated that 90% of Americans will be insured, while the uninsured will be mostly illegals and space aliens.
But when it comes to cost controls this bill is an absolute failure. And more important then our health insurance problem is our financial solvency as a nation. I don’t care what anyone says or what pills the GAO has taken while they performed this study. Health care is getting to expensive and this bill just shrugs it off like a bad sign from a drunk catcher. No one is going to care about their deductibles when they can’t afford to eat. Do I have a solution to health care costs? I have a few ideas including tort reform and such that this bill has just ignored, but I can’t really agree with passing this bill due to this fact. But I do agree to it, because I know that it will start the conversation for a single payer system which this bill will inevitably result in.
Make no mistake, Pelosi has said it herself this bill is designed to cripple our health insurance companies which is a necessary evil in order to solve this issue, and because they are not going to go away quietly this bill lets them think that they have a victory, but 10 years from now, they will be looking for benefits themselves.
But changing the growth of the health-care system is a lot harder than just cutting a few dollars here or there. It requires us to change how doctors practice medicine, or how much medicine people buy or how much they need — or maybe all three. We’re doing a lot on health-care reform this year, but we’re not doing that much. And we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking otherwise. We’ll be back at this again, and soon.
This is some pretty fuzzy math, seemingly out of Al Gore’s math class.
In short, the goal of the plan (it is not insurance, because it destroys most of the actuarial science and adds cost of adverse selection, so lets just call it “health entitlement”)
The real 1 trillion cost is going to be just the government cost of subsidies and tax credits. The unknown cost is the amount entitlement premiums are going up because of the big mandates. For insight, go look at the cost of entitlements in high mandate states like Masachusetts.
According to Oliver Wyman, an acutuarial consulting firm, the cost of those mandates will increase premiums by 14%, even before medical inflation sets in. So individual entitlements will go up an average of $1576 for individuals, and $3341 for families. For easy math, if there were 100 million families in America, the cost of increased premiums would then be 334 billion, above the current costs.
To President Obama and all 535 voting members of the Legislature:
It is now official that you are all corrupt morons!
(Democrats, Republicans, Independents)
The U.S. Post Service was established in 1775. You have had 234 years to get it right and it is broke.
Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 74 years to get it right and it is broke.
Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 71 years to get it right and it is broke.
War on Poverty started in 1964. You have had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is taxed each year and transferred to “the poor” and there is always a call for more.
Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have had 44 years to get it right and they are broke.
Freddie Mac was established in 1970. You have had 39 years to get it right and it is broke.
The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. It has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion a year and we import more oil than ever before. You had 32 years to get it right and it is an abysmal failure.
You have failed in every government service you have forced on us, while radically overspending our tax dollars. And now you want Americans to believe you can be trusted with a government-run health care system??
So , in summary, the 1tril cost is to assure the insurance access to 30 million people, a paltry $333,000 per person. While increasing cost to all via the loss of actuarial science.
It looks like time to go back to the drawing board.