So I'm super annoyed by the current total failure that is Obama's healthcare reform. And I say it's a failure because it's unclear what he specifically wants, and because he's let the Repubs control the conversation with idiocy like death panels and other BS. The country is losing faith in Obama, and is moving towards rejecting reform. Which is bat-shit crazy because our system is broken and costs are ballooning out of control. Of course, Repubs have no solution; they just want to make Obama look bad. For me, healthcare is one of those topics that can't be fucked around with (like the environment) because of the potential consequences to our way of life here in the good ol' US of A. Ballooning costs make our industry non-competive, and more and more people die or suffer needlessly because their healthcare is rationed (nah, you don't REALLY need that MRI, even though your doctor says you do!) or sub-par.
On this topic, Repubs are totally off the deep end. I dunno how you fight that kind of crazy, either. There's something about being on tv that lends them some level of legitimacy... why would they be allowed to say these things (death panels, Obama is a commie/socialist/nazi/etc) if they weren't true? But of course, there's nothing stopping them. It's so maddening. In my mind, the only thing that can stop them is a well-loved and charismatic leader calling them out. But Obama doesn't do that, and so he's weakened over time by the barrage of lies and the crazy machine continues.
Industry should be 100% behind reform. We're the only industrialized nation that makes our businesses cover their employees' health. Which is awful, because a company like Google whose workforce is young and fit will have low costs, while a company like GM whose workforce is older and less fit, will have huuuuge costs. And so GM is non-competitive with its foreign counterparts (for other reasons beyond healthcare obviously, but healthcare's a big part of it) because it has to bake so many more costs into its pricing. And in the US, there's a ton of overhead in administering insurance plans through employers, which makes hiring and firing people even harder to do, and thus makes us less nimble in response to economic trends. So industry would be WAY better off on the whole if the gov't took the burden of healthcare away from them. Industry would be more competitive, more nimble, and workers would be much more mobile and able to switch jobs without fear of losing coverage. It's win-win here... why isn't industry backing reform whole hog?
I've had friends argue that they don't want to pay for other peoples' healthcare through a public option; it already costs us too much. But the problem is that we *already* pay for people without healthcare. Emergency rooms are essentially publicly funded, and are used as primary healthcare by 10s of millions of Americans. And they don't go there until the tumor is so big they can't walk straight. And of course by then it costs 10-100x more to treat them than if we'd caught it right away. This is the argument that Obama needs to make: mandatory socialized medicine is CHEAPER for everyone than our current system. It's the fiscally conservative approach! And amazingly it's also the socially just one. It's win-win, again!
And there are all these idiotic arguments out there about how inefficient and costly a gov't option would be. (Note that those arguments are made by the same people that say that private insurers would be unable to compete against a gov't plan. Ummm, which is it? Is the gov't a bureaucratic mess? Or is it a killer competitor? It can't be both, assholes!) Except that the overhead on gov't-run healthcare (Medicare) is like 4%. The overhead on private insurance is like 30%. Medicare is literally some 7x more efficient than private insurance (something like that; I sense a mathfail on my part there). All that extra overhead that we pay private insurers just lines their pockets with gold. So you're wasting a ton of money now on unnecessary salaries and bonuses that in a gov't system DO NOT exist. And we know they don't exist because there is ALREADY a huge gov't-run public option!! Except, you know, get your god-damn gov't hands off my Medicare. O.o
I actually don't understand why Obama doesn't just make his healthcare proposal this: we're expanding Medicare to cover anyone who wants it. There, done. Then the discussion becomes one of cost and implementation, rather than whether Medicare is good or not. Because Repubs can't touch Medicare or they'll alienate half of their allies. Medicare is popular, successful, and cheap. So Obama, just expand it to any American who wants it, and mandate that every American be covered, and let's move the fuck on.
On this topic, Repubs are totally off the deep end. I dunno how you fight that kind of crazy, either. There's something about being on tv that lends them some level of legitimacy... why would they be allowed to say these things (death panels, Obama is a commie/socialist/nazi/etc) if they weren't true? But of course, there's nothing stopping them. It's so maddening. In my mind, the only thing that can stop them is a well-loved and charismatic leader calling them out. But Obama doesn't do that, and so he's weakened over time by the barrage of lies and the crazy machine continues.
Industry should be 100% behind reform. We're the only industrialized nation that makes our businesses cover their employees' health. Which is awful, because a company like Google whose workforce is young and fit will have low costs, while a company like GM whose workforce is older and less fit, will have huuuuge costs. And so GM is non-competitive with its foreign counterparts (for other reasons beyond healthcare obviously, but healthcare's a big part of it) because it has to bake so many more costs into its pricing. And in the US, there's a ton of overhead in administering insurance plans through employers, which makes hiring and firing people even harder to do, and thus makes us less nimble in response to economic trends. So industry would be WAY better off on the whole if the gov't took the burden of healthcare away from them. Industry would be more competitive, more nimble, and workers would be much more mobile and able to switch jobs without fear of losing coverage. It's win-win here... why isn't industry backing reform whole hog?
I've had friends argue that they don't want to pay for other peoples' healthcare through a public option; it already costs us too much. But the problem is that we *already* pay for people without healthcare. Emergency rooms are essentially publicly funded, and are used as primary healthcare by 10s of millions of Americans. And they don't go there until the tumor is so big they can't walk straight. And of course by then it costs 10-100x more to treat them than if we'd caught it right away. This is the argument that Obama needs to make: mandatory socialized medicine is CHEAPER for everyone than our current system. It's the fiscally conservative approach! And amazingly it's also the socially just one. It's win-win, again!
And there are all these idiotic arguments out there about how inefficient and costly a gov't option would be. (Note that those arguments are made by the same people that say that private insurers would be unable to compete against a gov't plan. Ummm, which is it? Is the gov't a bureaucratic mess? Or is it a killer competitor? It can't be both, assholes!) Except that the overhead on gov't-run healthcare (Medicare) is like 4%. The overhead on private insurance is like 30%. Medicare is literally some 7x more efficient than private insurance (something like that; I sense a mathfail on my part there). All that extra overhead that we pay private insurers just lines their pockets with gold. So you're wasting a ton of money now on unnecessary salaries and bonuses that in a gov't system DO NOT exist. And we know they don't exist because there is ALREADY a huge gov't-run public option!! Except, you know, get your god-damn gov't hands off my Medicare. O.o
I actually don't understand why Obama doesn't just make his healthcare proposal this: we're expanding Medicare to cover anyone who wants it. There, done. Then the discussion becomes one of cost and implementation, rather than whether Medicare is good or not. Because Repubs can't touch Medicare or they'll alienate half of their allies. Medicare is popular, successful, and cheap. So Obama, just expand it to any American who wants it, and mandate that every American be covered, and let's move the fuck on.
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