Will Business Kill Health Care? »
Posted By Progressive 6 months, 2 weeks ago in Business & FinanceAs Obama kicks off his summer drive for health reform, Matt Miller, who was in the White House during Hillarycare, on why corporate America wants to stay at the heart of the welfare state.
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Progressive
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing. -- Oscar Wilde
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Progressive6 months, 2 weeks ago
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We can quibble on the ways the President proposes to fund the changes he proposes, but I don't think we can quibble on the moral imperative to change the way we do business.
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http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/abraham_verg... -
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Progressive6 months, 2 weeks ago
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Share Your Thoughts on Health Care With President Obama:
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http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/HealthCare/story?id... -
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Progressive6 months, 2 weeks ago
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Will the Public Plan Make or Break Health Reform?:
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090616/us_time/0859... -
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beavith16 months, 2 weeks ago
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moral imperative?
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this article should be retitled "will national health care kill business?"
the author talks about how disconnected big business is from saving themselves.
does anyone else agree that that statement is ludicrous? let me paraphrase. business wants to kill itself over health care. the author is smarter than all the bean counters and executive leadership at big business. yeah. right.
yogi berra could've said it.
'if you think health care is expnesive now, wait until its free.'
let's work from first principles here.
if 20 million are not covered by health care now, and they will be once the national plan is in place, how could the present cost cover this additional number of people for anywhere near the same price?
sure. we can build in efficiencies and incentivize lower pricing but nowhere do those ideas involve anything more than handwaving the problem away.
the author talks about how efficient service is at the VA. when i take my wife's uncle to the hospital, the only feeling that i walk away with is the impression of a lousy level of care. its stalinesque.
i don't want that kind of lowest common denominator care. and that's going to solve all our problems? its not much different than our educational system where the bottom is brought up by all the testing and the top performers are brought down.
thanks for nothing. this is a bad direction that we are heading in.-
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Beau78906 months, 2 weeks ago
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As I'm sure you know by now, no one in Obama's administration is talking about replacing private plans with a public one--to argue as if they were is to attack a straw man.
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So if you believe setting up a public plan to compete with private insurance will kill the private insurers, you'll need to explain why you feel that way.
Please explain how the government's coverage of people private insurance companies won't insure will hurt those insurance companies. If anything, it guarantees them more profit by lowering their payouts.
"sure. we can build in efficiencies and incentivize lower pricing but nowhere do those ideas involve anything more than handwaving the problem away."
Really? I'd say it's a lot less handwaving than using market forces in favor of the consumer. What's your solution?
Regarding your comment about "lowest common denominator care," once again, that's a straw man. If you can afford it, feel free to pay premiums to your private insurer. For those who can't afford private insurance, they can use the public plan and you can stop paying medical providers inflated fees to make up for the losses they now incur treating the uninsured.
Additionally, if you're a business owner, you probably currently pay a portion of your employees' insurance. If a public plan were available, you wouldn't have to.
What are you so afraid of? -
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DoseASpinoza6 months, 2 weeks ago
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Uh...because Medicare administration is about 5% of costs, but private insurance administration is about 20% of costs? Because premiums for insured are higher to offset the cost of care for uninsured in emergency rooms?
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What's wrong with having a basic plan for everyone and letting companies offer add-on coverage?
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Progressive6 months, 2 weeks ago
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"does anyone else agree that that statement is ludicrous?"
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I disagree. As the article states, American businesses cannot compete in the global market with businesses based in countries that provide health care for their citizens because our businesses are punished by legacy costs. The bigger a company grows and the longer it is in business, the more it costs to provide health care to retired workers and their families. It's one of the reasons GM was doomed to failure.
...and it's 47 million--not 20 million--who have no health insurance now, yet we currently have the most expensive health care in the world.-
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beavith16 months, 2 weeks ago
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by that logic, liquidate every twenty years and never have to face that expense. further, its just a question of time before the Toyota and Hondas fall into the same trap?
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i don't believe it.
the auto makers got into this jam with the full complicity of the unions. rather than hammer out a relationship that's good for long term survival -we're not even talking about success- they had an incestuous relationship that feathered both their nests. until the Wall Street liquidity crisis.
47 million. right. thanks. i don't know what i was thinking.
even so, that makes it worse. call it 50M. how do you just drop another 16% onto the current cost structure? even one that's wildly more cost effective. i don't believe that either.
until we work some kind of feedback loop into the system where costs can be measured and rationalized by the users, any fiat national healthcare system is doomed.
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rimbaud6 months, 2 weeks ago
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Ah, the good old days... when The Company built the town and provided not only health care, but housing for its workers to live in and the store where they could do their grocery shopping! It was a little like being in the military: you had on-base housing and the PX.
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Progressive6 months, 2 weeks ago
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Reminds me of a song...
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http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=sixteen+tons+t... -
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Progressive6 months, 2 weeks ago
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Yes...they wrote a song about it:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIfu2A0ezq0
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beavith16 months, 2 weeks ago
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its not because i 'want' or 'don't want.' what i want is immaterial.
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the system the powers that be seem to be hell bent on providing is unsustainable out of the chute. the French system is admirable, but thanks to the 'not invented here syndrome' nobody talks about it.
shame on me? the system is broke, and the system they want o build is even more broken.
it ain't me, babe.
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DoseASpinoza6 months, 2 weeks ago
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Miller left out that part of the reasons companies want control of health care is because it helps them hold employees hostage. Having national health insurance would take away one reason worker stay in crappy jobs (when the economy is good enough for them to have a choice).
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When the government releases "Productivity" numbers, remember that is a euphemism for how many hours of unpaid overtime they are squeezing out of employees.
Unemployment will be a key factor in health care reform. With unemployment nationwide on track to reach 10.4% (Tim Geithner says), the more people who are unemployed, underemployed and uninsured, the more support there will be for a system that does not rely on employment.
But there's COBRA, you say...well just for myself, COBRA coverage maintenance would have cost me more than my mortgage every month. And I did not need a doctor in the 18 months I'd have had it.
In this economy, some people will be unemployed or working at jobs without benefits for longer than 18 months. The recovery is going to take a long time, and universal health care would help businesses make that recovery. But when things are better, employees would look for better jobs, and employers don't want that. -
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DoseASpinoza6 months, 2 weeks ago
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Something I have not heard discussed is changing health savings accounts so people could carry over the money from year to year. I would do one if I knew I could use the money when I need it, not just lose it at the end of the year if I needed less health care that year.
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