Comments on: If Supreme Court strikes down health care law, then what? http://sutherlandinstitute.org/news/2012/06/27/if-supreme-court-strikes-down-health-care-law-then-what/ News and views on Utah public policy Fri, 24 May 2013 23:32:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Managed Health Care Associates, Inc. Launches BizMed™ Program to Alternate … | Alternative Health http://sutherlandinstitute.org/news/2012/06/27/if-supreme-court-strikes-down-health-care-law-then-what/#comment-2162 Managed Health Care Associates, Inc. Launches BizMed™ Program to Alternate … | Alternative Health Wed, 30 Jan 2013 16:45:04 +0000 http://www.sutherlandinstitute.org/news_old/?p=3421#comment-2162 [...] In other words, the only alternative path forward is agreements such as the Health Care Compact – a locally driven, state-by-state approach to solving health …www.sutherlandinstitute.org/…/if-supreme-court-strikes-down-… [...]

]]> By: Thomasfritz http://sutherlandinstitute.org/news/2012/06/27/if-supreme-court-strikes-down-health-care-law-then-what/#comment-1677 Thomasfritz Mon, 02 Jul 2012 01:07:00 +0000 http://www.sutherlandinstitute.org/news_old/?p=3421#comment-1677  Did you look under your bed today to see if one of those agents from Obama is lurking there? I saw one the other day behind my tree in the back yard.  Dangerous times indeed….

]]> By: Thomasfritz http://sutherlandinstitute.org/news/2012/06/27/if-supreme-court-strikes-down-health-care-law-then-what/#comment-1843 Thomasfritz Mon, 02 Jul 2012 01:07:00 +0000 http://www.sutherlandinstitute.org/news_old/?p=3421#comment-1843  Did you look under your bed today to see if one of those agents from Obama is lurking there? I saw one the other day behind my tree in the back yard.  Dangerous times indeed….

]]> By: Jbo http://sutherlandinstitute.org/news/2012/06/27/if-supreme-court-strikes-down-health-care-law-then-what/#comment-1676 Jbo Sun, 01 Jul 2012 22:57:00 +0000 http://www.sutherlandinstitute.org/news_old/?p=3421#comment-1676 what most Americans have forgotten or never knew is that we used to have the #1 and most affordable healthcare system in the world before government decided to regulate it in all extremes. Also, you have clearly not read the bill. Anybody who does knows it is not about healthcare, but it is a collection of evils such as government controlled euthenasia. The feds decide who lives and who dies. They decide who gets treatment and who doesn’t. They have permission to electronically tag you from birth with a microchip. The elderly will be too ‘costly’ to keep alive. An emergency reserve pseudo-army support team, part of Obama’s domestic national security force. Over 150 new government agencies. Regular visits to your home to tell you if you’re a good parent or not, and sometimes take them if the healthcare worker is in a bad mood that day and doesn’t like the way you told your kid to behave during the visit. Obama are supporters have simply not read any of the bill, or they have only been fed tiny pieces of it.

]]> By: Jbo http://sutherlandinstitute.org/news/2012/06/27/if-supreme-court-strikes-down-health-care-law-then-what/#comment-1842 Jbo Sun, 01 Jul 2012 22:57:00 +0000 http://www.sutherlandinstitute.org/news_old/?p=3421#comment-1842 what most Americans have forgotten or never knew is that we used to have the #1 and most affordable healthcare system in the world before government decided to regulate it in all extremes. Also, you have clearly not read the bill. Anybody who does knows it is not about healthcare, but it is a collection of evils such as government controlled euthenasia. The feds decide who lives and who dies. They decide who gets treatment and who doesn’t. They have permission to electronically tag you from birth with a microchip. The elderly will be too ‘costly’ to keep alive. An emergency reserve pseudo-army support team, part of Obama’s domestic national security force. Over 150 new government agencies. Regular visits to your home to tell you if you’re a good parent or not, and sometimes take them if the healthcare worker is in a bad mood that day and doesn’t like the way you told your kid to behave during the visit. Obama are supporters have simply not read any of the bill, or they have only been fed tiny pieces of it.

]]> By: Thomasfritz http://sutherlandinstitute.org/news/2012/06/27/if-supreme-court-strikes-down-health-care-law-then-what/#comment-1675 Thomasfritz Sat, 30 Jun 2012 02:44:00 +0000 http://www.sutherlandinstitute.org/news_old/?p=3421#comment-1675  Don – see my rather long comment above.  Read the last paragraph.  What do you suggest who should pay?  You want CHIP and such programs out, incl. Medicare.  OK.  Who pays for grandma/pa if they are sick at age 80.  NO private insurer will give cover them, unless you have a mandate since ins. companies need a large base of healthy people to cover the huge costs of the few that get really sick.  That’s how private insurance works. 
Grandma worked as a caregiver for decades, raised a family and saved nothing since she never made much.  her two kids barely get buy as some lost jobs and have their own kids and problems.  Cost fo the procedure is $500,000, which is very normal.
Who pays for the kid (see above) and grandma and how.  if you want them to die without care, please say so.  otherwise, provide a solution and into just rail against this or that program.  These are realistic numbers and tens of millions of people are in that situation.
maybe you are on medicare?  If that didn’t exist, how would you cover your $500,000 cost?  What if your wife has the same problem for $500,000.  Do you just write a check?
I am not attacking you and respect your belief in a small govt.  I have it too, but health care is not an industry that is suited for the private sector like TV making or the cell phone industry. But all I hear form conservatives is to get the govt. out and the free market in.  OK, but who pays if a kid is sick with cancer that can costs potentially millions and the parents and family has no money.

]]> By: Thomasfritz http://sutherlandinstitute.org/news/2012/06/27/if-supreme-court-strikes-down-health-care-law-then-what/#comment-1841 Thomasfritz Sat, 30 Jun 2012 02:44:00 +0000 http://www.sutherlandinstitute.org/news_old/?p=3421#comment-1841  Don – see my rather long comment above.  Read the last paragraph.  What do you suggest who should pay?  You want CHIP and such programs out, incl. Medicare.  OK.  Who pays for grandma/pa if they are sick at age 80.  NO private insurer will give cover them, unless you have a mandate since ins. companies need a large base of healthy people to cover the huge costs of the few that get really sick.  That’s how private insurance works. 
Grandma worked as a caregiver for decades, raised a family and saved nothing since she never made much.  her two kids barely get buy as some lost jobs and have their own kids and problems.  Cost fo the procedure is $500,000, which is very normal.
Who pays for the kid (see above) and grandma and how.  if you want them to die without care, please say so.  otherwise, provide a solution and into just rail against this or that program.  These are realistic numbers and tens of millions of people are in that situation.
maybe you are on medicare?  If that didn’t exist, how would you cover your $500,000 cost?  What if your wife has the same problem for $500,000.  Do you just write a check?
I am not attacking you and respect your belief in a small govt.  I have it too, but health care is not an industry that is suited for the private sector like TV making or the cell phone industry. But all I hear form conservatives is to get the govt. out and the free market in.  OK, but who pays if a kid is sick with cancer that can costs potentially millions and the parents and family has no money.

]]> By: Thomasfritz http://sutherlandinstitute.org/news/2012/06/27/if-supreme-court-strikes-down-health-care-law-then-what/#comment-1674 Thomasfritz Sat, 30 Jun 2012 02:35:00 +0000 http://www.sutherlandinstitute.org/news_old/?p=3421#comment-1674  I agree that a third party between patients and providers adds costs, complexity and, with insurance companies, an adversarial relationship.  Insurance plans that pay practically for the first dollar of whatever service you get are essentially prepaid insurance plans since ins. cos. know that on average, you will use say $2,000 of services in a year.  They encourage waste.
I disagree that high profits attract competition in the ins. market.  The financial and regulatory barriers to entry in this market are huge.  That’s why we only have a few giants out there.  It’s the same with high end microchips that power computers.  Essentially, Intel owns most of that market since a plant to make them (a fab) costs several billions.  In fact, the big players get bigger every year and squeeze out the smaller ones or buy them up.
The essential argument about health care (HC) in this country is this:  maybe 50% or so (just rough guesses) of the population in this country gets excellent HC because they have good ins. plans.  Very few people can pay out of pocket for anything serious. They can also afford the co-pays, deductibles and other costs.  That’s the part of the population that’s to the right of the income distribution curve.  The other 50% is simply too poor to even pay for an office visit and doesn’t generate enough revenues for their employers to justify that the employer buys insurance.  These people depend on a patchwork of govt., charity and other HC plans or go without until they have to go to an ER.  No matter how much you write about free market, that people should pay their own basic HC and then get catastrophic ins., the numbers don’t add up.  if you make $40,000 or less for a family of four, which almost half the country makes (many maker far less than that) , you can barley pay your other bills.  You need housing, a car to get to work, some food, clothes, expenses for kids, etc.  There is NOTHING left for an HSA account or anything else.  This is all wishful thinking.  In other countries, they found that out a long time ago and the top 50% simply said that we pay for the bottom 50% since sick and uninsured people are too costly in the long run.  The top 50% of the country pays for almost all public education since illiterate people are costly too (prisons, lost productivity, etc.).  Our Founding Fathers figured that out already. In the US, the top 50% has to extend this mindset to healthcare too.  We barely tax the bottom 50% since there is nothing to tax, and there is even less to extract to pay for expensive HC.  It’s simple math and you can talk all you want about solutions.  If we didn’t have that division, many solutions would work.  But we have had  this discussion for decades and it gets worse every year.  if you throw out the govt. from HC and leave it all in the private sector, soon the top 50% would scream for the govt. to take care of all the sick people because charity cannot handle them. That’s an illusion and there is no free charity.  Somebody has to pay for the bandaid and the expensive MRI.  I prefer everybody than just those with insurance.  Conservatives complain about the tax in Obamacare, but not about the hiden tax in my premium to support the uninsured. 
You may say – the bottom 50% just needs to work harder and make more money.  No matter what, without some redistribution of wealth, there will always be lots of people who do the dirty work and not earn much.  if the fruit picker makes $100K, then soon the engineer demands $1 million (why study so long if you can pick fruit) and prices move up accordingly (that’s free market too).
So the solution is to find the fairest way for the top 50% to come up with the money to pay for the HC of the bottom 50%, just as we do with education and many other social expenses. if not, the problem gets only worse.  The bottom 50% with no or little health care and no money to pay for even basic care will not go away.  They vote too and the social costs will become so great that a solution will be found.  The ACA did just that, imperfect as it is. 
You and Don below can talk about free market in HC until the day you go to the doctor and ask for a price list for all services, like a restaurant menu.  Until then, HC is a dark cave.  The patients don’t know what they need, how much it costs and how to pay for it.  Today you are healthy and tomorrow you have a $1 million problem on your hand.  Unless we resort to every man/woman on his/her own, we will need some form of solution whereby everybody pays into the pot in case you become one of the 5% of the population that consumes half of all HC costs.
I am open for non-ideological solutions.  Let’s start by telling me how a family of four with an income of $25,000 or less a year (I think that applies to a quarter of the population) should get HC if they have cancer.  No charity, since it’s not free and nobody can supply HC for “free” to a quarter of the population. Who should pay or shall they just die.  if so, be honest to say.  if not, what do you suggest.  Obviously, they cannot pay a dime and if the main earner is sick, they have zero income.  Don rails against CHIP below, s what if the kid has cancer ($500K say). You are for families, pro-life, etc.  who pays for her care? thomasfritz@yahoo.com

]]> By: Thomasfritz http://sutherlandinstitute.org/news/2012/06/27/if-supreme-court-strikes-down-health-care-law-then-what/#comment-1840 Thomasfritz Sat, 30 Jun 2012 02:35:00 +0000 http://www.sutherlandinstitute.org/news_old/?p=3421#comment-1840  I agree that a third party between patients and providers adds costs, complexity and, with insurance companies, an adversarial relationship.  Insurance plans that pay practically for the first dollar of whatever service you get are essentially prepaid insurance plans since ins. cos. know that on average, you will use say $2,000 of services in a year.  They encourage waste.
I disagree that high profits attract competition in the ins. market.  The financial and regulatory barriers to entry in this market are huge.  That’s why we only have a few giants out there.  It’s the same with high end microchips that power computers.  Essentially, Intel owns most of that market since a plant to make them (a fab) costs several billions.  In fact, the big players get bigger every year and squeeze out the smaller ones or buy them up.
The essential argument about health care (HC) in this country is this:  maybe 50% or so (just rough guesses) of the population in this country gets excellent HC because they have good ins. plans.  Very few people can pay out of pocket for anything serious. They can also afford the co-pays, deductibles and other costs.  That’s the part of the population that’s to the right of the income distribution curve.  The other 50% is simply too poor to even pay for an office visit and doesn’t generate enough revenues for their employers to justify that the employer buys insurance.  These people depend on a patchwork of govt., charity and other HC plans or go without until they have to go to an ER.  No matter how much you write about free market, that people should pay their own basic HC and then get catastrophic ins., the numbers don’t add up.  if you make $40,000 or less for a family of four, which almost half the country makes (many maker far less than that) , you can barley pay your other bills.  You need housing, a car to get to work, some food, clothes, expenses for kids, etc.  There is NOTHING left for an HSA account or anything else.  This is all wishful thinking.  In other countries, they found that out a long time ago and the top 50% simply said that we pay for the bottom 50% since sick and uninsured people are too costly in the long run.  The top 50% of the country pays for almost all public education since illiterate people are costly too (prisons, lost productivity, etc.).  Our Founding Fathers figured that out already. In the US, the top 50% has to extend this mindset to healthcare too.  We barely tax the bottom 50% since there is nothing to tax, and there is even less to extract to pay for expensive HC.  It’s simple math and you can talk all you want about solutions.  If we didn’t have that division, many solutions would work.  But we have had  this discussion for decades and it gets worse every year.  if you throw out the govt. from HC and leave it all in the private sector, soon the top 50% would scream for the govt. to take care of all the sick people because charity cannot handle them. That’s an illusion and there is no free charity.  Somebody has to pay for the bandaid and the expensive MRI.  I prefer everybody than just those with insurance.  Conservatives complain about the tax in Obamacare, but not about the hiden tax in my premium to support the uninsured. 
You may say – the bottom 50% just needs to work harder and make more money.  No matter what, without some redistribution of wealth, there will always be lots of people who do the dirty work and not earn much.  if the fruit picker makes $100K, then soon the engineer demands $1 million (why study so long if you can pick fruit) and prices move up accordingly (that’s free market too).
So the solution is to find the fairest way for the top 50% to come up with the money to pay for the HC of the bottom 50%, just as we do with education and many other social expenses. if not, the problem gets only worse.  The bottom 50% with no or little health care and no money to pay for even basic care will not go away.  They vote too and the social costs will become so great that a solution will be found.  The ACA did just that, imperfect as it is. 
You and Don below can talk about free market in HC until the day you go to the doctor and ask for a price list for all services, like a restaurant menu.  Until then, HC is a dark cave.  The patients don’t know what they need, how much it costs and how to pay for it.  Today you are healthy and tomorrow you have a $1 million problem on your hand.  Unless we resort to every man/woman on his/her own, we will need some form of solution whereby everybody pays into the pot in case you become one of the 5% of the population that consumes half of all HC costs.
I am open for non-ideological solutions.  Let’s start by telling me how a family of four with an income of $25,000 or less a year (I think that applies to a quarter of the population) should get HC if they have cancer.  No charity, since it’s not free and nobody can supply HC for “free” to a quarter of the population. Who should pay or shall they just die.  if so, be honest to say.  if not, what do you suggest.  Obviously, they cannot pay a dime and if the main earner is sick, they have zero income.  Don rails against CHIP below, s what if the kid has cancer ($500K say). You are for families, pro-life, etc.  who pays for her care? thomasfritz@yahoo.com

]]> By: Derek Monson http://sutherlandinstitute.org/news/2012/06/27/if-supreme-court-strikes-down-health-care-law-then-what/#comment-1673 Derek Monson Thu, 28 Jun 2012 15:15:00 +0000 http://www.sutherlandinstitute.org/news_old/?p=3421#comment-1673  Most of your post illustrates quite well how we need a free market in health care.  You are largely correct in saying that “there is no ‘free market’ in health care now”…that is exactly why the free market is the solution to many of our health care problems. 

For instance, if there were truly free market competition in the health care sector, what we paid for health care wouldn’t be going to pay for everyone else’s health care.  This is because in a free market, people needing health care services would be paying for most of their health care services directly and by themselves, rather than having a third party (insurance or government) do it for them.  The exceptions to this, of course, would be health care services for unpredictable and disastrously expensive health care problems, which is what genuine insurance is meant for.

Free market competition is also really the only way in a free society to do anything about excessive profit margins for insurance companies.  If those profits are too big, in a free market other insurance companies would start up, or other current insurance companies market would notice an opportunity, and they would provide the same product for less money, thus lowering the profit margins you denounce.

And as a side note, if you think insurance company profits are such a bad thing, than mandating everyone buy insurance should be the worst idea in the world.  After all, what the mandate is going to do is FORCE everyone to give their money to the very companies that you don’t like, driving their profits even higher.

Derek Monson

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