Notes from Howard's Sabbatical from Working. The name comes from a 1998 lunch conversation. Someone asked if everything man knew was on the web. I answered "no" and off the top of my head said "Fidel Castro's favorite color". About every 6-12 months I've searched for this. It doesn't show up in the first 50 Google results (this blog is finally first for that search), AskJeeves says it's: red.
Friday, December 18, 2009
The Healthcare Bill
I don't really know what's currently in the Senate version of the Healthcare Bill. Howard Dean says it's crap. Paul Krugman and Nate Silver say it's much better than nothing. So far I'm listening to the Nobel winner and the election predictor.
1 comment:
Anonymous
said...
Both camps are correct.
The bill is crap, but it's better than nothing.
It's crap because it does little or nothing to bend the cost curve and is really just extra business for the already bloated parasite that is the health insurance industry in the US.
So, the insurers get to keep their anti-trust exemption, and there is no public option, so they only need to compete with each other.
Ooops, I forgot, they don't have to compete with each other cause they get to keep that nice anti-trust exemption.
Health care costs are going to continue to rise until only government workers and Goldman Sachs executives will have actual health insurance.
This bill is better than nothing because there are some nice reforms in there somewhere. Well, actually more like consumer protection clauses than actual reforms (e.g., restricting the pre-existing condition bullshit that insurance companies like to pull).
At the end of the day, it's really just business as usual for the insurance companies (no competition from the Gov't) and healthcare providers (good ol' fee for service as the standard healthcare business model) with the rest of us picking up the tab for about 25 million or so uninusured people.
Personally, I have no problem with helping out less fortunate people, but when the system is broken, simply throwing more money at it is a very temporary, very costly, and very ineffective solution.
Did you notice that the stock prices for almost every major health insurer hit highs last Friday. Obviously, a lot of very astute investors think the insurance industry is the big winner here.
Whooda thunk it..... So far the smart money is with Dr. Howard Dean.
1 comment:
Both camps are correct.
The bill is crap, but it's better than nothing.
It's crap because it does little or nothing to bend the cost curve and is really just extra business for the already bloated parasite that is the health insurance industry in the US.
So, the insurers get to keep their anti-trust exemption, and there is no public option, so they only need to compete with each other.
Ooops, I forgot, they don't have to compete with each other cause they get to keep that nice anti-trust exemption.
Health care costs are going to continue to rise until only government workers and Goldman Sachs executives will have actual health insurance.
This bill is better than nothing because there are some nice reforms in there somewhere. Well, actually more like consumer protection clauses than actual reforms (e.g., restricting the pre-existing condition bullshit that insurance companies like to pull).
At the end of the day, it's really just business as usual for the insurance companies (no competition from the Gov't) and healthcare providers (good ol' fee for service as the standard healthcare business model) with the rest of us picking up the tab for about 25 million or so uninusured people.
Personally, I have no problem with helping out less fortunate people, but when the system is broken, simply throwing more money at it is a very temporary, very costly, and very ineffective solution.
Did you notice that the stock prices for almost every major health insurer hit highs last Friday. Obviously, a lot of very astute investors think the insurance industry is the big winner here.
Whooda thunk it..... So far the smart money is with Dr. Howard Dean.
TT
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