Voting Against A Ban On Pre-Existing Conditions

We've already heard the Democrat talking points about how Republicans want to vote against or repeal legislation that grants coverage for pre-existing conditions and extended coverage for young adults under their parent's plan.  Aren't they mean and nasty to want to rescind such wonderfully compassionate legislation.  I've already heard this from a progressive friend of mine.  (yes, I have one.)  But this is tantamount to offereing somebody a hot fudge sundae covered in maggots and cockroaches and then being shocked when they vomit on your shoes.

There is a bit of ice cream and hot fudge in the bill, but the maggots and roaches are far more plentiful.  Here is a list of just a few things that make the sundae not just unpalatable but quite revolting.
 - Stages a government takeover of the entire student loan business thereby eliminating more than 30,000 private sector jobs and adding further hardship to an already struggling banking industry.  (Bail them out so they don't fail and then steal their business - good plan)
 - Forces people to buy coverage they don't want and levies a fine on them if they don't.
 - Places an excise tax on Medical Equipment which will cause the cost of the equipment to rise.
 - Places a 40% tax on insurance companies which will be passed on to the customer.
 - Mandates that small business owners offer group coverage to their employees whether they can afford it or not.  Businesses will either fail or hire fewer workers in an already struggling economy.
 - Places a medical cost to administrative cost ratio on the Insurance companies which will define them as insolvent in all 50 states.
 - Mandates that Insurance companies will have to refund premium amounts in excess of the medical cost thereby allowing them no cusion for the years when medical costs exceed the premiums collected.
 - Sets up a government program to monitor administrative costs of the insurance companies so that while the admin costs of insurance goes down, the admin costs of the government skyrocket.
 - Limits the amount that you can put in your own FSA to $2,500 per individual.  This serves no purpose except for the government to tell you what you can do with your money.  The FSAs are used to pay for child care, co-pays, deductibles and non-covered medical expenses so what right does the government have to tell you how much you can have deducted from your paycheck to cover these things?
 - Places a cap on how high an insurance premium can be without considering the actual medical costs of the coverage.  And remember that they have left the companies no cusion to cover excess costs.  This is equivalent to telling GM that they cannot charge more than $20,000 for a car no matter what it is.  How well do you think that would work and how long do you think GM would stay in business?
 - Mandates that there can be no more than a 3% variation in premiums across the population which means that a healthy person who takes excellent care of themselves, eats right, exercises and doesn't smoke or drink has to pay more in their premium in order to cover the 400 lb, chain smoking, beer swilling couch potatoe down the street.  If the premiums can't be more than 3% different do you think the sick guy's will go down or the healthy guy's will go up?
 - This is my favorite - The states will have to increase the number of people on Medicaid and raise the Medicaid re-imbursement rate even though many of these states are fighting against mounting debts already.

In the last instance the supporters say, "but the federal government is going to pick up the tab for that," and they are - for a few years - and then it's all up to the states.  The only difference there is that they put the maggots under the ice cream instead of on top of it.

These are not Republican talking points but actual extracts from the Bill.  I read it.  Just some of it, not all of it, so I can only imagine what kind of disgusting additions are in the portions I didn't read.

This bill was supposed to be about health care reform and controlling the rising costs of care but all it addresses is insurance, and it raises the cost of that.  It does address medical equipment, but it raises the cost of that as well.  There are no measures within this bill which will actually address the rising cost of healthcare, and if you're suprised by that then you haven't been paying attention.

Call me crazy, but I prefer my hot fudge sundae without maggots and cock roaches.
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Why Healthcare Reform Will Increase Premiums

Here is the reality in a nutshell.

Medicare is bankrupting the country because it doesn't collect enough in premiums to cover the benefits paid out.  Now our government is mandating that private insurance pay out more benefits.  In order to stay more solvent than Medicare, the premiums will have to increase at the same rate as the benefits paid.

One way to save Medicare is to increase the premiums to cover the benefits paid, (what a wild and crazy concept to take in more than you pay out) and then Medicare premiums would be just as high as private insurance.

Health Insurance Explained With Food

I like food - a lot - so it becomes a frame of reference for me with a lot of things, but there is a food reference which really helps to explain health insurance and why some of these new provisions have the potential to be disastrous.

An individual health insurance plan is like ordering off the menu.  You pay for what you as an individual are going to eat.  Your cost for the bill reflects what you are costing the restaurant to feed you.  The more you're going to cost them, the more you're going to pay.  A group insurance plan is like a buffet with the same price for every individual.  The buffet works because it's a balance between those who eat enough for 4 people against those who barely eat anything.  That's the insurance premium balance as well.  Those who are sick and will cost the insurance company thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars against the healthy people who cost the company nothing or next to nothing.  It balances and, as with a buffet, those who use less pay for those who use more.

However, with a buffet, everybody who uses it is paying for it.  Now imagine that the restaurant has to offer the buffet to people who can't pay for it because it's unfair that some people get the benefit of all you can eat while others do not.  Now the restaraunt has their balance thrown off and are feeding more people with no additional money coming in and no more food.  Some of these new people will also be eating in excess of the average and costing the company even more.  When this occurs, one of two things will happen at that buffet.  Either the cost will go up for those who pay for their meal, or the restaurant will be unable to cover the cost of the new eaters and go out of business.

This of course does nothing to really increase the availability of an all you can eat privilege for all.  It is still limited to how much food there is, how many seats the restaraunt has and the locations of them.  There are still those that will not be able to get all you can eat because there are simply not enough buffets to serve all of the people in the area.  Will the government then mandate that all restaraunts offer an all you can eat option thereby forcing them into bankruptcy?  Probably.

The insurance companies are all risk mitigation.  They exist to cover the cost of your health care.  If the costs you accrue rise, then the premium whose sole purpose is to cover those costs will have to rise as well.  The group policy is nothing but a buffet with the high cost of a few members being offset by the low cost of the majority of the members.  As you increase the number of high cost users without increasing the low cost members as well, the price for everybody goes up.  If you do all of this without increasing the number of doctors - and this new plan has the potential to actually decrease that number - you do nothing to improve access to health care.

What this bill does is give people access to health insurance but does nothing to give them access to health care.  It potentially has the opposite effect.  A health insurance card does nothing but take up space in your wallet if you can't find a doctor.