I watched the House of Representatives vote for the Health Care Reform bill. I admit I didn’t expect it to pass so the outcome came as a surprise. The vote came in 220 -215, a comfortable victory for such a controversial and contentious issue. A comfortable victory so soon after the Democratic losses of the recent off-year election.
From the New York Times:
Sweeping Health Care Plan Passes House
By CARL HULSE and ROBERT PEAR
[Excerpt]
Handing President Obama a hard-fought victory, the House narrowly approved a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care system on Saturday night, advancing legislation that Democrats said could stand as their defining social policy achievement.
After a daylong clash with Republicans over what has been a Democratic goal for decades, lawmakers voted 220 to 215 to approve a plan that would cost $1.1 trillion over 10 years. Democrats said the legislation would provide overdue relief to Americans struggling to buy or hold on to health insurance.
“This is our moment to revolutionize health care in this country,” said Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and one of the chief architects of the bill.
One can hardly argue that the country needs some health care reform. First among the reforms needed is medical malpractice reform. The bill includes a provision to allow states to “experiment” with tort reform, but prohibits caps on awards.
I’ve never been a fan of government run health care though I’ve always believed in the necessity of the government health care programs that have existed here: Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration’s hospitals, and the military health care system. Although these programs are necessary for their respective constituents, they are bloated bureaucratic nightmares, inefficient, expensive, and with the exception of the military hospitals and clinics – riddled with fraud and abuse.
The government does a poor job with the programs it already administers, now they are trying to created yet another to serve even more. Our law makers are not good at seeing the unintended consequences of their edicts, and the Health Care Reform bill is chock full of potential future unintended consequences.
Will the premiums my husband and I each pay go up because their is now a codified minimum percentage employers must pay?
From the Wall Street Journal [excerpts]:
What the Pelosi Health-Care Bill Really Says
Sec. 412 (p. 272) says that employers must provide a “qualified plan” for their employees and pay 72.5% of the cost, and a smaller share of family coverage, or incur an 8% payroll tax. Small businesses, with payrolls from $500,000 to $750,000, are fined less.
Currently, our separate plans are split at roughly 90/10%, where we pay the 10%, give or take a few percentage points. Our plans are from two different employers [my husband's under his retirement benefits package from the City of Charleston and mine from my employer]. Interestingly, both of our plans are “self-funded.”
Will the cost saving “self-funded” plans become untenable under the new bill?
Another snippet from the Wall Street Journal article:
Sec. 303 (pp. 167-168) makes it clear that, although the “qualified plan” is not yet designed, it will be of the “one size fits all” variety. The bill claims to offer choice—basic, enhanced and premium levels—but the benefits are the same. Only the co-pays and deductibles differ. You will have to enroll in the same plan, whether the government is paying for it or you and your employer are footing the bill.
A snippet from Bloomberg.com’s House Passes $1 Trillion U.S. Health-Care Legislation [Kristin Jensen and James Rowley]:
The bill would make large businesses that self-insure their employees pay $2 billion in fees over the next decade. And it adopts a Senate proposal to set a $2,500 limit beginning in 2011 on contributions to tax-advantaged Flexible Spending Accounts used to pay out-of-pocket medical costs. [Emphasis added]
I have a lot of questions and an equal number of concerns about the H.R. 3962 but I admit I’ve not yet read the bill. For those who would like a bit of self-abuse this Sunday morning OpenCongress.org offers access in a user friendly format.
I comfort myself with the knowledge that the Health Care Reform act still has to go to the Senate where it will go through changes and voted on. There is still a good chance that this will all go down in flames. Many bills pass the House of Representatives that do not pass the Senate. Of course, I said that very thing about the Stimulus package of earlier this year and much to my horror it passed the Senate with relative ease.
We would all do well to recall Winston Churchill’s words…
“True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.”
There is a lot of hype, misinformation, shrill rhetoric, uninformed elation coming from just about every outlet, few of which are free from one form of self interest or another. A 2,000 page bill affords a great deal of space to bury truly worrisome things. The size of the bill also affords an opportunity to “stretch the truth” about what is in there and what is not… who’s going to actually read those 2,000 pages to fact check an item?
If you read something alarming do not automatically assume it is correct, or mostly correct after “interpretation”, make the attempt to confirm the information. We are empowered by the internet in this “Information Age” and this issue is worth being informed on because the “potentials” – good and bad – are many.
A thoughtful write up of the Law of Unintended consequences can be found at The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
Unintended Consequences
by Rob Norton
[snip - the last paragraph]
One final sobering example is the case of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. Afterward, many coastal states enacted laws placing unlimited liability on tanker operators. As a result, the Royal Dutch/Shell group, one of the world’s biggest oil companies, began hiring independent ships to deliver oil to the United States instead of using its own forty-six-tanker fleet. Oil specialists fretted that other reputable shippers would flee as well rather than face such unquantifiable risk, leaving the field to fly-by-night tanker operators with leaky ships and iffy insurance. Thus, the probability of spills probably increased and the likelihood of collecting damages probably decreased as a consequence of the new laws. [Emphasis added]
… 2,000 pages … <groan> ……
V – We are of Peace
I finally had the opportunity to watch the new ABC show V today. I have to wait for ABC shows to become available on Hulu.com [don't ask] and today was the first day V’s pilot episode was available. A premier I eagerly awaited.
I am a stealth hardcore SciFi fan, something not exactly common for my demographic. Even given my already gleeful anticipation, the political junkie in me began to salivate when I read this piece from the Chicago Tribune:
Please do hop on over and read the entire article, regardless of your political “flavor” it offers some great insight, both into the show – and into our political hearts.
A funny thing though, in that sadly pathetic kind of way, is that there are people who really do believe the earth is infiltrated by “Reptilian aliens”, that they walk among us and are the puppeteers of the “power elite” of the world.
The show inspired a bit of personal discomfort when I realized that I would probably be one of the many who are hoodwinked in our fictitious television drama. I do believe that somewhere out there in the vastness of the universe other intelligent life exists. I believe that life, or some of it anyway, is vastly more advanced than we. And, I hope that they will one day introduce themselves to us – to our benefit.
A hope not unlike that of many religious folk who hope that the God of their understanding will come forth and set the world aright, right as judged by their beliefs that is. I don’t want aliens to come to earth and set us straight, to right all our wrongs, etc. I just think it would be cool in the extreme to know we are not alone and that there is hope that we will evolve past the “let’s kill each other” phase. Highly advanced, beneficent aliens would be affirmation that is possible, even if only remotely so.
A few years ago I asked myself if my wish for confirmation on advanced alien life [of the good kind] was, perhaps, inspired by my suspicions that human beings are genetically incapable of not bringing about our own mass extinction. My answer to myself: Probably. The history of the last few years has done nothing but reinforce that belief. It went from a vague suspicion to a rather well entrenched belief.
As such, as I said, I would no doubt be among the “adoring clueless”. But, I said the same thing to my husband the first time we watched Independence Day. I’d be like that exotic dancer that made a sign and went to a gathering at the top of a tall building to welcome the aliens — then the aliens vaporized the building just as the dancer realized the foolishness of her naivete.
But back to V. When things are tough and unpleasant we want someone to swoop in and make them all better. Who can argue that things are pretty tough and unpleasant for an awful lot of people? That alone was a large part of Obama’s mass appeal. Young, charismatic, attractive, he promised to sweep away all the old detritus and cut away all the dead tissue so healthy tissue [a healthy society, a "fair" society] could grow in its place. I won’t get into the stuff about all the broken promises and incompetence, as those are topics for another post. But, not only has he failed to make things better — he has made them worse, or empowered others to make things worse. Like humanity is scheduled to find out in V – the beneficent problem solvers are really here to eat us. You can’t get much worse than that.
Below is the pilot episode, embedded from Hulu.com just in case you haven’t seen it yet and are unfamiliar with how to navigate Hulu. By the way, Hulu is a wonderful thing indeed. I get to watch the other ABC show I’ve become hooked on this season, FlashForward. Both of these new shows have a lot to say about human psychology in the best traditions of fictional drama, and they’re entertaining to boot.