Latest tally: nationalized healthcare will benefit only 8000 people

[Monte_RCMS]

lucianne.com/thread/?artnum=588166

investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/559083/201101061902/This-Is-No-Reason-For-Reform.htm

Brief excerpt:

Crises: Over and over we were told Washington had to take over health care because so many Americans lack insurance due to pre-existing medical conditions. So how many fall into this category? Try 8,000.

You read that right: In this nation of nearly 311 million, the Democrats overhauled the world’s best health care system to benefit 8,000 people.

For this privileged minority, Washington will spend as much as $2.5 trillion, according to at least one independent estimate, while creating more than 150 regulatory agencies, health care analyst John Goodman says, “and causing perhaps 150 million or more people to change the coverage they now have.”

Goodman, president and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis, recalls that ObamaCare supporters shifted their position in the run-up to the vote and began to focus more sharply on this small group.

“Gone was any interest in ‘universal coverage’ or ‘insuring the uninsured’ or ‘helping poor people get health care,’” he wrote this week in his blog. “The case for change was focused almost exclusively on protecting the middle class from miserly insurance companies.”

Goodman believes, with good reason, that the “whole problem” of too many with pre-existing conditions “has been completely hyped and exaggerated from the get-go.”

If the number he cites on his blog is accurate, it’s easy to agree with him.

 

[rwoehmke]

The number 8000 is so small that it is almost insignificant in comparison to our total population. Insignificant to the point to lack any credibility. I would like to know how it was arrived at. In the state of Minnesota just this past week alone, 9800 more persons were now eligible for Medicaid in addition to those already on it.

 

[BGorski]

That is such an atrociously low number, it sounds implausible. Do you trust the sources you cite?? Does either have “an ax to grind” or tend to bias their reports??

If they seem reliable to you, then my question becomes when will FOX or MSNBC report this, or some congressman quote the number.

Thanks for the links.

Stay blest.
bobg

 

[kingal86]

I thought the healthcare reform was meant to benefit the uninsured as well? Not just those with pre-existing conditions who are scandalously denied coverage. (Surely everyone has some pre-existing condition if they’re honest, depending on definitions?)

At least I thought the uninsured were meant to benefit in theory (at least that’s how it was reported here in Britain, along with the usual scare stories about US health care compared to our tax-funded system), though I suspect in practice the mandated insurance will be much more expensive to less well-off individuals than similar systems in France or Germany (where the state is much more involved than in the present US legislation).

 

[Monte_RCMS]

That is such an atrociously low number, it sounds implausible. Do you trust the sources you cite?? Does either have “an ax to grind” or tend to bias their reports??

If they seem reliable to you, then my question becomes when will FOX or MSNBC report this, or some congressman quote the number.

Thanks for the links.

Stay blest.
bobg

I dunno … IBD is about the most reputable source in the media …

… and we know … that the 2500 or so pages of the health care law contain a lot of very strange things. Very few people have even read it. I don’t really trust what is in there.

 

[Dale_M]

That is such an atrociously low number, it sounds implausible.

The source cited in the first post says that it got the 8,000 number from a blog entry by the head of a think tank. After looking up that blog article it can be seen the figure comes from the Washington Post.

What the WaPo article says is that only 8,000 people have signed up so far for the special Medicare high-risk pools, which is lower than what was predicted.

So the 8,000 number has a very specific meaning: it is the number of persons who have so far taken advantage of one program offered in the health care reform package. It does not mean that only 8,000 people will ever sign up for that program. And it certainly does not mean that only 8,000 people will benefit from the changes of the reform package.

 

[kingal86]

So the 8,000 number has a very specific meaning: it is the number of persons who have so far taken advantage of one program offered in the health care reform package. It does not mean that only 8,000 people will ever sign up for that program. And it certainly does not mean that only 8,000 people will benefit from the changes of the reform package.

So a more accurate title for this thread would be: “The program to prevent those with pre-existing conditions being denied coverage has so far benefited 8000 people”?

 

[Hastrman]

So a more accurate title for this thread would be: “The program to prevent those with pre-existing conditions being denied coverage has so far benefited 8000 people”?

…at the expense of every single other person in their insurance system, sure.

See, there’s a reason insurance companies deny those with pre-existing conditions, or charge them more. Insurance only works—it is only capable of functioning—if any individual policy-holder is not more likely than a given probability to use the service within a given period. Add in people who are more likely, and it changes the whole calculus of the economics.

The difficulty I have with this bill is not that it gives the state power over healthcare; my problem with it is it seems to have been authored by people who are unacquainted with the basic economic principle of “scarcity”; it’s basically like punching holes in a fuel tank and then expecting the gas mileage not to change.

 

[kingal86]

…at the expense of every single other person in their insurance system, sure.

See, there’s a reason insurance companies deny those with pre-existing conditions, or charge them more. Insurance only works—it is only capable of functioning—if any individual policy-holder is not more likely than a given probability to use the service within a given period. Add in people who are more likely, and it changes the whole calculus of the economics.

That would be one of the reasons why I disagree, both morally and pragmatically, with the concept of a system based entirely on private health insurance, given that those with pre-existing conditions, e.g. people with cancer, are those who most need medical attention. I guess as a Brit I was brought up in a massively different political culture.

John Kay’s “The Truth About Markets” makes a good argument from an economist’s perspective about why an entirely privatised healthcare system (as opposed to say the German system) doesn’t work - and this book mostly argues against state planning/intervention (though does admittedly have a bias towards European-style mixed economies).

 

[St_Francis]

The number 8000 is so small that it is almost insignificant in comparison to our total population. Insignificant to the point to lack any credibility. I would like to know how it was arrived at. In the state of Minnesota just this past week alone, 9800 more persons were now eligible for Medicaid in addition to those already on it.

You are comparing apples and oranges. There are two groups of people in your post, the original group of people unable to get insurance because of previously existing conditions, and the group you want to compare that to, those eligible for Medicaid. Those with previously existing conditions who already met the criteria for receiving Medicaid are not part of tbe first group. I would posit that the reason the number of people eligible for Medicaid increased is that people’s financial resources declined sufficienly that they now fall under the guidelines for eligibility, which has nothing to do with the first group.

 

[St_Francis]

That would be one of the reasons why I disagree, both morally and pragmatically, with the concept of a system based entirely on private health insurance, given that those with pre-existing conditions, e.g. people with cancer, are those who most need medical attention. I guess as a Brit I was brought up in a massively different political culture.

John Kay’s “The Truth About Markets” makes a good argument from an economist’s perspective about why an entirely privatised healthcare system (as opposed to say the German system) doesn’t work - and this book mostly argues against state planning/intervention (though does admittedly have a bias towards European-style mixed economies).

You bring up a good point about the difficulties of health care under a market-based system, but putting health care under the government is not too much better, as the Europeans will find out as their baby boomers age. The US’s problems just show up more because such a large portion of government involvement in health care starts at retirement rather than being the (gradually steepening) increase seen in Europe.

 

[Timothy17]

If politicians and their financiers had spent one tenth the energy and funding they did on promoting health reform, and rather invested that time, energy and money into promoting its charitable alleviation, then there would be no health care crisis to reform.

ObamaCare above all else is a condemnation of the charitable spirit that the American people are world-renowned for ; it says Americans are too greedy to help those in need, and therefore the government had to spare those left-out from the avarice of their fellow countrymen.

A simple solution would be to establish an Office for Medical Relief that would operate on a case-by-case basis to assist, whether financially, materially or by means of network and information sharing those who were in desperate need of help. The government could have funded such an office with a guarantee to pay its base salary and operating costs while matching charitable donations from citizens for its purposes. The Office’s primary means, then, for increasing its budget would be to solicit the charity of citizen’s and it would become its own interest to invest those funds in such a manner that encouraged further charitable donations from citizens. This office could easily be audited and checked for fraud and any irregular officers or agents quickly dismissed for fear of needlessly scandalizing the administration or Congress.

Pax,
Tim

 

[Monte_RCMS]

“Insurance” is only about a group of people pooling their resources to share risks voluntarily.

Nationalized health care has none of those things and is not insurance.

 

[Hastrman]

That would be one of the reasons why I disagree, both morally and pragmatically, with the concept of a system based entirely on private health insurance, given that those with pre-existing conditions, e.g. people with cancer, are those who most need medical attention. I guess as a Brit I was brought up in a massively different political culture.

John Kay’s “The Truth About Markets” makes a good argument from an economist’s perspective about why an entirely privatised healthcare system (as opposed to say the German system) doesn’t work - and this book mostly argues against state planning/intervention (though does admittedly have a bias towards European-style mixed economies).

It’s actually funny, because everyone I know who’s had cancer in the US has paid for their care with a mix of insurance provided by their employer, and private donations from friends and coworkers—not state aid.

Did you know that, apparently, cancer is less likely to be fatal in America than nearly any country in the world?