Regarding Obamacare, I agree with the WSJ and Peggy Noonan's comments.
I did not see much of the news conference, my gag reflex was too strong.
So I start out with this premise. Big new federal giveaway programs are bad. That's even if it is some noble thing like taking care of poor folks.
This is not insurance - insurance would be a pool of willing participants who pay enough premiums to cover the costs of mutual risks. You do this with mathematical calculations and with experience data, and you keep enough cash in the account to cover disasters and unexpected changes in the projections of payouts. Generally, a large amount of cash is necessary so that the premium vs payout balance does not have to be held in short range tilts. Generally, the pool of cash is invested so that the income is about the same as the payout for long range stability.
This is what the WSJ said about the "news conference":
"His news conference the other night was bad. He was filibustery and spinny and gave long and largely unfollowable answers that seemed aimed at limiting the number of questions asked and running out the clock. You don’t do that when you’re fully confident. Far more seriously, he didn’t seem to be telling the truth. We need to create a new national health-care program in order to cut down on government spending? Who would believe that? Would anybody?"
It is totally irrational to think that a federal agency is somehow going to streamline costs so that the projected savings will pay for the medical care of everyone, with "poor" people not having to pay anything for the "insurance". See what has happened with Medicare, Medicaid etc.
Examine what happened in Massachusetts and Tennessee when "public option" was attempted.
This is nothing more than a gigantic $1 TRILLION per year plan to entitle everyone to free medical care, a la Medicare for the masses.
I don't consider the healthcare system to be "broken", and I like my insurance just fine. It costs the Company I work for about $10K per year, and I pay an additional $2K beyond that. The out of pocket expenses above that are small, and I can go to just about any doctor or hospital, hand them my card, and they will happily treat me. If there is any waiting list or unavailability, it would be very unusual. I have two excellent hospitals nearby in Plano, and they both have critical care and emergency facilities. Dozens of well qualified specialists near me have openings on their schedules within a week or so for just about any malady.
I have also experienced "public option" care at Parkland in downtown dallas. A friend of mine had an aneurism, and it proved fatal. Going into Parkland and seeing their (scary) waiting rooms is a flash of what we can expect. There must have been 200 people in the emergency waiting area, and they all looked pretty bad.
Noonan closes her editorial like this:
"So this might be an unarticulated public fear: When everyone pays for the same health-care system, the overseers will feel more and more a right to tell you how to live, which simple joys are allowed and which are not.
Americans in the most personal, daily ways feel they are less free than they used to be. And they are right, they are less free.
Who wants more of that?"
I could not agree more! Empowering the Federal government to pay a trillion a year and to decide who gets what and make me pay for it is outrageous. The fact that I pay a lot for good coverage and that others can't afford the same real insurance is not an argument that mandates me paying taxes to give everyone free care. We already give free coverage to the old, the disabled, to children, and to those willing to get in line at the county hospital. That is more than enough.
Free is not freedom. This will not be insurance. The cost will rise dramatically every year, just as soon as all those poor uninsured folks get signed up so they get free cataract surgery, free heart bypass, free drugs for whatever ails them; an extra week or two in the rehab unit...You somehow think the new "cost controls" imposed will reduce the current Medicare and Medicaid payouts to balance this? That is total nonsense. Look at the increases in Medicare/caid costs - they predict financial ruin. So Obama simply waves his hand and says we will name a panel of experts to fix this. He must have been reading too much Harry Potter.
Once this entitlement is given, there will be no turning back. Private insurance will now be equilibrated with the "option" of Obamacare. No one will be turned away, we will all have access to the same doctors and hospitals, based on a newly decreed fee structure, and a newly imposed gateway of who gets what.
If this could work, it would have worked in Mass and TN where there were gigantic federal subsidies to attempt this "insurance". In Massachusetts, the costs and the number of recipients is about double the projections. Note that the deficit is largely paid for by Medicare funds, and the amount of federal funding to the State of Mass has risen dramatically.
I think the reason so many people wail and moan about the "broken" system is because good, advanced, private care for all manner of disease and disability is expensive. Treatments are now available for things that would have surely killed you twenty years ago. Lives are being extended by months and sometimes years by drugs that cost thousands per month. Surgeries can fix or replace organs that no longer work. Images can be produced with fantastic details of the entire anatomy, and abnormal cells light up on the screen. It's all amazing, but it all costs a fortune, and those without the fortune think they are being discriminated against. No matter how mellow your tone, or how nicely the script on the teleprompter reads, this level of care will not suddenly become cheap by law.
The democrats want to make us all equal, to apply socialistic mandates so that my fancy new hospital in Plano will have to serve anyone who walks in the door, and they'll be paid what Medicare pays for each service. This idea can be made to sound noble, but it is radical, and it will not be sustainable. This is not Denmark.
