Dumbest Statement Coming Out of Congress Yet on Healthcare . . .
A partial of the Republican plan:
introduced by Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), would end Medicaid expansion, decouple health insurance from employers, offer a tax credit of up to $5,000 to fund HSAs, and eliminate most regulations on what health plans must cover. Insurers would be able to sell policies across state lines; regulations that mandate birth-control coverage would be nixed.
Hmmmm, that’s nice . . .
This is about the dumbest statement I have read yet by Senator Rand Paul;
“What if 30 percent of the public had health savings accounts?” Paul asked. “What do you do when you use your own money? You call up doctors and ask the price. . . . If you create a real marketplace, you drive prices down.”
“What if” we were all billionaires, able to buy the best care, and negotiate with multi-billion dollar hospitals? Yea “what if” . . . “What if” all the Senators and Congressmen, and Judges had our very same healthcare plan? Yea “what if” . . . “What if” all of those people fighting against the PPACA had really put some effort into learning about it, put the effort into forcing Congress to move forward with making it better . . . where would we be today? Yea “What if” . . .
Still love kicking the one layer deep naysayers around as they too will get a douse of what this is all about if ESI disappears as well as birth-control. Healthcare policies across state lines will be similar to what bank chartering is like with a couple of states controlling all the policies and no real competition (just like interest rates and usury).
“What if . . . “
This is the cover incidentals and let government be stuck with catastrophic care approach without actually admitting it.
Dumbest statement ever by Rand Paul? You sure about that? How about, “Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be ‘constitutional’ does not make it so. The whole thing remains unconstitutional.”
Or, on health care: “With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have to realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery. It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.”
Adams:
You are almost quoting from Ayn Rand. If you are libertarian? you have already lost with me. Rand Paul appears to be such. I have little use for them or the Koch Bros.
“with any good or service that is provided by some specific group of men, if you try to make its possession by all a right, you thereby enslave the providers of the service, wreck the service, and end up depriving the very consumers you are supposed to be helping. To call ‘medical care’ a right will merely enslave the doctors and thus destroy the quality of medical care in this country. … It will deliver doctors bound hands and feet to the mercies of the bureaucracy.” released by the Ayn Rand Institute in 1993 as a comment on the Clinton health plan.
Sorry, this is trash coming from someone (Ayn Rand) who ended up taking Medicare in the end. Hopefully there is a different discussion to be had, I will listen. Had to change this to make my point clearer.
“What if 30 percent of the public had health savings accounts?” Paul asked. “What do you do when you use your own money? You call up doctors and ask the price. . . . If you create a real marketplace, you drive prices down.”
Oh, except according to Rand Paul’s rules you can’t use your own money from your own HSA for abortions. Those are “libertarian” rules.
Re Rand Paul for a long time (including today) there has been a special law to allow drafting of Physicians into the military. (it would just take a declaration of need by the DOD to activate) So is that draft slavery also (which imho conscription is)
What good are tax credits when about half the households don’t pay any federal income tax now.
Jerry:
They get the $5,000 anyway.
Actually, I’m all for Paul’s suggestion, because, presumably, in the statute creating this system there will be a subsection that provides everyone with the power of clairvoyance to know ahead of time that they will be, say, injured in a car accident or have a heart attack or stroke or appendicitis.
This will save a lot of money in that you will then avoid the car accident. And it will guarantee that you will be right there in the ER when you have the heart attack or stroke. And you can schedule your appendectomy for a more convenient time than if, say, you woke up one morning in excruciating pain and it was really a bad day for that.
Unless, of course, you’re a procrastinator and had to make those price-comparison calls while you were having the heart attack, the stroke, or appendicitis, rather than planning ahead.
Still….
Go for it, Rand!
Adams, obviously, you are not a physician in, say, Canada. Or Germany. And certainly not in France. Or Australia. Or Denmark. Or Britain. Or any other country that conscripts its physicians into slavery.
In fact, you’re obviously not even a janitor at a hospital in one of those countries. Or a nurse there.
So you probably think those folks are getting PAID for their services. And that someone didn’t come to their house and conscript them. Which shows you how little you know.
@Beverly Mann
Adams posted “Dumbest statement ever by Rand Paul? You sure about that? How about . . . ,” which I took to mean that what followed was even dumber. IOW, that Adams doesn’t support the comments s/he quotes.
Joel:
I agree, Adams is pointing out dumber statements.
Oh, dear. Joel, why would you think I thought Adams supports ANY of the Paul quotes, rather than that he’s dumbfounded at their stupefying absurdity and illogic?
My comment was intended as a facetious supplement to his, not a rebuttal to it.
Lordy. Didn’t think that would be misunderstood.
@Beverly,
You should probably not attempt sarcasm online.
I have an aquaintance who recently who an award in the insurance industry. I wrote him a note of congratulations and he called me today to thank me. He had just returned from the National Association of Health Underwriters Washington DC conference. In speaking with legislators on both sides of the aisle he indicated a number of things. Subsidies may be expanded. Although the open enrollment period will be shortened, individuals may enroll at any time by paying a late enrollment fee. Those fees, and other fees collected by CMS, will help fund a new reinsurance program which will be more closely modeled on the Part D reinsurance program. Insurers will estimate high risk insured medical costs and apply for reinsurance funds prior to the policy year. At the end of the policy year the insurer either losses money or makes money and refunds a portion of the profits back to the reinsurance fund. Other tweaks of a more technical nature will be attempted as well.
Who knows if this will really happen given our legislative atmosphere but I thought run might find this interesting.
LJ:
Sounds familiar . . .
The PPACA/ACA/Obamacare had Risk Corridor and Reissuance programs in place which were modeled after the same in Part D. The difference being the PPACA programs were to last 3 years and Part D’s is still in existence and also generating revenue. PPACA’s program never got a chance to get off the ground as Sessions, Upton, and Kingston did everything they could to block it.
Thanks for mentioning it though.
Why don’t we all get to share in the same tax payer sponsored healthcare as members of Congress do?
Deborah:
Welcome to AB. Lets reverse your thought. Let them share the same as what they plan for us. Think that would happen? Naaaaaaaawww . . .
No matter how you try to frame the healthcare debate it all comes down to the fact that without the federal government pouring billions of dollars into the healthcare/medico complex, lots of jobs are going to be lost.
Linus:
You are mostly wrong. Start reading here: http://www.alignamerica.com/node/62
But the big difference is the pre-policy year estimate of costs. The ACA reinsurance program was a post-policy year reimbursement whereas the Part D reinsurance program is pre-policy year. I think the pre-policy year process encourages a more accurate pricing of policies rather than the post-policy year idea that no matter what premium was charged the insurance company would get bailed out on the back-end.
Nonetheless if some new ideas aren’t implemented and the individual market isn’t stabilized the whole thing is in trouble.
LJ:
I can see your point; but, I believe the emphasis for a post year was the numbers of pre-existing patients coming into the market. How would you account for the cost of them since no one was insured previously. Then there is also the numbers game; if one insurance company had great numbers of customers with pre-existing conditions, your forecast would not be good. What you get may be difficult to analyze. After a couple of years, it gets easier to forecast. PPACA/ACA program was also a 3 year program. Good or bad? CBO scored it at making $12 billion annually and spending $6 billion annually. It like the Part D program would be self sustaining.
All things being equal, if the Republicans (Sessions, Upton, and Kingston) had not screwed with it, the market with Co-ops and UHC would still be around. Now, your point is valid after they defunded it.
I love this “you call up your doctor and ask the price” thing.
Umm, the price of what?
What a maroon……
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/08/11/opinion-rand-paul-is-out-step-with-latinos-on-immigration-civil-rights.html “As soon as Paul heard the young woman identify herself as a “Dreamer,” he bolted from the table, leaving behind a half-eaten hamburger.
“unwilling to confront the issue of immigration head on. He talks a good game about making the GOP more inclusive to Latinos, yet his libertarian views are not in sync with the Hispanic mainstream. He also has a blind spot when it comes to civil rights issues. ”
Rand Paul is a hypocrite.
Run,
You are too kind to him.
He is an absolute clusterf!ck of a human being.
Sadly, half the GOP leadership(I’m being nice) fits that description.